Uncertainties abound about the host country’s grand proposals, either because of their staggering scope or because of their human cost.
When FIFA’s team of inspectors visited northwestern Saudi Arabia a fortnight ago, they had to use their imagination. They were reading one of the most likely locations for the 2034 World Cup, but it’s not a reconnaissance mission as usual. It’s one thing when, more than a decade later, a stadium is rarely heavily built, but it’s different when the same thing happens to an entire host city. Imagining a semi-final between, say, England and Brazil is not easy when you look at a ditch.
That was the case when a delegation from soccer’s governing body visited Neom, a mind-boggling task whose centerpiece will be a 105-mile-long, 200-meter-wide high-altitude line in the desert that will eventually house another nine million people. The revealed blueprints look like something out of a video game. The main points of its evolution are being heavily monitored, but excavation work is underway and there is a commitment to start moving other people there by 2030. The city will involve several stadiums and if Saudi Arabia gets what it wants, which happens most of the time, Neom will. to become one of the most important sports venues in the world.
Barring unforeseen advances in construction technology, Fifa will be taking a leap of faith when it signs off Saudi Arabia’s bid towards the end of 2024. If Neom is passed as a venue it will be betting on an unprecedented infrastructural project that cannot be assessed in working order and may never be realised in entirety. But leaving the country’s flagship project out of the biggest sporting event on the planet would appear to defeat the object.
This may not be the only possibility that FIFA is taking. The Saudis were announced as the sole contenders for the 2034 contest in October and were later proclaimed the pending hosts via an Instagram post via Gianni Infantino. The idea is that they can also simply submit an application for children’s cartoons before the July deadline and it will still be selected. But in Jeddah, where Saudi Arabia hosted a successful Club World Cup this month, there was little willingness to delve into the main points of what the tournament could look like. Companies close to the offer need to be shown that they are following due process before revealing the main points.
Two of the disruptions that have delayed Qatar 2022 deserve to be resolved sooner. It wasn’t until 2015 that FIFA admitted that the last World Cup, initially scheduled for the summer, would have to be held in the coldest winter. This time, Saudi Arabia is expected to dedicate itself from the outset to a winter tournament: this will cause further disruption to the calendar and cause consternation among clubs, who had been promised that Qatar would be a one-off tournament, but the abandonment of any pretense may be welcome.
The tournament also appears to be alcohol-free, a substitution in local legislation cannot be completely ruled out given Saudi Arabia’s speed of modernization. Beer and finer beverages will no longer be on the menu as is, which may prove more problematic for hospitality package sales than in the stands. Again, the initial clarity would play in the organizers’ favor: the crisis surrounding Qatar’s belated U-turn regarding the origin of alcohol in venues was entirely avoidable and created a mountain of what deserves to have been a grain of sand.
The most serious issues need to be considered conscientiously before anyone can even roll out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia. It remains to be seen exactly to what extent the country’s human rights record complies with FIFA’s guidelines, which in theory are aligned with those of the UN. There are doubts about at least one possible World Cup venue and FIFA will have to ensure that any safeguards to protect the rights of staff, in particular, go beyond the façade. Although Saudi Arabia, with a population of just 36 million, is less reliant than Qatar on low-paid foreign hard labor to build its stadiums, the truth is that there are around 10 million migrant workers in the country. There have been reports of serious abuse and ill-treatment.
There are also fears that citizens have so far paid a heavy price for the government’s gigantic allocations. The proposed new World Cup stadium, intended to locate a desalination plant on the Red Sea coast, is an extension of the extensive allocation of Central Jeddah that has led to mass evictions and displacements under false pretenses. A critical and sobering report by ALQST, a human rights organization that sometimes focuses on Saudi Arabia, points to violations inflicted on members of the Huwaitat tribe early in the process of building Neom. The FIFA tournament will want ballet to have the ability to address these issues.
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Human rights bodies, whose resources are understandably stretched by developments elsewhere in the Middle East, will be focusing on Saudi Arabia as the deadline for submitting applications approaches. They will hold it accountable, as much as imaginable in a state where they are systematically denied access, and they will expect FIFA to do so with the same honesty.
No one who has seen the Jeddah-based Al-Ittihad team, driven to the roof by huge local support, at the Club World Cup would doubt the Saudi enthusiasm for football. Nor did those who joined Infantino among the crowd of 4,500 who attended the women’s derby earlier this year. month. But the uncertainties surrounding the 2034 bid go beyond mere rhetoric, both in its ambitious scope and its possible human cost. As FIFA representatives surveyed Neom’s vast structure, a decade didn’t seem long enough.