by When Fifa’s team of inspectors traveled to north-west Saudi Arabia a fortnight or so ago, they had to bring a vivid imagination with them. They were scoping out one of the likely venues for the 2034 World Cup but this was no ordinary scouting mission. It is one thing when, more than ten years out, there is an unbuilt stadium but quite another when the same goes for an entire host city. It’s not easy to watch a semi-final between, say, England and Brazil while looking into a trench.
That was the case when a delegation from football’s governing body visited Neom, a mind-boggling project whose center will be a high-rise line in the desert that will be 105 miles long and 200 meters wide, serving the back end of nine a million people. The released plans are like a video game. Details of its progress are closely guarded but excavation work is well under way and there is a promise that people will start moving in by 2030. The city will have several stadiums and if Saudi Arabia gets its way, which happens more often than not otherwise, Neom will be there. to be one of the most important sports centers in the world.
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Barring unexpected advances in construction technology, FIFA will be taking a leap of faith when it signs Saudi Arabia’s bid towards the end of 2024. If Neom goes ahead as a venue it will be a commitment to an unprecedented infrastructure project that cannot to consider while working. order and it can never be fully achieved. But it looks as if the country’s flagship project will fail the biggest sporting event in the world.
This may not be the only chance FIFA takes. The Saudis were announced as the sole bidders for the 2034 tournament in October and were later announced as hosts via an Instagram post by Gianni Infantino. The understanding is that they could submit a tender book of children’s cartoons by the July deadline and still go through with it. But there was little willingness in Jeddah, where Saudi Arabia hosted the highly successful Club World Cup this month, to look at what the competition might look like. Figures close to the bid want to be seen to be looking at due process before rolling out the details.
Two of the problems associated with Qatar 2022 should be resolved soon. It was not until 2015 that FIFA admitted that the final World Cup, originally scheduled for summer, would have to be held in the colder winter. This time it is expected that Saudi Arabia will commit to a winter tournament at the outset: it will present fresh calendar issues and cause friction among clubs, who were promised a one-off in Qatar, but could fall be involved at all. your welcome.
The tournament is also likely to be alcohol-free, although a change in local laws cannot be completely ruled out given the pace of modernization in Saudi Arabia. Beer and liquor will be off the menu as things stand, which could be more of a problem selling hospitality packages than the stands. Again, clarity would soon work in favor of the organisers: the fears surrounding Qatar’s late U times regarding the provision of alcohol in venues were entirely avoidable and turned a mountain out of a hill that should have been there.
More serious issues need to be properly examined before anyone can roll out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia. It remains to be seen exactly how the country’s human rights record conforms to Fifa’s guidelines, which are nominally aligned with the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. There are question marks over at least one possible venue for the World Cup and it will be expected that Fifa will ensure any guarantees to protect the rights of workers, in particular, go beyond window dressing. Although it is suggested that Saudi Arabia, with a population of almost 36 million, will rely less on low-wage foreign labor to build its states than Qatar, the reality is that there are about 10 million migrant workers in the country . There are many reports of misuse and abuse.
There are also concerns that locals have paid a terrible price for the government’s mega-projects so far. The proposed new World Cup stadium, earmarked for the site of a desalination plant near the Red Sea, is an extension of the sprawling Jeddah Central project that has resulted in massive evictions and false displacements. A scathing and necessary report by ALQST, a human rights organization focusing on events in Saudi Arabia, details the violations committed against members of the Huwaitat tribe early in the construction process for Neom. A FIFA tournament will require a balletic leap to not touch any such issues.
Human rights bodies, their resources strained by events elsewhere in the Middle East, will step up their attention on Saudi Arabia as the bid deadline approaches. They will hold him accountable, as much as possible in a state where they are regularly denied access, and they will expect Fifa to do so with the same honesty.
Anyone watching the side Jeddah-based Al-Ittihad, roared to the rafters by a huge home support, at the Club World Cup would doubt the Saudi enthusiasm for football. Nor would those joining Infantino be among the 4,500 crowd watching the local women’s derby earlier this month. But the uncertainties surrounding the 2034 bid go beyond the pitch, to its ambitious scope and potential human cost. As FIFA representatives surveyed the massive construction site in Neom, ten years might not have felt like a long enough time.
