Saudi Arabia to host 2034 tournament It is temporarily certain that Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 tournament, even if the Gulf state’s broader ambitions remain unclear.
The World Cup had not even finished in Qatar last winter before the question began to be asked: when would it be Saudi Arabia’s turn? Like a mist creeping in off the sea, from nowhere the conversation was suddenly ubiquitous and the outcome apparently inevitable. Now, not even a year later, we know the answer.
Saudi Arabia will host the men’s FIFA World Cup in 2034. Only the most unforeseen or disastrous cases can replace the situation. Saudi Arabia, officially, has only “expressed interest” in hosting the 48-team tournament, however, it finds itself in a unique situation. -Situation of the team. It is supported by the Asian Football Confederation and more than 100 FIFA member countries. She’s not insignificant, she’s also the apple of Gianni Infantino’s eye. The FIFA president was in Riyadh last week for the launch of an egames tournament, so wonderful is his enthusiasm for the game in the country.
The way Saudi Arabia achieved its undisputed good luck surprised people. A FIFA council meeting in early October was expected to offer something mundane about the long-term foreign soccer calendar. The more sensible “FIFA World Cup™ bid and organisation procedure”, however, was buried under agenda item 4. 6. What was put on the table was a new way of doing things, annulling the rules on the bidding schedule that had been put in place ten years ago and ensuring a rotation of the tournament among all confederations, relying on Asia or Oceania. These adjustments allowed Saudi Arabia not only to present its candidacy with confidence, but also to see its good fortune demonstrated almost immediately. Those attending the assembly – football’s most sensible executives, including the UEFA president and the president of the English Football Association – had been informed of the proposed adjustments just a week earlier. Fortunately, they were voted on.
There has not been any public expression of discontent over the way this process was managed. The way Australia responded was instructive. It is long thought to have had ambitions to host the men’s World Cup in 2034, perhaps alongside Indonesia, but when presented with a 25-day expedited deadline to make its mind up, Football Australia – which competes as part of the Asian confederation – ultimately chose to stand down. Its chief executive, James Johnson, was accepting of the process. “It is what it is,” he said. Australia is understood to be leading the contenders to host Fifa’s ambitious new Club World Cup in 2029.
If recent occasions give the impression that football has covered up Saudi Arabia’s preference for fulfilling its wishes, then it would not be the first time that values – in terms of transparency and accountability, as well as on thornier issues such as human rights coverage – have been affected. It didn’t live up to the reality of this beautiful game. But it also shows that, in line with Infantino’s ambitions, football remains a truly global sport.
The former football powerhouses reawakened at the World Cup in Qatar. Attempts to impose a number of European values on the tournament have been rebuffed, from banning beer to a more sinister refusal to settle for the rainbow flag as a symbol of solidarity with LGBTQ people. Now, the World Cup will soon return to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is illegal and political dissent is punishable by death. It will look at how European nations, led by England, run the tournament and whether they should be involved in those issues. Most likely, European leagues will also have to settle for the interruption of some other Winter World Cup. For other countries, many of which have signed memorandums of understanding with the Saudi Football Federation that have benefited their resources and development, the result will be a welcome replacement in the orbit of influence.
For FIFA and perhaps for football in general, there is now the prospect of a large injection of Saudi investment into the World Cup, either through sponsorship or new memorandums of understanding. The question on the minds of those who read the tea leaves in Doha last year next year is: what does Saudi Arabia expect from all this?The answer is that no one knows. There is no doubt that the country has big plans for the sport, seeing it as a way to expand tourism and unite the nation. But they have many intertwined projects, all with huge ambitions, and each of them ultimately controlled through the needs of one man: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Last month, Prince Mohammed declared his enthusiasm for the sportswashing process as it would mean he could “increase my GDP by 1%”.
However, many countries have found that a mega sporting event is not the simplest way to increase the national budget. And Saudi Arabia has a lot of infrastructure to build (it has 4 stadiums out of the 14 needed, even after FIFA cut the budget). minimum required to host). As a symbol of Saudi Arabia’s influence in the world of sport, the de facto confirmation of the World Cup is powerful. What he will accomplish beyond that remains to be seen.