His wife took their two small children out of Riyadh, and Ollie Watkins stayed to finish the football season. No amount of sympathy for how hard this must be changes what it is: a man choosing his salary over being in the same country as his kids during a period his own wife has described as frightening.
Ellie Watkins was right to go. Saudi Arabia just suffered the deadliest attack on its soil in more than a decade, with missiles hitting Riyadh's international airport and schools across the capital forced onto remote learning for a week. You do not leave a five-year-old and a three-year-old in that for one extra day than you have to. In her own words, she took the step for her children, "so that we can guarantee them a measure of normal life, until we are able to reunite." Full marks. That is what a parent does.
The real question is why the father isn't on the same plane. The honest answer, with no return date set by anyone, is that Watkins is a healthy millionaire with full freedom of movement who has decided that turning out for Al-Hilal matters more right now than being physically present for his family. He joined the Saudi Pro League side from Aston Villa in a move announced at the end of August, reportedly earning somewhere around £20m a year, tax-free. Nobody's forcing him to stay; he's choosing it.
I don't care about the Saudi move itself. Players are allowed to chase the biggest check of their lives, and good professionals have done it without apology. What I won't accept is the framing that Watkins is some trapped bystander, a worker who can't simply walk out on a contract while his family flees. Footballers at this level can walk away from contracts; deals get torn up mid-contract all the time when the will is there. Jordan Henderson walked out of Al-Ettifaq after six months and waived something like £4m he was owed to join Ajax when his family couldn't settle. The exit was there for the taking. Watkins picked a different door, one that keeps the wages coming.
The strongest defense of him is real: this is a genuine security crisis that deserves to be taken seriously. That defense is true, and it actually makes things worse for him. If the region is dangerous enough to evacuate two children under six, then it's dangerous enough to raise the question of why their dad is commuting into it every day. You can't lean on "it's a real threat" to justify the family leaving and then wave it away for the one adult who could most easily go with them.
Responsibility here is easy to assign. Al-Hilal is just a club paying a footballer to play football. Ellie did exactly what she should have. The responsibility sits with Ollie. He's good at his job, through his first eight league games this season he'd racked up a healthy haul of goals and assists, but that doesn't change where his family is. His family is in one country and he's in another, by his own decision, with no date on the calendar for fixing it.
He's putting the Saudi money ahead of his family's wellbeing by staying. That doesn't change until Ollie Watkins gets on a plane too.
