Editorial: World Cup in Saudi Arabia - Fifa’s move to desert nation smells of sportswashing

Fifa president Gianni Infantino. The 2034 World Cup is likely to go to Saudi Arabia. Photo / AP

EDITORIAL

Working for one of the world’s biggest sports organisations, the apparatchiks of Fifa have surely become familiar – comfortable, even – with taking a brutal kicking in the public eye.

The news this week that Saudi Arabia is the likely host of the 2034 men’s Football World Cup looms as another open net for critics of the sport’s governing body. On Tuesday, the Middle Eastern nation with a football history that runs no deeper than buying expensive players became the sole bidder for the hosting rights after Australia withdrew.

It looks like a grubby arrangement, with football’s biggest show again sold for petro-profits, hot on the heels of the 2022 tournament being hosted by Qatar. There are countries with far richer footballing legacies who have no chance of playing the role of individual host.

Saudi Arabia’s ongoing conflict with the Houthis in neighbouring Yemen has been nudged down the global newslist by wars in Ukraine and Palestine. Likewise, the fact they executed 196 people in 2022 – three times higher than the number they executed in 2021 – makes few headlines.

Nonetheless, Fifa – which has made earnest pledges to uphold human rights in its dealings – shipped it’s biggest game to the Kingdom which has inspired countless Amnesty International reports.

Mind you, Fifa has also pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 and to achieve net zero by 2040, and that didn’t stop them from hosting the next two tournaments in nine different countries.

Fan travel makes up about 70 per cent of football’s carbon emissions; nonetheless, the 2026 tournament will take place in three countries (the US, Canada and Mexico) and the 2030 tournament in a bewildering six countries across three continents (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).

With such a flippant disregard for their own commitments to reduce carbon, it’s perhaps fitting that after those two expansive events, Fifa is taking the party straight to the source: Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest exporter of oil.

As they did with major boxing, golf and sailing events, the Saudis are using the money from that oil to buy themselves a coat of sportswashing.