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Sunday, December 22, 2024

Saudi Arabia awarded 2034 FIFA World Cup

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11 days ago
20241211
FILE - Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, stand for the anthem prior to opening soccer match of the 2018 World Cup between Russia and Saudi Arabia at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, Russia, on June 14, 2018. (Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, stand for the anthem prior to opening soccer match of the 2018 World Cup between Russia and Saudi Arabia at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, Russia, on June 14, 2018. (Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Alexei Nikolsky

Sau­di Ara­bia has been of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed by FI­FA as host of the 2034 World Cup in men’s soc­cer, giv­ing the oil-rich king­dom its biggest prize yet for mas­sive spend­ing on glob­al sports dri­ven by Crown Prince Mo­hammed bin Salman.

The Sau­di bid was the on­ly can­di­date and was ac­claimed by the ap­plause of more than 200 FI­FA mem­ber fed­er­a­tions. They took part re­mote­ly in an on­line meet­ing host­ed in Zurich on Wednes­day by the soc­cer body’s pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no.

“The vote of the con­gress is loud and clear,” said In­fan­ti­no, who had asked of­fi­cials on a bank of screens to clap their hands at head lev­el to show their sup­port.

The de­ci­sion was com­bined with ap­prov­ing the on­ly can­di­date to host the 2030 World Cup. Spain, Por­tu­gal and Mo­roc­co will co-host in a six-na­tion project, with Ar­genti­na, Paraguay and Uruguay each get­ting one of the 104 games.

The South Amer­i­can con­nec­tion will mark the cen­te­nary of Uruguay host­ing the first World Cup in 1930.

The de­ci­sions com­plete a most­ly opaque 15-month bid process which In­fan­ti­no helped steer to­ward Sau­di Ara­bia with­out a ri­val can­di­date, with­out tak­ing ques­tions, and which hu­man rights groups warn will put the lives of mi­grant work­ers at risk.

FI­FA and Sau­di of­fi­cials have said host­ing the 2034 tour­na­ment can ac­cel­er­ate change, in­clud­ing more free­doms and rights for women.

A fast-track path to vic­to­ry was cleared last year by FI­FA ac­cept­ing the three-con­ti­nent host­ing plan for the 2030 World Cup. It meant on­ly soc­cer fed­er­a­tions in Asia and Ocea­nia were el­i­gi­ble for the 2034 con­test, and FI­FA gave them less than four weeks to de­clare. On­ly Sau­di Ara­bia did.

Sau­di Ara­bia’s win will kick off a decade of scruti­ny on labour laws and treat­ment of work­ers most­ly from South Asia need­ed to help build and up­grade 15 sta­di­ums, plus ho­tels and trans­port net­works ahead of the 104-game tour­na­ment.

One of the sta­di­ums is planned to be 350 me­ters (yards) above the ground in Neom — a fu­tur­is­tic city that does not yet ex­ist — and an­oth­er named for the crown prince is de­signed to be atop a 200-me­ter cliff near Riyadh.

Dur­ing the bid cam­paign, FI­FA has ac­cept­ed lim­it­ed scruti­ny of Sau­di Ara­bia’s hu­man rights record that was wide­ly crit­i­cized this year at the Unit­ed Na­tions.

Sau­di and in­ter­na­tion­al rights groups and ac­tivists warned FI­FA it has not learned the lessons of Qatar’s much-crit­i­cized prepa­ra­tions to host the 2022 World Cup.

FI­FA made a “reck­less de­ci­sion” to ap­prove Sau­di Ara­bia with­out get­ting pub­lic as­sur­ances to pro­tect hu­man rights, an in­ter­na­tion­al col­lec­tive of rights groups said in a state­ment.

“At every stage of this bid­ding process, FI­FA has shown its com­mit­ment to hu­man rights to be a sham,” said Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al’s head of labour rights and sport, Steve Cock­burn.

The king­dom plans to spend tens of bil­lions of dol­lars on projects re­lat­ed to the World Cup as part of the crown prince’s sweep­ing Vi­sion 2030 project that aims to mod­ern­ize Sau­di so­ci­ety and econ­o­my. At its core it is spend­ing on sports by the $900 bil­lion sov­er­eign wealth op­er­a­tion, the Pub­lic In­vest­ment Fund, which he over­sees. Crit­ics have called it “sports­wash­ing” of the king­dom’s rep­u­ta­tion.

The prince, known as MBS, has built close work­ing ties to In­fan­ti­no since 2017 — align­ing with the or­ga­niz­er of sport’s most-watched event rather than di­rect­ly con­fronting the es­tab­lished sys­tem as it did with the dis­rup­tive LIV Golf project.

The re­sult for Sau­di Ara­bia and FI­FA has been smooth progress to­ward the win Wednes­day with lim­it­ed push­back from soc­cer of­fi­cials, though some from women in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers.

The steady flow of Sau­di cash in­to in­ter­na­tion­al soc­cer is set to in­crease.

FI­FA cre­at­ed a new and high­er World Cup spon­sor cat­e­go­ry for state oil firm Aram­co, and Sau­di fund­ing is set to un­der­write the 2025 Club World Cup in the Unit­ed States that is a pet project for In­fan­ti­no.

North Amer­i­can soc­cer body CON­CA­CAF signed a mul­ti-year deal with PIF, Sau­di sta­di­ums host Su­per Cup games for Italy and Spain, and near­ly 50 FI­FA mem­ber fed­er­a­tions have signed work­ing agree­ments with Sau­di coun­ter­parts.

Lav­ish spend­ing by PIF-owned Sau­di clubs in the past two years buy­ing and pay­ing play­ers – in­clud­ing Cris­tiano Ronal­do, Ney­mar, Karim Ben­ze­ma and Sa­dio Mané – put hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in­to Eu­ro­pean soc­cer.

That in­flu­ence could be key in talks to agree which months to play the 2034 World Cup. The No­vem­ber-De­cem­ber slot tak­en by Qatar in 2022 to avoid ex­treme mid­sum­mer heat is com­pli­cat­ed in 2034 by the holy month of Ra­madan through mid-De­cem­ber and Riyadh host­ing the mul­ti-sport Asian Games.

Still, Jan­u­ary 2034 could be an op­tion — and like­ly bet­ter for Eu­ro­pean clubs and leagues —af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee said it saw few is­sues in clash­ing with the Salt Lake Win­ter Games open­ing Feb. 10, 2034. The IOC al­so has a ma­jor com­mer­cial deal with Sau­di Ara­bia, to host the new Es­ports Olympics.

ZURICH (AP) —

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