Two issues stood out about Karim Benzema’s arrival in Jeddah on Wednesday night. The first was the look on his face. From the second his non-public jet touched down at King Abdulaziz International Airport to the second — an unspecified however apparently inordinate time later — that he lastly made it out into the Saudi Arabian night time, Benzema seemed distinctly baffled.

Perhaps it was simply the impact of the lengthy flight, or the lingering impression of what should have been a whirlwind few days, or the truth that individuals had been speaking to him in French, English, Spanish and Arabic, solely three of which he truly speaks. His smile didn’t waver, however nor did the slight trace of confusion in his eyes.

It was there as he was hustled by the intense, echoing halls of the arrivals terminal, as he was seated in an ornate chair in some kind of convention room, fidgeting with the yellow-and-black Al-Ittihad scarf that had been positioned round his neck, as he was offered with two smiling, however wholly unidentified, kids. Throughout, Benzema had the countenance of a person who had been just lately startled.

More placing nonetheless, although, was that each single step of his journey was being documented. Not simply by the cadre of official photographers and videographers — from Al-Ittihad, from the Saudi Premier League, from numerous news companies — who had been there to seize this transformative second in each Saudi Arabian and world soccer, however by everybody who crossed his path.

Airport workers members had been filming. Other passengers had been filming. The kids had been filming. The numerous digicam crews had been filming each other, filming. These weren’t simply devoted Al-Ittihad followers. It is a good guess that a few of them, a minimum of, wouldn’t even contemplate themselves soccer followers. But regardless of: Everyone nonetheless needed their very own little memento, their very own footage of the second Karim Benzema, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner, arrived in Jeddah.

That is the glamour he exudes, the spell he casts, the lure of his fame. And it’s that, greater than something he does on the sector, that Al-Ittihad can pay $400 million over three seasons to own.

There are, broadly, two faculties of thought on Saudi Arabia’s speedy, aggressive and lavish enlargement into sports activities during the last seven years or so.

One — the one proffered by the Saudi authorities, and anybody who desires to discover a justification for accepting the eye-watering salaries on provide — is that sports activities is a option to diversify the nation’s economic system away from oil, to encourage its residents to be extra lively, to assist construct a extra inclusive, extra “modern” society.

The different, the one proclaimed by Saudi dissidents and by activist organizations each there and internationally, is probably finest summed up by Lina al-Hathloul, whose sister, Loujaine, was arrested and sentenced to jail for advocating for Saudi ladies’s proper to drive. Sports, on this telling, is getting used as a distraction, a sleight of hand, a trick of the sunshine.

“I think the Saudi government, the Saudi regime and Mohammed bin Salman, he wants people to think of Ronaldo when they think about Saudi,” she mentioned, “and not about Khashoggi.”

They aren’t, in fact, mutually unique: The Saudi authorities nearly actually does wish to divert consideration away from its human rights file, however that doesn’t imply it doesn’t need its individuals to be extra lively.

Likewise, the dominion is probably acutely aware of the worth of offering leisure and spectacle for its younger, sports-obsessed inhabitants — panem et circenses stays a robust political motivation — whereas concurrently hoping it may possibly leverage its funding in soccer, culminating in a bid for the 2030 World Cup, for worldwide affect.

Whatever the motivation, the impression has been outsized. The first sport to fall underneath Saudi Arabia’s thrall was, oddly, professional wrestling. Five years in the past, the nation’s sports activities minister signed a deal with World Wrestling Entertainment to provide a variety of co-sponsored reveals for the following 10 years. The cash from that association, in accordance with “Ringmaster,” a captivating biography of Vince McMahon, supplies a substantial quantity of W.W.E.’s working finances.

Others fortunately adopted the path that sports activities leisure — and, if we’re trustworthy, what just isn’t sports activities leisure today? — first blazed. Saudi Arabia gives the richest purses in boxing. It is house to probably the most profitable horse race on the planet. It has scooped up motor sports activities properties: Formula 1 races, MotoGP events and the World Rally Championship.

And then, in fact, there is golf. No sport has been disrupted fairly a lot as golf by the sudden consideration of the Public Investment Fund, which by bankrolling the rebel LIV Golf collection waged conflict on the extra established P.G.A. Tour. This week introduced an abrupt, surprising cease-fire: After two years of bitter enmity, the 2 our bodies would type an alliance, they revealed. It was offered, successfully, as a merger. It seemed an terrible lot like a takeover.

Soccer, although, stays the last word prize: Its uncommon combine of untamed, enduring recognition and entrenched, more and more bananas tribalism makes it the surest car conceivable for assembly all the many and diversified goals of the Saudi sporting venture. But that additionally makes it probably the most treacherous floor.

Soccer just isn’t, not like Formula 1 and golf {and professional} wrestling, successfully a monopoly, the place one all-powerful fief or suite of executives could make selections for your complete sport. It is, as an alternative, a Game of Thrones of competing energy constructions and particular person pursuits. It is straightforward, too straightforward, to purchase in to; it’s unimaginable, when it comes right down to it, to purchase outright.

The Gulf monarchies that first set upon the game as a option to obtain broader, geopolitical targets — Qatar and Abu Dhabi, Saudi’s neighbors and rivals — determined that the simplest option to spend money on soccer was basically to purchase a crew as an avatar for the state.

Abu Dhabi reworked Manchester City not solely right into a Premier League and European powerhouse, but in addition a industrial, political, diplomatic and real estate venture. City is greater than only a billboard for its emirate. It serves because the vanguard of lots of its enterprise pursuits, too.

Qatar picked up Paris St.-Germain, bankrolled the French league to make sure its crew had some individuals to play towards, and set about constructing what’s finest regarded as a monument to its own self-regard. It signed one of the best gamers on the earth. It employed and fired the coaches who couldn’t make them work collectively. It alienated the membership’s followers, many times.

But none of that mattered, not solely as a result of it had its status property, however as a result of it was merely step one in a venture that culminated — or a minimum of the primary stage of it culminated — with a P.S.G. participant, Lionel Messi, clad in a bisht, lifting the World Cup within the nice, golden bowl of Lusail final December.

Saudi Arabia has, in fact, thrown its weight into that individual aggressive area, too: The PIF owns a controlling stake in Newcastle United, the longstanding Premier League makeweight that can play within the Champions League subsequent season for the primary time in twenty years.

But that strategy is a unstable, unsure one. There isn’t any assure that Newcastle will be capable of make the identical easy, exponential — if not uncontroversial — progress that Manchester City has these previous few years. And even when it does, there is no such thing as a assure it can make anybody common. It doesn’t fairly work like that, as each Qatar and Abu Dhabi, to their chagrin, have discovered.

And whereas there will be no query that Saudi Arabia is a fervent soccer nation — its hordes of fans at the World Cup bore witness to that — it’s truthful to imagine that the nation’s rulers haven’t any actual curiosity in sports activities in a literal sense. They aren’t spending all of that cash to compete. They are spending it to win, and people aren’t the identical factor in any respect.

The signing of the French striker Benzema, then, represents a major departure. He will likely be, in all probability, the primary of many European stars to land in Jeddah and Riyadh. The PIF now controls 4 golf equipment within the Saudi Premier League. Its intention is to inventory every of them with three high-profile, high-quality players.

N’golo Kanté appears more likely to be the following in line. Wilfried Zaha, or Roberto Firmino, or David De Gea might comply with. Others will come quickly sufficient: Saudi soccer authorities have drawn up a listing of attainable targets, primarily based largely on when their contracts in Europe expire, for the following few years. Each of them will likely be handed a contract far past their expectations. Each of them will likely be provided a home of their alternative, probably in perpetuity.

The temptation is to see this as merely one other model of the summer time of 2016, when the Chinese Super League briefly threatened to upturn soccer’s established order in a quixotic pursuit of sporting ambition. It is a comforting interpretation, a minimum of for traditionalists: It marks the Saudi plan out as nothing greater than a flash within the pan, a short interlude that must be of no concern to the elite leagues of Europe.

That might, although, be a misreading. Increasingly, it’s not golf equipment or leagues that transfer the needle, however gamers themselves. The one participant Saudi Arabia has, to date, failed to steer is Lionel Messi. Given that he’s an envoy for the dominion’s tourism authority, his disinclination to just accept a unfathomably wealthy provide to reside there would possibly fairly be thought of a blow. (Though Messi did, in choosing to commit his future to Major League Soccer, provide you with a superb promoting slogan for the Saudis: “If it had been about money, I’d have gone to Arabia or somewhere.” Put it on the posters.)

The provide that did persuade him, from Inter Miami, was rooted in a lot the identical logic. Messi, when he ultimately indicators, is not going to solely be paid by the membership, however he additionally is anticipated to be provided a reduced fee on an possession stake within the M.L.S. crew. Another a part of the monetary package deal will likely be offered by Apple, primarily based on the logic that he’ll assist promote a substantial variety of streaming passes, and Adidas is anticipated to sweeten the deal, too.

Teams, in fact, draw an viewers. Competitions generate content material. But, greater than ever, it’s gamers — or, extra particularly, a choose group of gamers, whose fame outstrips even the golf equipment they signify and the trophies they win — who command world consideration, who transfer merchandise, who’re the best belongings within the recreation. And one of the best factor, in fact, is that gamers are one factor that cash can completely purchase. The business of soccer, not like the game, is a recreation that’s gained, more often than not, by whoever has the deepest pockets.

Saudi Arabia has gone all in on that logic. It has dedicated almost a billion {dollars} in salaries already, to not more than a handful of gamers. At first look, it’s exhausting to not be startled and dazed and, above all, baffled by the scale of the numbers and the audacity of the strategy. Such is the draw, the attraction, the facility of the gamers, although, that it doesn’t take too lengthy earlier than it begins to make sense.

The Fourth Wall

The line that connects the occasions within the parking storage and the airport terminal seems, on the floor, to be a fairly straight one. In the quick aftermath of his Roma crew’s defeat to Sevilla within the Europa League remaining, José Mourinho noticed Anthony Taylor, the referee, on his method out of the Puskas Arena in Budapest.

Just in case anybody had been beginning to marvel if maybe the Portuguese manager was not so bad after all, Mourinho — an grownup male human — spat a volley of invective in Taylor’s basic path, delivering a withering critique of his efficiency within the recreation in a handy number of languages, simply to drive the message house.

A number of hours later, as Taylor and his household walked by Budapest airport on their method again to England, they had been greeted by what most likely constituted a mob of Roma followers. They had been jostled, jeered, abused, intimidated. The physique that oversees refereeing in England described the scene as “unjustified and abhorrent.”

Not with out trigger, the fast consensus had it that blame for the incident lay squarely at Mourinho’s door. Urs Meier, a former referee, advised that Mourinho must be banned from the sport for a yr for “throwing the referee at the fans.” A refrain of assorted commentators fulminated that the followers had merely been following his lead.

One factor, although, was conspicuous by its absence in all this evaluation: the function of the news media itself. Far too steadily, managers select in charge their disappointment on the supposed failings of referees. Far too usually, they’re offered with a microphone and inspired to cross the buck for his or her failings on to the one particular person on the sector who just isn’t attempting to achieve no matter benefit they’ll at any given second.

But it’s no good pretending that each one of that occurs in a vacuum. Someone arms them the microphone. Plenty of individuals earnestly jot down their phrases, kind them up, after which ship them out into the ether utterly unchallenged, no matter their legitimacy or not.

Mourinho was, probably, to some extent liable for what occurred to Taylor in Budapest. He has hardly ever shirked a chance to make life basically insupportable for referees throughout his profession. But he’s not alone in that, and till the news media dispenses with its absurd pretense that it’s an observer, reasonably than an lively participant, it’s exhausting to see how something modifications.

Up Next? The Final

That’s all for this week. Getting prepared for the Champions League remaining? So are we. The Times will present reside protection of Manchester City vs. Inter Milan on Saturday at nytimes.com.