When FIFA’s team of investigators traveled to northwestern Saudi Arabia nearly two weeks ago, they had to bring a vivid imagination with them. They were scouting one of the possible venues for the 2034 World Cup, but this wasn’t a conventional reconnaissance mission. It’s one thing for a stadium not to be built after more than a decade, but it’s quite another for the same to be true for the entire host city. When you look at a ditch, it’s not easy to imagine a semi-final between, say, England and Brazil.
Such was the case when a delegation from football’s governing body visited Neom, a mind-boggling project that will be a 105-mile-long and 200-metre-wide high-rise line in the desert, ultimately housing nine million people. The published plans resemble a video game. Details about its progress are closely guarded but excavation continues and there is a commitment to start moving people here by 2030. There will be many stadiums in the city, and if Saudi Arabia gets its way, which is often the case, Neom will also be built. It will become one of the most important sports venues in the world.
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Barring unforeseen advances in construction technology, FIFA will have taken a major step when signing Saudi Arabia’s bid towards the end of 2024. If Neom is accepted as the location, it will be investing in an unprecedented infrastructure project that cannot be evaluated at the operational stage. order and may never be fully realized. But leaving the country’s flagship project out of the biggest sporting event on the planet seems to defeat that purpose.
This may not be the only chance FIFA has. The Saudis were announced as the sole bidder for the 2034 contest in October and were subsequently announced as hosts via Gianni Infantino’s Instagram post. The logic is that they could submit a tender book of children’s cartoons by July and still be approved. But in Jeddah, where Saudi Arabia is hosting a sufficiently successful Club World Cup this month, there was little appetite to get into the nuts and bolts of what the tournament might look like. Figures close to the tender want it to be seen that they are observing the legal process before announcing details.
Two of the problems dogging Qatar 2022 need to be resolved early. It was only in 2015 that FIFA accepted that the last World Cup, originally planned for the summer, should be held in the colder winter months. This time around, Saudi Arabia is initially expected to stage a winter tournament: this will present new calendar problems and cause consternation among clubs with Qatar promised to be a one-off, but any bets can be expected to be abandoned. was welcomed.
It also seems certain that the tournament will be alcohol-free, but given the rate at which Saudi Arabia is modernizing, a change in local laws cannot be completely ruled out. This being the case, beer and fancier drinks will be removed from the menu, which could create more problems when selling hospitality packages by stand. Early clarity will again be in the organisers’ favour: the uproar surrounding Qatar’s recent U-turn on alcohol supply at venues was entirely avoidable and has created a mountain of what should have been a molehill.
Before anyone rolls out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia, more serious issues need to be properly examined. It remains to be seen how exactly the country’s human rights record complies with Fifa’s guidelines, which are supposedly in line with the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. There are question marks over at least one potential World Cup venue, and FIFA is expected to provide any guarantees to protect workers’ rights, especially going beyond window-dressing. Although it is claimed that Saudi Arabia, with a population of approximately 36 million, will be less dependent on low-paid foreign labor in stadium construction compared to Qatar, it is a fact that there are nearly 10 million migrant workers in the country. There have been numerous reports of serious abuse and mistreatment.
There are also concerns that local people have so far paid a terrible price for the government’s megaprojects. The proposed new World Cup stadium, earmarked for the site of a desalination plant on the Red Sea coast, is an extension of the sprawling Jeddah Center project, which has led to mass evacuations and displacements under bogus pretexts. A serious and important report by ALQST, a human rights organization focused on events in Saudi Arabia, details violations inflicted on members of the Huwaitat tribe early in the construction process of Neom. Fifa’s tournament will require finesse to avoid touching on such topics.
Human rights institutions, whose resources are naturally depleted by events elsewhere in the Middle East, will focus their attention on Saudi Arabia as the bid deadline approaches. They will be held accountable as much as possible in a state where they are routinely denied access, and expect FIFA to do so with similar integrity.
No one who watched the Jeddah-based Al-Ittihad team, which advanced to the Club World Cup with great support at home, could doubt the Saudis’ enthusiasm for football. So did those who joined Infantino in a crowd of 4,500 watching the local women’s derby earlier this month. But the uncertainties surrounding the 2034 bid extend beyond the field, both in terms of its ambitious scope and potential human cost. Ten years may not have seemed long enough as Fifa’s representatives inspected the vast construction site at Neom.