Oil, Ronaldo, and Existentialism: Inside the Jeddah Club–Al-Nassr Derby the World Pretends Not to Watch
Jeddah Club vs. Al-Nassr: The Derby Where Oil Money Meets Existential Dread
By “Abu Dhabi Al-Roberts,” International Correspondent-at-Large
Jeddah –– If you squint through the smog of a Thursday night, the floodlights at Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Stadium look less like beacons of sport and more like the interrogation lamps of late capitalism. Jeddah Club—population: mostly forgotten locals and a few loaned-in Eastern Europeans hoping for a career defibrillator—host Al-Nassr, the Riyadh super-club that recently swapped its soul for Cristiano Ronaldo’s torso and a sponsorship deal rumored to be denominated in petrodollars, NFTs, and a modest slice of Yemen’s future.
Across the Persian Gulf, the world’s bar tabs are being totaled. Qatar just cashed out on a World Cup that left eight stadiums and one lingering question: “Was it worth it?” Meanwhile, the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia—motto: “Soft Power, Hard Cash”—is betting that 90 minutes of Ronaldo doing step-overs will distract the planet from 90 years of geopolitical footnotes. Thursday’s derby is the pilot episode of that experiment, and the critics are already sharpening their keyboards.
From Buenos Aires to Birmingham, supporters’ WhatsApp groups are buzzing with the same half-ironic lament: “Remember when football was about football?” Nostalgia, of course, is a luxury item; the rest of us get VAR and sovereign wealth. Jeddah Club’s ultras—their average age suspiciously close to the national unemployment figure—wave homemade flags reading “We Were Here Before Oil and We’ll Be Here After.” It’s cute, in the way that a handwritten protest sign outside a tear-gas factory is cute.
Al-Nassr’s traveling circus rolls in on a fleet of matte-black buses that look like they moonlight as CIA rendition vehicles. Ronaldo disembarks last, shirt untucked, hair gel still setting under the coastal humidity. He offers a thumbs-up that simultaneously says “Respect the fans” and “Check my follower count.” Somewhere in the VIP box, a European football bureaucrat calculates how many carbon credits the private jet burned and decides to offset them with a glossy brochure on “Vision 2030.”
On the pitch, the first half plays out like a TED Talk with shin guards. Al-Nassr stroke the ball around, practicing a possession game best described as “gentrification in motion.” Jeddah Club, meanwhile, defend the way a millennial defends their last avocado: desperately, and with a faint whiff of performative virtue. The irony isn’t lost on anyone when the home side’s Moroccan striker—on loan from a Belgian team that no longer exists—equalizes against the run of play. The crowd erupts as if someone just announced free student-loan forgiveness, which is to say: ecstatic, but suspicious it’s a clerical error.
Halftime brings the inevitable montage of smiling children waving flags distributed 30 minutes earlier by PIF interns. In the press box, an American podcaster live-tweets the match while Googling “What is Wahhabism?” The Wi-Fi, mercifully, buffers just long enough to spare him an answer.
Second half: enter the meta-narrative. Al-Nassr’s coach, whose résumé includes the words “UEFA Pro License” and “Qatar Stars League tax-free stipend,” throws on a 19-year-old Brazilian winger whose transfer fee could rebuild a Ukrainian village. Within four minutes the kid nutmegs two defenders and slots the winner. Social media melts like glacier ice. Hashtags bloom: #SaudiGameChanger, #RonaldoEffect, #SportswashingButMakeItFashion.
Full-time whistle. Final score: 2-1 to Al-Nassr. The away fans chant “Siuuu” with the rehearsed joy of a flash mob sponsored by a fintech startup. Jeddah Club supporters applaud their players, partly out of pride, partly because the stadium loudspeakers remind them that “positive fan behavior” earns loyalty points exchangeable for discounted falafel.
As the lights dim, the stadium empties into the Red Sea night. Some fans will Uber home; others will queue for buses that run on schedules best described as “Kafka meets daylight saving time.” The global audience, meanwhile, flips to the next tab—Netflix, OnlyFans, or an open letter condemning something. In the distance, cranes keep building, oil keeps pumping, and Ronaldo’s jet lifts off toward another city that believes salvation can be signed on a three-year deal with an optional fourth.
Football, they say, is the universal language. Tonight it spoke fluent Gulf-English, subtitled in cynicism. And somewhere in the afterglow, a Jeddah Club kid pockets a torn corner of Ronaldo’s match-worn jersey—proof that miracles exist, even if they’re dry-cleaned and resold on eBay before sunrise.
