Why is Saudi Arabia a controversial host country?
The situation in Saudi Arabia is such that there is no freedom of speech, there is no free press, there is gender inequality. Women and girls have few rights. It is an absolute monarchy. Human rights organizations say it has one of the worst human rights records in the world. You have no right to express any political opinion, you have no right to criticize the monarchy.
Saudi Arabia would say that we are transforming the country, the country is opening up to the world, “our society is changing, we are a country that depends on oil, we want to become a tourism destination, an entertainment destination, a financial and technological hub, and so we invest in sports.”
Critics would say that’s only part of the story. A big part of the story is that you’re doing it to fill your image with sports. You’re using sports to change your image, to project soft power, so when people think of Saudi Arabia about, they don’t care about human rights violations like Cristiano Ronaldo or Formula 1. I think these are legitimate concerns.
FIFA has stated that human rights were part of the bid evaluation process, but many people believe that human rights did not play a sufficient role in the process.
Why was FIFA’s process also criticized?
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Jamie Weir on Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup bid and why it’s so controversial
After the hugely controversial vote in 2010, when Russia got 2018 and Qatar got 2022, we thought that would be the catalyst for change where things would be open and transparent going forward. But now we have a situation where everything seems to be done behind closed doors.And it’s hard to defend a process where there’s only one bid for each World Cup.
There are certainly more countries in the world wanting to host the World Cup than the bids we’ve had for each edition.
For example, 2030, having the World Cup on three continents, as there will also be games in South America, as well as Spain, Portugal and Morocco, which immediately takes Europe, Africa and South America out of the equation when it comes to hosting the 2034 World Cup .
And FIFA said that because of the confederation rotation principle, 2034 should be in Asia or Oceania. They announced that in October last year. They said whoever wants to accept it has 25 days to submit their bids. And within minutes, no one else had time to come up with an offer because it takes months and months for Australia to make a bid thought about it, but they decided not to announce it too soon.
The World Cup in Saudi Arabia is extremely controversial, but at least if we had an open and transparent process where there were other bids, whether there was media scrutiny, whether there was a free, open vote, then you can say that Saudi Arabia won fairly.
Although FIFA will say that their auditors concluded that both evaluation processes were carried out with objectivity, integrity and transparency.
And the FIFA congress that approves the World Cups was held online?
Normally you would have a FIFA Congress where all the best people from the 211 member associations would fly in. There would be a lot of journalists there, we would have a chance to talk to a lot of people, there would be a press conference afterwards. But it’s all done online, which from our perspective means there’s less media scrutiny.
FIFA would say it makes more sense nowadays and we should be mindful of our carbon footprint to do it virtually.
But we had to be in a situation where we only had the FIFA Congress online, there was no real voting, it was done by applause. I would have been much happier if we had a process where there were competitive bids, where it wasn’t fast-tracked, where we had. media control and we could ask the right questions and the real vote was a real vote and we could count who was for what vote and how much he won.
What is the position of the FA, SFA and FA of Wales?
The FAs of England, Scotland and Wales backed both bids.
Should the FAs have taken a stand? I think a lot of people would say it would be good for them to come out and stand up for what they believe in. But I think things get very political and you have to consider many other things in your decision making process.
For example, we know that if England qualify for the 2034 World Cup, would the FA look like hypocrites if they didn’t support it? And we also know that English companies do big business with Saudi in Arabia.
The prime minister was there on Monday to talk to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, inviting him to a football match in England, cementing the defense partnership between the two countries. So you might say, well, if everyone is doing business in Saudi Arabia, why shouldn’t football? do business there too.
Will it be the Winter World Cup?
Traditionally the World Cups were always held in the summer until Qatar moved to winter in 2022. Saudi Arabia’s climate is similar to Qatar, so it’s hard to see how we can have a summer world to hold the championship in 2024.
I have spoken to the president of the Saudi Arabian FA, the head of the bid, and they have always told me that we are not ruling anything out, we are looking at the possibility of hosting the World Cup in the summer.
The international games calendar is only agreed until 2030, so we’ll have to wait and see, but most observers will tell you we’re looking at another winter World Cup.
We already know how busy the fixture calendar has become, with the Champions League expanding as well, I think we’re looking at the World Cup in January or February.
There are people, not including me, who would say: “We really liked holding the Winter World Cup in Qatar because the quality of football was better, because the players weren’t so tired because it was the middle of the season. And it’s been long, dark nights in Western Europe and it’s been nice to have a big tournament to watch in the winter. That’s the only positive spin I can put on it.
How did Saudi Arabia’s bid achieve the highest score ever awarded by FIFA?
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Hamad Albalawi, the head of Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup bid, is defending the process with FIFA and says everyone, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, will be welcome amid accusations of the sport being washed.
Even though there have been individual bids for each World Cup, FIFA still says you have to go through a proper bidding process part, FIFA is now also looking at the human rights of countries bidding to host World Cups.
Controversially, in their bid evaluation reports released almost midnight on Friday night, Saudi Arabia received the highest bid score ever, I think it was 4.2 out of 5.
The bid assessment report says the human rights risk of hosting the World Cup in Saudi Arabia is a medium risk. Many people have criticized the process, they have criticized the bid assessment report.
Is this a sports wash?
This is a really important question. Why does Saudi Arabia want the World Cup? The Saudi sports minister said that the crown of world sports that they wanted was Formula 1, which they got, the World Cup, which they are going to win, and also the Olympics, which I am sure. that they will look to in the future.
Why do they want that? Well, critics will say it’s all about washing the sport because they want to change their image on the world stage so that when people think of Saudi Arabia, they don’t think of a repressive, oppressive regime. Instead they think about Cristiano Ronaldo, or they think about Lewis Hamilton, or they think about the World Cup.
The Saudis themselves, the Saudi officials that I’ve talked to, will say it’s not, it’s not about washing the sport, that’s a really simplistic way of looking at it. The reason we’re doing it is because we want to “We want to transform our country and our economy from a country that depends on oil revenues to an economy that is based on tourism. We want to turn Saudi Arabia into a financial and technological center.”
As for human rights and reforms, they will tell you that they have made some reforms, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Critics will say that many of these reforms are superficial and simply done for PR purposes.
And the situation on the ground when it comes to civil liberties and human rights has not really changed in Saudi Arabia.
