The headlines in Saudi football tend to follow the money. Marquee signings, nine-figure transfer fees, ageing superstars taking one last paycheque under the desert sun. NEOM SC have just delivered a result that fits none of that, and it might end up mattering more than any of it.
The Tabuk club have completed a clean sweep across their academy age groups in 2025-26. The U-13s have been crowned national champions in the Braem competition. The U-15s have won promotion to the Premier League. The U-16s, U-17s and U-18s have all earned promotion to the First Division. Five age groups, five sides going up or lifting silverware, and a youth pyramid that has just had the most successful season in the club’s history.
It is the kind of news that does not generate viral clips, but it tells you a lot about where this project is actually going.
Structure, not spectacle
NEOM’s senior side has spent its debut Saudi Pro League season as one of the more interesting case studies in the division. They sit eighth, seven points off fifth, with five matches still to play under former PSG manager Christophe Galtier. They had the youngest squad in the entire league through the opening months of the campaign, and under-23s and under-21s have accounted for a bigger share of minutes than at any other top-flight club in Saudi Arabia.
فئاتنا السنية هذا الموسم 🔝
— الفئات السنية | نادي نيوم الرياضي (@NEOMSCSG) April 27, 2026
أبطــال المستقبل 💙#نادي_نيوم_الرياضي pic.twitter.com/WMYVukjc1i
That is not an accident. It is a deliberate strategic choice from Sporting Director Kyriakos Dourekas, the Greek executive brought in to oversee the football operation. Dourekas has framed the academy as a long-term competitive asset rather than a marketing exercise, and the youth pyramid has been built with the senior team’s identity firmly in mind. Promotions across four consecutive age groups suggest the coaching infrastructure, recruitment standards and competitive level are now all moving in the same direction.
It is a model that requires patience. Saudi football has spent the last two seasons defined by enormous senior-team investment, and the headlines have followed accordingly. NEOM are running a parallel project, focused on producing rather than purchasing, and it is starting to produce at every level it competes at.
Zeze as the proof of concept
If you want to see what the academy is being structured to deliver, look at Nathan Zeze.
The 20-year-old French centre-back, once tipped as the next William Saliba and reportedly tracked by Liverpool, Inter Milan, Villarreal and Bournemouth before his move from Nantes, has been one of the bright spots of NEOM’s debut top-flight season. He has featured in 26 of NEOM’s 29 league games and ranks second among all outfield players in the division for minutes played, with 2,340. He sits third in the entire Saudi Pro League for clearances and inside the top ten for passes completed, with 1,451. He has scored twice and created 12 chances along the way.
Zeze is also bought into where this is heading. “Next year, we’ll try to aim for the top five in the league because we’re capable of it,” he told Foot Mercato earlier this month. “If we bring in two or three more players, we can achieve some great things.”
He has spoken about the dressing-room balance between veterans like Alexandre Lacazette, who he describes as “a bit like an uncle”, and the younger contingent bringing what he calls the carefree attitude of youth. That blend, the experienced senior pros guiding the next generation, is the model NEOM set out to build.
The point is that Zeze is not an isolated bet. He is a senior-team version of what the U-17s and U-18s are now being structured to deliver in three or four years’ time. The pathway looks deliberately built so that the talent emerging from the youth pyramid has somewhere meaningful to go.
What it actually means
None of this guarantees what comes next. Promotion at youth level is the start of a harder conversation, not the end of one, and every club in the region is sharpening its own development model. Senior football remains the only metric that ultimately keeps Sporting Directors in jobs.
But the picture from 2025-26 looks more joined-up than the league table alone might suggest. A senior side punching at its weight in its first top-flight campaign. A young French international embedded as one of the most-used outfielders in the entire division. And a youth pyramid that has just delivered the most complete season the club has ever seen.
For a project still very much in its early years, it is the kind of foundation that takes longer to build than people give credit for. Dourekas and his team appear to be building it anyway.
