Welcome to Saudi 2034! Fifa are set to rubber stamp Saudi Arabia as the hosts of the men’s World Cup in 10 years’ time.
This will happen on Wednesday, with Saudi left as the only bidders after Australia pulled out last year, making this truly a victory for the little guy and the Public Investment Fund worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Following on from the controversy of Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup, this is another dubious election by world football’s governing body, not least because they have smoothed the route for the Saudis’ bid.
Fifa even gave Saudi’s bid a 4.2 out of five in their bid evaluation report, released last month, earning it the highest score in history. Quelle surprise!
Here we have picked out five reasons why Saudi 2034 is going to be the most controversial in history…
Manufacture of only bid
Fifa’s rules indicate that a confederation may only bid for a World Cup if they have not hosted one of the previous two tournaments, a stipulation that they failed to change despite the enlargement of their tournament inducing multi-confederation bids.
So, with North America covered by 2026, South America covered by the continent being given the first three matches of the same tournament and Europe and Africa winning the bid for 2030, that left Asia as the only option. How wonderfully neat for the power brokers of that region.
Then, Fifa unexpectedly gave potential Asian bidders just four weeks to submit their entries to host a tournament 11 years away that requires vast planning.
Saudi Arabia, with breathtaking efficiency, announced their own intention several minutes after the announcement of the process, along with a statement from football federation president Yasser Al Misehal that invited the world to “witness Saudi Arabia’s development, experience and culture and become part of its history”. Great timing to have all that lined up, guys!
That’s not all. In the days that followed the Saudis’ public declaration of intent, social media messages from the Saudi Pro League’s newest and most expensive recruits started to drop. As ever, Jordan Henderson – now no longer in Saudi – took the biscuit more than most, including the immortal line: “I’ve been here two months and there’s been no issues”. Truly the intrepid investigative journalist of our age.
Finally, you might think that a single country hosting a 48-team World Cup would come with logistical challenges that might fall foul of Fifa’s existing guidelines – you’d be right. Until recently, Fifa’s bidding processes for the 2030 and 2034 tournaments dictated that proposals “must propose a minimum of 14 suitable stadiums, of which at least seven must be existing stadiums [including those under construction]”. Those stadiums would need a minimum capacity of 40,000.
However, Fifa were, coincidentally, able to change this part of their World Cup bidding framework. It became “of the 14 suitable stadiums proposed, any bid must propose a minimum of four existing stadiums”. You’ll never guess what: Saudi Arabia met that guideline after it was changed.
Between the smattering of South American games in 2030, fast-tracking of the bidding process for a tournament 10 years away (thus making life very difficult for Australia, the only likely alternative) and changing of the guidelines over stadium construction, you would almost think that Fifa were desperate for Saudi Arabia to get the gig…
Another winter World Cup, but bigger
The Qatar World Cup, initially awarded as a summer tournament before everybody realised that it gets quite hot in Doha in June and July, became a winter event that forced the entire domestic calendar to be shifted to accommodate.
Well strap in. With temperatures regularly topping 40 degrees in summer in Riyadh, it seems inconceivable that the 2034 World Cup could be played at that time of year. So we’re going to return to the elongated season, November and December World Cup, and knackered players for the next six months. Fun.
It gets worse. Because Fifa have altered their initial idea for a 48-team World Cup – 16 groups of three – there are going to be 104 matches (a rise of 47 per cent) at these tournaments with each country that gets to the semi-finals playing one more fixture than usual. As such, the 2026 World Cup is expected to last 39 days, 10 days longer than the Qatar edition.
So there you have it: a winter tournament, likely 10 days longer than Qatar, with shorter lead-in and lead-out times than usual to allow players to rest after and before domestic responsibilities.
Stadium construction and white elephants
As discussed, Saudi Arabia will be forced to engage upon an unprecedented period of construction to meet the demands of a 48-team World Cup. The kingdom currently has two sporting stadia that meet the 40,000-capacity minimum requirement to host a World Cup match (although Fifa may well merrily change that too) – one in Riyadh and one in Jeddah.
Two existing stadiums will be temporarily expanded, while organisers have confirmed their plan for 15 stadiums overall, meaning 11 new stadiums will be built in the next 10 years, with three currently under construction.
They are clearly capable of achieving this, given the vast wealth of the PIF. But, in 2016, Fifa warned countries that they wanted to avoid “white elephant” syndrome. “Don’t build stadiums that will not be filled by your leagues or your teams,” said Jurgen Muller, head of planning and infrastructure at Fifa. “Fifa would like to avoid, by all means, white elephants.”
Good luck. The average attendance at Saudi Pro League games this season is below 8,000, and that’s after the super-charged expansion plan overseen by PIF investment and state-ownership of four of the league’s football clubs last summer. In what world are 15 stadiums of 40,000 or more going to be useful to anyone after the tournament ends. Saudi Arabia likely don’t care – but why don’t Fifa?
Climate change
There’s a climate impact to all this that cannot be overlooked.
President Gianni Infantino promised to make World Cups greener, pledging net zero by 2040. Last year, the regulator Commission for Loyalty found that world football’s governing body had made false and misleading statements about the reduced environmental impact of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
I’ll leave it to Infantino to explain how constructing so many new stadiums, in a part of the world that, like Qatar, will require air conditioning within them to keep supporters and players cool, will help them to edge nearer to that net zero goal.
Human rights and soft power
Let’s give the floor to Amnesty International on this one:
“Fifa has yet again disregarded Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record… without any consideration of freedom of expression, discrimination or workers’ rights. Fifa is once again discarding its own human rights policy and is complicit in blatant sports washing.
“In recent months, Saudi Arabian authorities have escalated their brutal crackdown on freedom of expression, sentencing individuals to prison terms of between 10 to 45 years simply for their peaceful expression online. The authorities also continue to execute people for a wide range of crimes. On a single day last year, 81 people were put to death, many of whom were tried in grossly unfair trials.”
Well quite, and that’s before we come to the issue of LGBTQ+ treatment in the kingdom and the continued lack of justice over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Fifa continue to parrot their line over how football “brings people together” but that is incompatible with the awarding of its flagship tournament to a state with such a woeful record on these issues.
Why will this be different to Qatar, where migrant workers were treated appallingly and are still fighting for full pay? Where will the improvements be for the LGBTQ+ community, who felt so uncomfortable in travelling to a place where their sexuality was illegal? How can you persuade us that this isn’t just a case of whoever is richest wins and stuff everything else?
There will be those who insist that hosting a global sporting tournament is a means to drive change – surely by disallowing it we are failing to engage and admitting defeat. To which the obvious retort is: hosting a World Cup should not be a driver of progress in equality, but a reward for it. Otherwise people just pretend everything is fine for six weeks and nothing changes for good.
Football is supposed to be for all. World Cups are supposed to be events that unite people, not geopolitical badges of honour that smooth the path for the sportswashing that Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, has been so brazen in admitting is his strategy. We are allowed to demand better. We must demand better.
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