FIFA Caught in World Cup Controversy Again!

Karan Ahgun

— 3 min read
FIFA Caught in World Cup Controversy Again!

This week, the hosts of the 2030 and 2034 FIFA World Cups were announced. Portugal, Spain & Morocco will host in 2030 and Saudi Arabia will host in 2034. The process taken by FIFA to come to the decision to allow Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 World Cup has come under great scrutiny and FIFA find themselves at the centre of more scrutiny again!

After the backlash and alleged corruption behind the bidding processes which saw Russia and Qatar host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups respectively, FIFA told the world that it was going in a new direction where underhand tactics could be considered a thing of the past regime. However, the decision to grant Saudi Arabia the hosting responsibilities for the 2034 World Cup has received a similar reaction as when Qatar was announced as the hosts of the 2022 tournament. The negative reaction mainly stems from concern amongst many over Saudi Arabia's human rights record, which is reportedly amongst the worst in the world. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy and there have been some very public issues with press censorship in the past. In addition to this, this announcement has been seen as another attempt by Saudi Arabia to engage in sportswashing. They already have Formula 1, LIV Golf and Cristiano Ronaldo but the World Cup and Olympic Games are seen as the pinnacle of sports events which could legitimise Saudi Arabia on the world stage. In response to this reaction, Saudi Arabia would say the their "society is changing" and that this is an attempt by Western media to influence the thinking of people by planting seeds of negative connotations about the country.

FIFA's process in announcing the hosts of the 2030 and 2034 World Cups was also scrutinised by media. What was really striking about this FIFA Congress was that it was held online so that there would be less media scrutiny for FIFA officials to deal with. Furthermore, there was only one bid for each World Cup which threw up some red flags. Many knew that the 2030 World Cup would be held in Portugal, Spain & Morocco. There's an added facet in that 3 "centenary" games will be held in South America. In this instance, Europe, Africa and South America are all hosting the 2030 World Cup meaning that only Asia/Oceania could host the 2034 World Cup. This itself is weird and doesn't really dispel the rumours of underhand tactics. The Saudi bid received the highest ever evaluation score from FIFA, who also classified their human rights risk as "medium".

There is a lack of clarity from FIFA when it comes to these World Cup announcements and is the exact opposite of what Gianni Infantino and FIFA promised after the corruption scandal which damaged the organisation's reputation. There is little hope that we will get any transparency from FIFA in the near future and the only way to get that is through wide-scale and lasting change.

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