There was a very strange sound from the federations and associations when the 2034 World Cup was presented, gift-wrapped, to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Silence.
No protests, no armbands, no T-shirts, no statements; no rebellions, no condemnations, not even a hastily convened meeting. There will be a ratification process next year but, with Australia out, it is a formality. This flies. Saudi Arabia wins, Fifa wins, oil money wins – as always. The rest of the world will simply lie there and let it wash over them, like a golden shower.
Just don’t let those at the top pretend there was nothing they could do. There is always something that can be done, always a trump card to be played — they just never play it. The biggest nations, the most significant nations, the ones that make the World Cup go round, could have said no, as they could have to Qatar before 2022. They could reject this proposal and send Fifa homewards, to think again. But they won’t.
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Like all sports, football is increasingly in hock to wealth in the east. A quick review of BeIn Sport’s clients among the domestic leagues and the international federations explains why the pushback against Qatar equated to little more than image-building and window-dressing, and Saudi Arabia is no different. It has the 2023 Club World Cup, it has Newcastle United, it has Cristiano Ronaldo, Steven Gerrard and Roberto Mancini, it has the Italian Super Cup — expanded to a four-team tournament and held in Saudi Arabia for four of the next six years — and, until 2029, the Spanish Super Cup, also now a four-team tournament.
Ronaldo, who joined the Saudi Pro League club Al-Nassr in a deal worth £170 million a year in January, celebrates Saudi Arabia’s Founding Day in February
AL NASSR/REUTERS
And it is plain how addicted Europe’s clubs are becoming to that Saudi Pro League money. Take it away across the next few seasons and some would have to form an orderly queue behind Everton at Financial Fair Play hearings. Certainly Wolverhampton Wanderers.
So it was left to fans, the media and the human rights groups to launch the counteroffensive on Tuesday and as this alliance was powerless to halt a World Cup in Qatar — even one that was proven corrupt and never actually voted for by Fifa’s executive committee — it is hard to see how it will be any different come 2034.
Could it be? Undoubtedly. When Uefa agreed to let Russia’s age-group teams back into international competition, and Fifa gratefully followed suit by then permitting them to attempt qualification for the World Cup, a bloc of European nations objected. England, through the FA, said they would refuse to play them if drawn together. Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the Baltic states and, unsurprisingly, Ukraine, all followed suit.
Faced with chaos — what if Russia qualified by default and then teams began to withdraw from matches at the finals proper? — Uefa backed down. It did not put the decision forward for approval at an executive meeting, citing the absence of a “technical solution”. As Uefa organises European qualification for Fifa tournaments, the World Cup pathway closed too. It showed what could be achieved with a little resolve; with the simple power of no.
Newcastle’s goalkeepers at a training camp in Jeddah in January last year, after the club were taken over by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund in October 2021
SERENA TAYLOR/NEWCASTLE/GETTY
There were few negatives on Tuesday, however, and no nos — just as Fifa anticipated. They are all in this together now. How can the FA, for instance, stand against a World Cup in Saudi Arabia while continuing to welcome Jordan Henderson to England’s camp? And even if they plotted a path through the moral maze, how soon would it be before a back-channelling call came — perhaps from the same department that will soon appoint football’s regulator — to say that the government would really prefer the sport to find a way to help its allies in Saudi Arabia? Just as they did with the Newcastle takeover.
It’s not only football that is waist-deep in this trade-off. There is no way this government, or the next, or the majority of governments around the world, are going to risk alienating Saudi Arabia. In Westminster they are more likely to give Tyson Fury a King’s Award for Enterprise than let the FA lead a backlash over 2034.
Barcelona celebrate winning the 2023 Spanish Super Cup against Real Madrid in Riyadh; Saudi Arabia has a deal to host the tournament until 2029
MOHAMMED SAAD/ANADOLU/GETTY
So as realpolitik and real greed take over the game, maybe this time we will be spared the posturing. Remember when the England team were going to rainbow-armband Qatar into submission this time last year, only to crumble when it turned out somebody might get booked? Remember when the broadcasters arrived with the firm intention of speaking truth to power, but settled for a cosy television gig and game of padel at a five-star resort instead?
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At least this time we will see through that stuff when it happens. We will see through the equivalent of Henderson’s soundbites — not that we can expect many of those unauthorised by the ministry — and we won’t fall for protests that amount to little more than fashion accessories, because this one is done.
The season will be disrupted — at least there is no pretence around when the tournament will be played — and fans will have to conform to local customs. This time, at least, there will be no falsehoods about how open and familiar the World Cup will be. This is a dry, repressive state that will host a dry, repressive competition, but one that will make everyone connected with it very wealthy.
And, yes, it could be challenged. Indeed, it should be challenged. But it won’t be: because football’s commitment to human rights washes clean out at the first mention of money.
