at the end of the 2025 winter transfer window Algerian International say Ben Rama said goodbye to his teammates at leyon Ben Rama had only been in the French leaga for a year but he just received an offer to play in Saudi Arabia and it was too good to turn down dozens of players had moved to Saudi Arabia on huge contracts Cristiano Ronaldo was reportedly earning close to a quarter of a billion dollars a year at al- Nasa but Ben Rama wasn't signing for one of the big clubs in the Saudi pro league he was signing
for a club newly promoted to the second division of Saudi football and it seemed like a huge step down but this club was richer than all of them in fact it was probably the richest Club in the history of football neom sports club based in The Quiet City of tabuk in the northwest of the country and owned by neom the controversial tightly guarded $1.5 trillion real estate Mega project being built in Virtual secrecy 200 km down the road neom is entirely owned and funded by the public investment fund Saudi Arabia's Sovereign wealth fund which majority
owns Newcastle United too the project announced in 2017 by the country's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is a high-tech series of developments covering 27,000 Square km of tuuk Province bordering on Saudi Arabia's pristine and undeveloped Red Sea Coastline it was virgin land they said to build the settlements of the future including the line a proposed 100 km long cognitive City AI would monitor everything and use the data to predict and satisfy the needs of the city's proposed 9 million citizens there would be no roads or currency and the project would be staffed by robot servants
and flying cars the mega project was a vital component of Saudi Vision 230 nbs's grand plan to wean the kingdom off oil and diversify the economy as well as Saudi Arabia's successful bid for the 2034 World Cup finals one of the host cities would be in neom so if neom was to be a proper city with a proper World Cup Stadium then it needed a proper football team too and that is where neon Sports Club comes in in the summer of 2023 it was announced that Saudi Arabia's four biggest clubs would be privatized the money
would come from the public investment fund and it sparked one of the great gold rushes of modern football that summer saw the arrival of Neymar Jr Benzema kante mané firmino and many more a billion euros was spent in a few weeks the same as the entire Healthcare budget of mova for a year and buried to the bottom of that announcement was the news that a third division Club from tibuk called el sakur would now be owned by neom El sakur or the Falcons in Arabic was formed into book in the 1960s and had spent most
of its life bumping around in the third tier of Saudi football neom scouted the club bought it and then molded it into Nom's image they changed the club's Crest colors and most obviously its name a new training complex was built inbook in 44 days and the club now has a legitimate claim to be the richest in the world World in little over a year millions of Euros were spent on players Saudi national team captain Salman alaraj signed as did Egyptian International Ahmed agazi both stepping down a division to play for a brand new team in
a remote part of the country as did Brazilian coach Pericles chimusa neom Executives took jamusa on a helicopter ride before he signed he said it was different and amazing a giant project recalling seeing neom from the air it makes you emotional and gives you the feeling that you're also part of this project so you become more motivated now neom has a five-year plan this year promotion to the Saudi pro league then challenge for the title and once that was won challenge for FIFA's Club World Cup and then once the club had established itself as one
of Asia's best they were to be transplanted to their new home in a state-of-the-art World Cup stadium on top of the line we don't believe in this word impossible said mashari elmi the chairman of neomc everything is possible we need to work hard double time and we'll reach it now there is of course another side to this story far from being unpopulated lands several tribes including the haat who had lived there for centuries had been forcibly displaced their leaders arrested to make way for the Giga project a recent BBC investigation found that Villages schools and
hospitals had been wiped off the map one former colonel in Saudi intelligence who since sought asylum in the UK told the BBC that a shoot to kill policy was ordered against those who refused to leave it's estimated that as many as 20,000 people have been forcibly displaced NBS talks about neom as virgin land but of course as Saudis we know these regions have been inhabited for Centuries by tribes including the haat tribe said Lena alul an exiled activist for Al cust a Saudi human rights NGO based in the UK they the Saudi authorities don't call
these arrests arbitrary they say that they're Justified because these people are a threat to National Security to National Unity the Saudi authorities have denied the allegations now it's a huge project 20% of the world's entire Steel Supply is currently being sent to Neon and a huge amount of Labor is therefore needed and just like in the rest of the gulf tens of thousands of men from Asia and Africa have been brought in under cfala a highly exploitive system the hands almost all power over a worker into the hands of an employer Qatar was heavily criticized
for its treatment of workers during the building of the 2022 World Cup and conditions in Saudi Arabia appear to be worse the ITV documentary Kingdom uncovered inside Saudi Arabia claimed that since 2017 21,000 workers from Bangladesh Nepal and India have already died on construction projects the Saudi government called the figure misinformation but the neomc project continues s Ben Rama made his debut and the team are currently top of the Saudi first division League we know that there's no way we can't be promoted at the end of the season to the pro league said coach Pericles
jamusa and given that the club has a budget comparable to the top Saudi teams he's right Saudi Arabia and the pif have have a plan and neom sports club's future is already mapped out if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists including David onstein Daniel Taylor Ole K Amy Lawrence and James horncastle with the latest transfer news and insight on every Premier League Football story that matters theathletic.com puts you inside football and you can try it for free now for 30
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