The most instructive meeting in Jeddah on Saturday evening was not on the dark grey canvas where Oleksandr Usyk and Anthony Joshua met; sporting bouts flash in the moment but are ultimately transient, soon giving way to the next great contest.
Higher up in the stands of Jeddah’s King Abdullah Sports City Arena, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud was joined by Fifa president Gianni Infantino to watch the fight. We can presume they touched on matters of business as well as pleasure and football administration more than boxing history.
It represents the latest reinforcement of ties between Saudi Arabia and Fifa, led by its president’s multiple visits to the country over the last two years. Infantino has also appeared in a Saudi PR video with all the predictable cringing lines you can stomach: “This is something that the world should come to see”; “The Saudi food is delicious, very tasty”; and, most memorably, “It is showing and breathing the greatness of this country”.
Infantino is dressed in a black suit and tie throughout the clips, seen exiting a black car like a low-level henchman of a Bond villain. Looks can be deceiving, of course – just not how he’d like us to believe. Infantino is not a mere facilitator – he’s a kingmaker.
The inevitable end game here is a Saudi World Cup bid, almost certainly for 2030. Fifa’s own rules disallow their showpiece tournament being hosted on the same continent twice in three editions (and so Qatar 2022 should stop Saudi 2030), but those waters have been muddied by the expansion to a 48-team tournament. Infantino has already conceded that the age of the single-nation tournament is over. Multiple hosts would allow for Saudi Arabia to piggyback onto another bid and thus circumvent the technicalities of the hosting rules. How handy when everything falls into place.
In 2021, reports suggested that a joint Saudi bid with Italy was a possibility; it came to nought. Now, Egypt and Greece appear to be the preferred partners. If you can envisage Fifa enjoying the notion of a World Cup held in a relatively small geographical area but based over three of its confederations, Saudi have too. It may pit them against the romantic choice, a joint bid from South American countries to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the first World Cup. If you think romance automatically wins out, you haven’t been paying enough attention.
The Usyk-Joshua fight, as with the World Cup, forms part of the kingdom’s sportswashing surge under their Saudi Vision 2030. Created in 2016, it is a modernisation programme that aims to make Saudi Arabia a natural home for global sporting events to position itself as the commercial and political centre of the Middle East, diversifying its economy away from oil and its public image in the process. The World Cup would be the golden ticket – what better way to end the Vision 2030 era with the landmark sporting event on the planet. If Qatar had theirs, there will be a deep desire to outdo them.
And Saudi Arabia’s reputation does need distraction. It repeatedly ranks towards the bottom of human rights indexes. Freedom House, an organisation that campaigns on the premise that freedom is established only when the rule of law prevails and freedoms of expression, association, and belief are permitted, awarded Saudi Arabia a score of 7/100 in its latest report. Amnesty International has detailed how the Kingdom’s Specialised Criminal Court has handed down significant prison sentences to those who campaigned on human rights issues and expressed dissenting views. Only last week, a Saudi student at Leeds University who had returned to her home country on holiday was jailed for 34 years for using a Twitter account and retweeting activists.
The full detail in the Freedom House report is here, but the introduction alone spells out their misgivings perfectly: “Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties. The regime relies on extensive surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, appeals to sectarianism and ethnicity. Women and religious minorities face extensive discrimination in law and in practice. Working conditions for the large expatriate labour force are often exploitative.”
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But that slightly misses the point. Negative media coverage is a small price to pay for the kudos of hosting a major sporting event and the further opportunities it provides for their normalised presence on the world stage. Saudi Arabia’s willingness to risk the backlash follows Qatar’s own lead. They believe, with some evidence, that hosting the World Cup will prove to be a success despite negative press coverage. The commercial and political opportunities are simply too big to ignore. Soft power is attractive power.
And the negative stories will soon dissipate, they reason. For proof of that, look at the reaction to Newcastle United’s likely signing of Alexander Isak. Expecting Newcastle fans not to be excited about the club breaking their transfer record is too much to ask, most probably. But then that’s exactly the point: these owners can play on emotions and football demands greater loyalty from its followers than any other cultural entity. They know what they’re doing.
You can make the case, as Fifa’s president does, that he is merely helping to force cultural change in Saudi Arabia. What point is there keeping them on the outside, he may figure. But that doesn’t really wash. Hosting the World Cup ought to be a reward for significant, systemic progress for minority rights and freedom of expression, not an attempted persuasion. The horse is following the cart.
Now Saudi Arabia is aiming to follow the path that Qatar ploughed: the Fifa charm offensive (with the emphasis on offensive), the movie trailers that talk up the benefits without mentioning those who sit hidden from view, the washing of a reputation in public view that nobody appears able to contest because money speaks more powerfully than truth. Sport can change the world, Infantino is often at pains to repeat. It can also provide gold-plated wallpaper to cover the cracks.
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