As construction budgets in Saudi Arabia go, the 100 or so million dollars NEOM have spent building their football team is trifling. Set against the cost of the city the team is set to represent, for example, it scarcely touches the sides. After all, the club is just one piece of the $500 billion mega project underway in the Kingdom’s far north west.

But the outlay the club have made this summer is still a statement of intent in football terms. They are entering Saudi Arabia’s big league for the first time, and they want to make their mark. For the best part of 60 years, the club had bobbed along in the lower reaches of the country’s competition structure.

Based in Tabuk, the main city of a region that is being entirely redrawn as part of Vision 2030, the club was then known as Al Suqoor.

NEOM have attracted a number of players with Premier League pedigree. Abdoulaye Doucoure has arrived from Everton on a free, with Alexandre Lacazette, the former Arsenal striker, doing similar from Lyon.

Said Benrahma, formerly of Brentford and West Ham United, has also formalised his permanent signing, having played a key role in NEOM’s promotion season as a loanee.

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