Why is Saudi Arabia a controversial host country?
The situation in Saudi Arabia is that there is no free speech, there is no free press, there is gender inequality. Women and girls have few rights. It’s an absolute monarchy. Human rights groups say it has one of the worst human rights records in the world. You are not allowed to express any political opinions, you are not allowed to criticise the monarchy.
Saudi would say we are transforming the country, the country is opening up to the world, ‘our society is changing, we are a country that has been reliant on oil, we want to become a tourism destination, an entertainment destination, financial and tech hub and that’s why we’re investing in sport’.
Critics would say that’s only part of the story. The bigger part of the story is you are doing this to sportswash your image. You are using sport to change your image, to project soft power, so when people think about Saudi Arabia, they don’t think about human rights abuses, for instance, they think about Cristiano Ronaldo, Formula 1 or golf. I think these are legitimate concerns.
FIFA have said human rights have been part of the bid evaluation process but a lot of people think human rights haven’t played enough of a part in the process.
Why has FIFA’s process also drawn criticism?
After having a hugely controversial vote in 2010, when Russia got 2018 and Qatar got 2022, we thought that was going to be the catalyst for change, where going forward everything was going to be open and transparent. But now we’ve got a situation where everything seems to be being done behind closed doors. And it’s difficult to defend a process by which there is only one bid for each World Cup.
Surely there are more countries around the world who want to host the World Cup than the single bids we’ve had for each edition?
For instance, 2030, having a World Cup on three continents – because there will also be games in South America, as well as Spain, Portugal and Morocco – that immediately knocks Europe, Africa and South America out of the equation when it comes to hosting a World Cup in 2034.
And FIFA said because of the confederation rotation principle, 2034 has to be in Asia or Oceania. They announced that in October last year. They said whoever wants to host it has 25 days to lodge their bids. And, within minutes, Saudi Arabia had lodged their bid. Nobody else had the time to come up with a bid because it takes months and months to put a bid together. Australia were thinking about it but they decided not to bid pretty quickly.
It’s hugely controversial to have a World Cup in Saudi Arabia, but at least if we’d had an open and transparent process where there’d been other bids, whether there’d been media scrutiny, whether there was a free, open vote, then we could say Saudi Arabia won fair and square.
Although, FIFA will say their auditors concluded that both evaluation processes were executed with objectivity, integrity and transparency.
And the FIFA Congress to confirm the World Cups was held online?
Normally you’d have a FIFA Congress where all the top people from the 211 member associations would fly in. There’d be lots of journalists there, there’d be opportunities for us to speak to lots of people, there’d be a press conference afterwards. But it’s all been done online, which from our point of view means there’s less media scrutiny.
FIFA would say it makes more sense in this day and age and we have to be mindful of our carbon footprint to do it virtually.
But should we have ended up in a situation where we had a FIFA Congress online only, there wasn’t a real vote, it was done by applause? I’d have been much happier if we’d had a process where there had been competing bids, where it hadn’t been fast-tracked, where we would have had media scrutiny and could have asked proper questions and the actual vote was a real vote and we could tally up who voted for what and how much they won by.
What is the stance of the FA, SFA and FA of Wales?
The FAs of England, Scotland and Wales backed both bids.
Should the FAs have made a stand? I think a lot of people would say that it would be good if they did come out and stand for what they believed in on a point of principle. But I think sometimes things get very political and you’ve got to factor in lots of other things into your decision-making process.
For instance, we know that if England qualify for the World Cup in 2034, the England team would go there. So would the FA end up looking like hypocrites if they hadn’t backed it? And also we know that English companies do a lot of business in Saudi Arabia.
The Prime Minister was there on Monday talking to the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, inviting him to a game of football in England, strengthening defence partnerships between the two countries. So you could say, well if everyone else is doing business in Saudi Arabia, why shouldn’t football do business there as well?
Will it be a winter World Cup?
Traditionally World Cups were always in the summer, until Qatar in 2022 when it moved to the winter. The climate in Saudi is similar to Qatar so it’s difficult to see how we can have a summer World Cup in 2024.
I’ve spoken to the president of the Saudi FA, the head of the bid, and they’ve always said to me we’re not ruling anything out, we’re looking at the possibility of having a World Cup in the summer.
The international match calendar has only been agreed until 2030 so we’ll have to wait and see, but most observers would tell you we’re looking at another winter World Cup.
We already know how congested the match calendar has become, with the Champions League expanding as well. I think we’re looking at a World Cup in January or February.
There are some people – I’m not among them – who would say, ‘we quite liked having a winter World Cup in Qatar because the quality of football was better, because the players weren’t so tired, because it was mid-season and it was long, dark nights in western Europe and it was quite nice to have a big tournament to watch in winter’. That is the only sort of positive spin that I think could be put on it.
How did the Saudi bid achieve the highest-ever evaluation score from FIFA?
Even though there were only sole bids for each World Cup, FIFA still said that you have to go through the proper bidding process. ‘We will evaluate bids, we will send people to the bidding countries to have a look at their bids and their stadiums’. And, as part of the bidding process, FIFA now also looks at the human rights of the countries who are bidding to host World Cups.
Controversially, in their bid evaluation reports, which were released at almost midnight on a Friday night, Saudi Arabia got the highest mark ever given to a bid. I think it was 4.2 out of 5.
The bid evaluation report said that the human rights risk of hosting a World Cup in Saudi Arabia constituted a medium risk. A lot of people have criticised the process, they’ve criticised that bid evaluation report.
Is this sportswashing?
This is a really important question. Why does Saudi Arabia want the World Cup? The Saudi Arabia sports minister has said on record, the crown jewels of world sport that they want were F1, which they’ve got, the World Cup, which they’re about to get, and also the Olympics, which is something I’m sure they’ll be looking at in the future.
Why do they want it? OK, critics will say that it’s all to do with sportswashing, because they want to change their image on the global stage. So that when people think about Saudi Arabia, they don’t think about a repressive, oppressive regime. They think instead about Cristiano Ronaldo, or they think about Lewis Hamilton, or they think about the World Cup.
The Saudis themselves, the Saudi officials I’ve spoken to, will say that is not the case, it is not to do with sportswashing, that’s a really simplistic way to look at it. ‘The reason we’re doing it is because we want to transform our country and our economy from a country that is reliant on oil revenues, to an economy that is based on tourism, entertainment. We want to turn Saudi Arabia into a financial and technological hub’.
When it comes to human rights and reforms, they will tell you that they have made some reforms, but there is still a lot of work to do. Critics will say a lot of those reforms are superficial and they have just been done for PR purposes.
And the situation on the ground when it comes to civil liberties and human rights hasn’t really changed in Saudi Arabia.
