Tthe greatest trick the devil ever learned was to overwhelm the critical faculties of those who would hold him accountable. Use the word “trash” once and there’s a massive outburst of close reading, drilling into the true meaning: did you say “supporters” or “supporters”? Be a convicted felon constantly spewing insults and inconsistencies and the response becomes too multi-directional, too unfocused, always moving on to the next outrage, so none ever sticks.
Saudi Arabia will be awarded the right to host the 2034 World Cup. on Wednesday. There may not even be a vote, but only cheers of acclamation. Liz Klavenesthe president of the Norwegian Football Association, was an admirably consistent critic of Gianni Infantino last month as well raised a number of questions for the 2034 bidding process, but there seems little even she can do now. Other Scandinavian federations, the only vague locus of resistance, seem to have already accepted the inevitable. When there is only one option available, what else can you do?
But it’s worth repeating why there’s only one option. FIFA rules – quite sensibly – state that once a confederation hosts the world championshipcannot host either of the following two. The 2026 World Cup will be co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, knocking CONCACAF out of the competition. The 2030 World Cup will be co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with the symbolic three matches played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to mark the centenary of the first World Cup held in Uruguay. This eliminated UEFA, Caffe and Conmebol, which meant that 2034 had to go to either Asia or Oceania.
On October 6 last year, without warning, FIFA opened the bidding process, giving potential hosts 25 days to submit their bids. Putting together a bid takes months: at the most basic level, stadiums have to be chosen, logistics thought out, construction financed, planning permission secured. It doesn’t take 25 days. Fortunately, Saudi Arabia was ready to bid. Australia, who may have been interested in hosting, saw where the wind was blowing and had no qualms going into a contest they had no chance of winning.
Still, there was a strict vetting process by FIFA for the Saudis to negotiate. AS&H Clifford Chance, which is based in Riyadh, was contracted to compile an “independent assessment of the human rights context”. Amnesty International described the report as an “observation” which ignored some issues while selectively using UN investigations that highlighted the widespread practice of torture in prisons, that women and girls who claimed to be sexually abused often themselves criminal charges will be filedand workers’ rights complaints.
This last point seems particularly pertinent in light of Report of the FIFA Subcommittee on Human Rights and social responsibility, which was published last week. Despite concluding that FIFA had a responsibility to compensate those who suffered losses as a result of employment on World Cup construction projects, the governing body refused to pay compensation.
Reports predicting that the situation will be even worse in Saudi Arabia given the scale of the construction seems essentially be ignored. About 21,000 Indian, Bangladeshi and Nepali workers have died in Saudi Arabia since 2016. here: as work gets under way on a range of new stadiums and associated infrastructure, including 185,000 hotel rooms, that figure will not decrease. The Kafala labor sponsorship system which was eventually abolished in Qatar – at least in law, if not in practice – applies while trade unions are banned and labor laws are rarely enforced, leading to widespread exploitation of migrant workers.
FIFA’s own report on Saudi Arabia’s bid managed to rate the human rights risk as ‘medium’ – which makes you wonder what ‘high’ would look like, for God’s sake. Amnesty described the situation as “dire” and worsening Mohammed bin Salmanwho, as crown prince, “has presided over massive mass executions, torture, enforced disappearances, severe restrictions on free expression, repression of women’s rights under a male guardianship system, LGBTI+ discrimination, and the killing of hundreds of migrants at the Saudi border and Yemen”.
FIFA gave the Saudi bid a record high score of 419.8 out of 500, possibly the least credible figure issued by an official body since Enver HoxhaThe Communists of Russia won 1,627,959 out of 1,627,968 votes in the 1982 Albanian elections. Their stadiums were rated the same as those for 2026, a remarkable achievement considering that 11 of Saudi Arabia’s don’t actually exist yet.
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All of which raises the obvious question of why. The Saudis get to host the World Cup as part of their wider investment in soft power in sport, but what does FIFA get in return? Last week, Infantino announced that the streaming rights for next summer’s Club World Cup, his pet project designed to wrest at least some control of the club game and its resources from UEFA, had been bought by Dazn for $1 billion, so that every match would be broadcast live and free. This is a figure that industry insiders suggest is significantly higher than the market (Fox only offered $10 million on US rights).
Dazn has recorded losses of at least £1 billion every year since 2019. so far, but recent reports suggest that the Saudi Public Investment Fund is is preparing a $1 billion bid for 10% of the company. And so Dazn will become a platform to promote Saudi investment in the sport while saving the Club World Cup, which is in in desperate need of a cash injection. Infantino and Saudi Arabia win; football and human decency lose.
The World Cup was created by Jules Rimet, a romantic who set up his own club in Paris in response to the papacy’s suggestion that sport be used to alleviate “misery and wretchedness” and believed that “sport can unite the world”. It only took four years and the intervention of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to realize how naive this was. But the World Cup has never seemed so far from Rime’s ideals as now, both the greatest sporting festival on the planet and a mindless commercial machine run at enormous human and environmental cost to the torturers, murderers, exploiters and insatiably greedy, the check is hindered by the great variety of indignation.
