Can the Saudis Buy Soccerr?

Saudi Arabia is spending an unfathomable fortune to lure the biggest stars of global football (Ronaldo! Benzema! Neymar!) to its upstart league ventured to the kingdom to discover what the gambit represents. Is this the future of the world's most popular sport? The vanguard of sportswashing? Or something way bigger?

- By Oliver Franklin-Wallis. Photographs by MacMahon

CONSIDER, BEFORE WE begin, that not long ago, the grassy pitch of Riyadh’s Al-Awwal Park was desert, and even before that, it was underwater. Around 250 million years ago—give or take—much of what we call the Arabian Peninsula was submerged beneath an ancient sea that teemed with life: algae, diatoms, and sundry other prehistoric critters in their trillions. When these creatures died, their bodies littered the ocean floor and became trapped. Bedrock accreted. Tectonic plates drifted, smashed together. And, under pressure and heat and time, those organisms transformed into the substance we now know as crude oil.

Whole eras pass. The dinosaurs come and go. Continents break up, sea levels fall, and a new landmass rises from the waves, eventually giving way to an inhospitable desert. The resourceful Homo sapiens that do make it their home toil and quarrel until the early 20th century, when much of the territory falls into the hands of the warrior they call Ibn Saud, who proclaims his fiefdom the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Then, fortune: Prospectors discover that the bygone ocean has left behind some of the richest oil-and-gas reserves anywhere on the planet, making the ruling family of this fledgling desert kingdom among the wealthiest human beings alive.

The point being that places change—slowly, continuously, and, on rare occasion, all at once. Oh, and that for the craziness of what follows to make sense, perhaps keep in mind that while money doesn’t grow on trees, it does, in a few places, flow freely from the earth.