Sheriff was formed in 1997 by Viktor Gushan, a former K.G.B. officer, and is embedded in the private economy in Transnistria. Its distinctive black-and-yellow sheriff’s badge can be found on everything from supermarkets to gas stations.

The money has helped Sheriff become the richest club in the Moldovan league, allowing it to scoop up talented young players in Africa and nearby Serbia. Its stadium is considered one of the best in Eastern Europe, a modern building with a training stadium next door and a hotel with accommodations that would not seem unfamiliar to the best teams in Europe.

“I don’t like the pitch here,” Aleksandar Pesic, an under-21 Serbian international who recently signed for Sheriff, said before a recent game on a decrepit soccer field in the village of Ghidighici, three miles outside the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. “But you should see the pitch at Sheriff in Tiraspol. It’s perfect.”

The disparity in wealth was clear as the game proceeded. Sheriff beat the home team, Academia, 4-1, after bringing on two big-money foreign signings, one of them Pesic, who scored.

“I enjoy living there,” Sheriff’s Serbian coach, Milan Milanovic, who has since been fired, said coyly after the match, referring to Transnistria. “The facilities are great.” He added, “I think, in Europe, I have never seen such good places like this.”

Beyond that, though, nobody wanted to talk about the club, from a nation where even 20 years after the war of independence with Moldova, phone calls between the two capitals do not connect, no matter that the team regularly crosses the border to play Moldovan teams.