Saudi Arabia 2034 World Cup: Why is it controversial? Will it be in the winter? Basic questions and the FIFA process are explained | Football News

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 is 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 political opinions, you are not allowed to criticize the monarchy.

Saudi Arabia would say that we are transforming the country, the country is opening up to the world, “our society is changing, we are an oil-based country, we want to become a tourist destination, an entertainment destination, an economic and technological hub and that is why we are investing in sports ».

Critics would say this is only part of the story. Most of the story is that you are doing this to wash your image. You use sport to change your image, to project soft power, so when people think of Saudi Arabia, they don’t think of human rights abuses, for example, they think of Cristiano Ronaldo, Formula 1 or golf. I think these are reasonable concerns.

FIFA said that human rights were part of the bid evaluation process, but many people believe that human rights did not play enough of a role in the process.

Why has FIFA’s process also drawn criticism?

After a highly controversial vote in 2010, when Russia took 2018 and Qatar 2022, we thought it would be the catalyst for change, where in the future everything would be open and transparent. But now we have a situation where everything seems to be happening behind closed doors. And it’s hard to defend a process where there’s only one bid for each World Cup.

Surely there are more countries around the world wanting to host the World Cup than the individual bids we’ve had for each edition?

For example, in 2030, having a World Cup on three continents – because there will also be games in South America, as well as in Spain, Portugal and Morocco – that immediately takes Europe, Africa and South America out of the equation in terms of it’s about hospitality. World Cup in 2034.

And FIFA said, because of the principle of confederation rotation, 2034 must be in Asia or Oceania. They announced it last October. They said anyone who wants to host it has 25 days to submit their bids. And, within minutes, Saudi Arabia had submitted its offer. No one else had time to submit an offer because it takes months and months to submit an offer. Australia were considering it, but decided not to bid fast enough.

It is extremely controversial to have a World Cup in Saudi Arabia, but at least if we had an open and transparent process where there were other bids, if there was media scrutiny, if there was a free, open vote, then we could say that Saudi Arabia won fairly.

Although, FIFA will say that its auditors concluded that both evaluation processes were carried out with objectivity, integrity and transparency.

And the FIFA conference to confirm the World Cups was held online?

Normally you would have a FIFA conference where all the top people from the 211 member confederations would fly. There would be a lot of journalists there, there would be opportunities for us to talk to a lot of people, there would 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 the carbon footprint of doing it virtually.

But should we have ended up in a situation where we had a FIFA Congress only online, there was no real voting, it was done by applause? I would have been much happier if we had a process where there were competitive bids, where there was no fast tracking, where we had media scrutiny and we could have asked the right questions and the real vote was a real vote and we could count who voted for what and how much they won.

What is the stance of the FA, SFA and Welsh FA?

The FAs of England, Scotland and Wales supported both bids.

Should the PAEs have taken a stand? I think a lot of people would say it would be good to come out and stand up for what they believed in at one point. But I think sometimes things get too political and you have to consider a lot of other things in the decision making process.

For example, we know that if England qualified for the 2034 World Cup, the England team would go there. So would the FA have ended up looking like hypocrites if they hadn’t backed her? And we also know that English companies do a lot of business in Saudi Arabia.

The prime minister was there on Monday, holding talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, inviting him to a football match in England, boosting defense cooperation between the two countries. So you might say, if everyone else is doing business in Saudi Arabia, why shouldn’t football be doing business there too?

Will it be a winter World Cup?

Traditionally, World Cups have always been in summer, until Qatar in 2022 when it moved to winter. The climate in Saudi Arabia is similar to Qatar, so it is hard to see how we can have a summer World Cup in 2024.

I spoke to the president of Saudi Arabia, the head of the bid, and they always told me that we are not ruling anything out, we are looking at having a World Cup in the summer.

The international fixture calendar is only 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 fixture calendar has become, with the Champions League expanding as well. I think we are looking at a World Cup in January or February.

There are some people – I’m not among them – who would say, ‘we would have loved to have had a winter World Cup in Qatar because the quality of football was better, because the players weren’t as tired, because it was in the middle of the season. and it was long, dark nights in western Europe and it was very nice to watch a big tournament in the winter.” That’s the only kind of positive spin I think could be put on it.

How did Saudi Arabia’s bid achieve FIFA’s highest rating score?

Even though there were only unique bids for each World Cup, FIFA still said you had to go through the proper bidding process. “We will evaluate the bids, we will send people to the candidate countries to look at their bids and pitches.” And, as part of the bidding process, FIFA is now also looking at the human rights of countries bidding to host World Cups.

By contrast, in their bid evaluation reports, released close to midnight on Friday, Saudi Arabia received the highest rating ever given to a bid. I think it was 4.2 out of 5.

The bid evaluation report said the human rights risk of hosting a World Cup in Saudi Arabia was a medium risk. Many people have criticized the process, they have criticized this bid evaluation report.

Is this sports wash?

This is a really important question. Why does Saudi Arabia want the World Cup? Saudi Arabia’s sports minister has stated that the jewels of world sport that they want were F1, which they have, the World Cup that they are going to get, and also the Olympics, which is something that I. I’m sure they’ll look into it in the future.

Why do they want it? OK, critics will say it’s all about sportswashing, because they want to change their image on the world stage. So that when people think of Saudi Arabia, they don’t think of a repressive, oppressive regime. Instead, they think about Cristiano Ronaldo or Lewis Hamilton or the World Cup.

The Saudis themselves, the Saudi officials that I’ve talked to, will say that’s not the case, it’s not about sports washing, that’s a really simplistic way of looking at it. “The reason we are doing it is because we want to transform our country and our economy from a country based on oil revenue to an economy based on tourism, entertainment. We want to turn Saudi Arabia into an economic and technological hub.”

In terms of human rights and reforms, they will tell you that they have made some reforms, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Critics will say that many of these reforms are superficial and just done for PR purposes.

And the situation on the ground in terms of civil liberties and human rights has not really changed in Saudi Arabia.