These Ligue 1 stars have signed... in a ghost town 👻 | OneFootball

A titanic project.

This is a name you probably never heard of before this summer transfer window. Yet, NEOM SC has made a resounding entrance into the French football landscape by recruiting the likes of Alexandre Lacazette, Marcin Bulka, Saïd Benrahma, and Christophe Galtier.

If you didn't know this club, it's probably because it's attached to a city that doesn't exist... yet.

NEOM SC is the team of the utopian project of the Saudi government called "The Line". This vertical city in the middle of the desert is supposed to be extended in a straight line over 170 kilometers long, 200 meters wide, and 500 meters high.

Faced with the magnitude of the project, the size of this city would have been revised downward to only 2.4 kilometers. This video from three years ago shows what the Saudi government promised.

But how can a club from a city that doesn't exist yet already play in the Saudi first division? Well, before being NEOM SC, the club was called Al-Suqoor and was founded in 1965.

In 2023, the Saudi public investment fund bought the club, which was stagnating in the third division, to rename it and allow it to climb the ranks until it reached the Saudi Pro League this year.

If the city and its future suspended stadium are supposed to host matches of the 2034 World Cup, the current home of NEOM SC is located in the suburbs of Tabuk, 150 kilometers from where The Line will be built.

In the meantime, the Saudi club is trying to build a solid squad to rival the top teams in its championship and the Asian continent. Fabrizio Romano reported that NEOM would have now set its sights on Granit Xhaka from Bayer Leverkusen.

What do you think of this project? Tell us everything in the comments.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇫🇷 here.

📸 OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE - AFP or licensors