With his strawberry blond hair and pale complexion, August fixtures in the UAE Pro League might not seem like the natural habitat for Brad Young.
The 22-year-old Englishman acknowledges the opening games of a new season are little toastier in the Middle East than they were back at home.
Temperatures would rarely have reached the late 30s – as it was when his new side Baniyas kicked off against Ittihad Kalba on Friday – in his previous postings in Birmingham, or the Welsh borders.
Happily for him, though, he had a year of acclimatisation, even before he started pre-season at Baniyas in Abu Dhabi this summer.
“It is hot, and it is about getting used to the weather,” Young said. “We train in it every day so I’m progressing, and I think I’m getting used to it now. In Saudi it was the same, but here it is even hotter.”
Young spent last season playing against stars like N'Golo Kante, Ruben Neves and Joao Cancelo in the Saudi Pro League (SPL).
He earned the unlikely move to Al Orobah, a club from the town of Sakaka in the north of the Kingdom, thanks to the weight of goals he scored in one season in Welsh football.
The $250,000 Al Orobah spent on him might have been a drop in the ocean against the other eye-watering transfer fees of the SPL. But it was still the record for a player from the Cymru Premier division in Wales – even if the delayed payment of it did subsequently earn Al Orobah a transfer embargo.
Both in celebrity and age profile, Young was different to many of the other imports arriving in Saudi Arabia. He was thrilled to get the chance.
“Everyone has a lot of stuff to say about Saudi but look at the quality of players they have in the league there,” Young said.
“It speaks for itself. Yes, there are some players who are getting to the end of their careers and want to get a paycheck, but I looked at it in a different way.
“I was a young player at the time, playing in the Welsh league. I could have played in [England’s] League One or Two, but chose Saudi.
“The quality of players that are in the league is levels above the English leagues. It worked out in my favour.”
Most weeks last season he was playing against household names. Although his side struggled, they did have one exceptional night out.
Young played in the game in which Al Orobah claimed an extraordinary 2-1 win against an Al Nassr side which included the great Cristiano Ronaldo in their line-up.
Controversially, Al Nassr were subsequently awarded a 3-0 win when it was ruled Al Orobah had fielded an ineligible player. It was based on the spurious grounds that their goalkeeper held another job elsewhere, thus infringing league rules.
Whatever the final outcome – and Al Orobah ended the season four points short of saving themselves from relegation – that Al Nassr game must have been a satisfying one for Young.
Not because Ronaldo and all the other stars on the other side – but one of them in specific.
Al Nassr’s attack included Jhon Duran, the Colombian striker who led the line for Aston Villa, before he was spirited away to Riyadh on a big-money deal.
Playing up front for Villa was a dream that Young had once harboured.
“Unai Emery didn’t see me fitting into the first team,” he said of his reason for leaving the Premier League club he was with as a teenager.
“I listened to the academy manager, listened to my agent, and everyone said the Welsh league was the best going forward. Luckily it has turned out that way.
“It is a different route. Not everyone would do it. When I left Villa it was a case of joining either a League Two or League One club, or joining a Welsh team.
“At that point in my career I had to think about what was best for me. League Two is not really football; it is scrappy football, so I chose the Welsh league.”
The next step on his magical mystery tour after Oswestry, where The New Saints play, and Al Orobah is Abu Dhabi.
After Orobah’s relegation last season, he accepted a free transfer to Baniyas. Again, it will be a challenge: Baniyas finished one place above relegation in the UAE Pro League last season, and have started the new campaign with two defeats.
But Young is grateful to be here. “I enjoyed my time in Saudi and it was a big step in terms of where I have come from,” he said.
“It was a privilege to play in a league with top quality players, but this move came from me wanting to play in the UAE.
“It is a tough league which is getting better each year. Quality players are here. But most importantly, for my family, it is obviously a great place to live. Probably the best place in the world. [The decision to move] stems from that.”
At Baniyas, Young has been pitched into a league of nations. The manager is Bulgarian, the coaching staff Bosnian, while the playing squad includes players from Cameroon, Ghana, Belgium, Tunisia, Brazil and Uzbekistan.
There is also fellow new signing, Mackenzie Hunt, who was born in Liverpool but brought up in Dubai, and has a UAE passport and represents the national team.
Young would qualify to play for the national team if he stayed in the UAE for five years, and he says that is an idea that would appeal to him.
“It is something that I would be interested in,” Young said.
“Having spoken to Mackenzie, he has nothing but great things to say about the country and the national team.
“I want to take it one step at a time. I’m only into my second game. We are all new boys wanting to get used to the system. Inshallah, it progresses in the future.”
