Ten years from now, the Men’s World Cup will be held in a country that has long been considered one of the worst abusers of human rights on the planet. Saudi Arabia has spent much of this last decade systematically starving Yemen as part of a larger campaign of economic isolation and air strikes meant to annihilate the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. U.S. intelligence has found substantial evidence that the nation’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the execution and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident and dissident journalist, in its Turkish Embassy in 2018. Women, homosexuals, and many noncitizens have practically zero—if not zero—rights in the Kingdom. The World Cup it will host will almost certainly result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of migrant laborers. Executions and torture are common; free speech is nonexistent; the list of abuses goes on and on.
Everyone who works for FIFA, which makes the decision as to who will host world soccer’s grandest event, knows all of this. In case they missed it somehow, Amnesty International released a damning report last month laying all of this out. Its conclusion was blunt: Should Saudi Arabia be awarded the World Cup, “people will die.”
And yet, on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia won the 2034 World Cup with no opposition whatsoever. From now until the start of this World Cup 12 years from now, people will die to make it happen. For FIFA and for Saudi Arabia alike, that is simply the cost of doing business.
Two related threads intertwine in Saudi Arabia’s successful bid. One is that the petrostate, which approached pariah status after the brazen murder of Khashoggi, has been fully reintegrated into the global community. The other is that the soccer world, which seemed at the brink of a moral awakening not so long ago, when then–Chelsea owner oligarch Roman Abramovich was forced out due to his close ties with Vladimir Putin following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, is currently in a moment of apathy—if not nihilism—about human rights of all sorts. This is a low moment for the sport and, indeed, for sports in general. And yet no one in charge—or, for that matter, at any level—seems to care.
It is, of course, always easier to shrug off a fait accompli. Gianni Infantino, who rules FIFA as a mix of Don Corleone, the Wizard of Oz, and Donald Trump, ran a carefully manicured process that ensured there would be no turbulence as bin Salman glided toward securing an event that will cement its status as a global powerhouse. Yes, Saudi Arabia technically “won” its bid to host the World Cup. But Infantino guaranteed the nation would win the same way he guarantees that he will be reelected to lead the brazenly corrupt governing body of soccer: by clearing the field.
Saudi Arabia was initially competing with a consortium of nations to host the 2030 World Cup. Infantino, ever the dealmaker, found a solution: Everyone wins. Spain, Portugal, and Morocco were guaranteed the tournament’s 2030 competition after the Saudis backed down but not out. Infantino made sure that they would not leave empty-handed. Instead, there was never anything competitive about the bidding to host the 2034 tournament. Thanks to Infantino’s careful stage management, Saudi Arabia was both the winner and the only contestant. Have a problem with Saudi Arabia? Too bad (sucker).
Infantino’s maneuvering reflects a lesson FIFA learned more than a decade earlier. In 2010, Qatar won the 2022 World Cup via what was a theoretically competitive bidding process. I say theoretically, because that process—in keeping with how many World Cups have been awarded over the years—was rife with bribery and corruption. (The same year, it’s worth noting, Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup, which it hosted four years after annexing Crimea via invasion and four years before it would fully invade Ukraine. Oh, and Russia also allegedly won that World Cup thanks to bribery.) The shock of Qatar’s victory—the United States, which already had much of the necessary infrastructure in place and where soccer is relatively popular (especially in comparison to Qatar, where it is not), was heavily favored—resulted in a stream of damaging stories that trickled out for more than a decade.
Yes, many of those stories were about what quickly became clear was a brazenly corrupt selection process. But Qatar’s victory also put a spotlight on that country’s abysmal human rights record. For 12 years, there were stories about its deeply discriminatory at best, horrific at worst, treatment of women and gay people; as the World Cup neared, there were also many stories about its brutal treatment of migrant workers, thousands of whom died constructing the stadiums that would host the month-long tournament before, in many cases, being dismantled.
The resulting firestorm was such a P.R. disaster that Infantino himself had to come out and try to do damage control—a rarity for a figure who otherwise casts himself as untouchable and above the fray. In one of the most disastrous and embarrassing press conferences in world history, Infantino characteristically centered himself, claiming that, as an Italian growing up in Switzerland who was occasionally bullied for his red hair, he possessed an innate understanding of the oppressed.
“Today I feel Qatari,” he said in what were, amazingly, prepared remarks. “Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker.
“Of course I am not Qatari, I am not an Arab, I am not African, I am not gay, I am not disabled,” Infantino continued in a rare but fleeting moment of self-awareness. “But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated [against], to be bullied, as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child I was bullied—because I had red hair and freckles, plus I was Italian, so imagine.” One can only imagine!
Infantino may not have to make the speech again, however. The response to Saudi Arabia’s selection, aside from a handful of articles, has generated little public attention and even less outrage. Much of that, yes, stems from the fact that the decision, controversial though it may be, was made without drama. But it also reflects the fact that Saudi Arabia and its murderous ruler have emerged from the controversy following Khashoggi’s murder completely unscathed.
Joe Biden deserves much of the blame here. Democrats, world leaders, and much of the general public were horrified by Khashoggi’s murder. But long after American intelligence agencies concluded that bin Salman ordered it, Biden ignored human rights concerns and traveled to Saudi Arabia to give bin Salman a fist-bump, effectively welcoming him back into America’s good graces.
The fist bump itself captured much of what made the moment so disgusting. Yes, it stopped short of a hug or a handshake, but that was the whole point. The fist bump was a pre-planned, deeply cynical gesture aimed at fully embracing bin Salman without, well, actually embracing him. Biden, you see, didn’t care about Khashoggi or human rights. He and his advisers were increasingly nervous about rising gas prices and wanted Saudi Arabia’s help in increasing production to bring them down: The fist bump was simply the cost of doing business. The visit to Saudi Arabia was the lowest moment of Biden’s pre–October 7 presidency and, as he prepares to leave the White House, it still stands out as one of his most shameful actions.
Two years after Biden’s visit, the Kingdom is in a strange place. Bin Salman has invested heavily in an effort to hold off two potential threats to his all-encompassing power. One is a world where oil is far less important than he’d prefer. Yes, Saudi Arabia is currently a very rich country. But its wealth is entirely dependent on its vast oil reserves. In a world in which black gold matters significantly less, Saudi Arabia would be in serious trouble and so Saudi Arabia has embarked on an ambitious effort known as Project 2030 to expand its economy so it is no longer more or less completely dependent on oil production. (Now that the World Cup has been announced, it may become Project 2034.)
At the same time, bin Salman has sunk considerable capital into a range of bread and circus-y ventures, particularly Formula 1 racing, ultimate fighting, and a glitzy, if janky, soccer league that features faded legends like Cristiano Ronaldo. These popular distractions serve a purpose. Bin Salman, like many world leaders, was traumatized by the Arab Spring; Saudi Arabia, like many of the countries that experienced revolutions in 2011, has an enormous population of young men. Bin Salman’s investment strategy—which very much includes the World Cup—is aimed at solving both problems at once: diversifying the country’s economy; providing jobs and entertainment for potential revolutionaries to glom onto instead of participating in potential revolutions. These patches may be less durable than he imagines but, suffice it to say, he imagines himself holding onto power forever.
That journey has been a rocky one; not all of his pet projects are working out as planned. Neom, the J.G. Ballardesque futuristic city that was at the heart of bin Salman’s Project 2030 has been dramatically scaled back. Oil is still at the very center of the Saudi economy. And bin Salman’s effort to sportswash his regime into respectability has only moderately successful. The Saudi Pro League, its tentpole soccer league, is not the world eater that many feared it would be when it signed Ronaldo to a nine-figure contract two years ago. In fact, it is not very good—or, for that matter, popular (at least when Ronaldo isn’t playing). All signs suggest that investment in it has been significantly scaled back.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia has a new set of foreign policy problems. Although Saudi Arabia has not formally joined the Abraham Accords—the 2020 agreement that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states—relations between Israel and the Kingdom had grown considerably warmer throughout the 2010s. That increased closeness was an internal problem for bin Salman even before Hamas’s October 7 attacks, as many of the country’s influential clerics were opposed to any cooperation with Israel. But the widespread and growing outrage in the country as Israel has killed tens of thousands of civilians across the Arab world as part of its reprisal campaign is immense. As Israel attacks Iranian proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen and conducts airstrikes against Iran itself, there is considerable risk of a wider regional war that could see Saudi Arabia fighting one of its sworn enemies (Iran) at the side of another (Israel). Regardless, what had once seemed like a seismic, generational realignment has quickly curdled. Bin Salman’s recent foreign policy gambits have become an albatross around his neck as he risks conflict with both the country’s powerful religious clerics and its people, both of whom are supportive of Palestinian rights and contemptuous of Israel.
By awarding Saudi Arabia the World Cup, the global soccer community has given bin Salman a gift of incalculable value at a moment when reality might have brought him back down to earth. The 2034 World Cup will be his stage: It will exist to promote Saudi Arabia as a hub of development and innovation. Yes, there will be stories about its human rights abuses—and the likely catastrophic death toll that resulted from building its infrastructure. By awarding Saudi Arabia the World Cup, FIFA has likely committed what The Guardian’s Barney Ronay—one of a handful of journalists who have covered the selection process with the scorn and moral outrage it deserves—recently described as an act of “corporate manslaughter.” There will be stories about that too—about the perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands, of migrant laborers who died working in abysmal conditions so the show could go on. By then, of course, it will be too late.
The cold lesson of the Qatar World Cup is that none of that really matters. There will be negative stories and criticism, but so what? The fans will be there, as will the players and the cameras. Hosting a World Cup provides soft power benefits that are vast and intangible. Bin Salman knows this. FIFA knows this.
The 2034 World Cup will undoubtedly be a travesty. For Saudi Arabia and, in particular, bin Salman it will undoubtedly be a wild success.
Yes, Saudi Arabia won the World Cup in the same way that many host nations win it: by ingratiating itself to FIFA’s many eminently persuadable power brokers, particularly the most important power broker of them all: Gianni Infantino, who lords over the organization—and, by extension, the sport itself—as a kind of grotesque avatar of its many shortcomings and sins. Even in a world in which all of this was greeted with the shock, horror, and indignation that it deserves, Saudi Arabia would still have been tapped to host the 2034 World Cup because Infantino and FIFA don’t care about any of that as long as the money keeps flowing.
But the lack of outrage is nevertheless notable. It’s undeniable that interest in human rights and social justice has hit a nadir in the wider soccer world. Not only are fans, clubs, players, and the media significantly less engaged in promoting social justice issues than they were only a few years ago, one could also argue that politics in soccer have taken a dark turn in recent months.
Not so long ago, there was a concerted effort within the wider soccer world to push social justice issues. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, players in the English Premier League and elsewhere began kneeling before games to acknowledge systemic racism. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there were moments of silence and arm bands and blue and yellow flags flying in the stands; meanwhile, Russia—and its benefactors, like Abramovich, were effectively booted from the sport. There have been concerted efforts, via rainbow laces and captain’s armbands, to make soccer more welcoming for LGBTQ fans and, more broadly, to send a message that it is a sport for everyone.
Yes, the implementation of these elements was imperfect: Hardly a week goes by in which players or teams aren’t subjected to racist or homophobic chants; even with the wild growth of women’s soccer in recent years, players accused of sexual and partner violence continue to play in prominent roles for prominent teams. But until recently, there was a larger sense that inclusivity was being prioritized.
That is no longer the case. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the sport united in protest. The reality has been sadly different as Israel’s reprisal campaign against Hamas and the Palestinian people has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Teams have tried to ban Palestinian flags from their grounds while some players who have spoken out against Israel’s brutal bombing of civilians have been forced to leave their clubs. The message is clear: Speak out in favor of Palestinian rights, and your livelihood—indeed your very future—could be jeopardized.
At the same time, the sport’s wider efforts toward inclusivity have been halted, if not completely rolled back. This year in the Premier League, for instance, there was widespread opposition to anodyne and previously uncontroversial statements of support for the LGBTQ community. Manchester United’s entire team refused to wear rainbow-colored warm-ups after one of its players said donning them went against his beliefs. Ipswich Town’s Sam Morsby refused to wear a rainbow captain’s armband; Crystal Palace’s Marc Guehi did, but wrote “Jesus is King” on his. Both escaped with a slap on the wrist. In the United States, meanwhile, star winger Cristian Pulisic—who had previously stayed mum about his political beliefs—celebrated a recent goal against Jamaica by dancing like Donald Trump (Characteristically, Pulisic denied that it was meant as a show of support. But come on.)
Trump himself appeared, via a prerecorded video, at a recent event for another of FIFA’s money grabs, the Club World Cup, a wholly superfluous competition to determine which of a handful of somewhat randomly selected teams from across the world is the “best.” His daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and one of their children participated in the draw that selected the groups for the tournament’s first phase—precisely the kind of cozy, corrupt, and familial dynamic that FIFA has cultivated over the decades.
Trump’s presence was a reminder that he will have a prominent seat at the World Cup, as president, when the United States co-hosts it in 2026. That tournament will likely occur in a country in the midst of mass deportations, political prosecutions, widespread unrest, and general dysfunction. Those deportations, combined with Trump’s threats of tariffs, moreover, may also lead to a rupture of relations between its three co-hosts—the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. That would be extraordinary, in many respects. But by the sport’s historical standards—and especially by FIFA’s—it would hardly be unprecedented. This is the way things have always been. People will watch, and the money will flow. If we’re lucky, the tournament may even be exciting.
It is tempting to take a cynical view of all of this, in other words. Soccer is a reflection of the world, and the world is a chaotic, dangerous, unfair, deeply divided place. Discrimination, after all, has plagued it for as long as it has existed. For a sport that has increasingly been defined by the pursuit of more and more money, making things marginally better for groups that had previously been told, again and again, that they do not have a place in it is a sound business decision—perhaps we should not be so surprised that no one in power really gives a fig about the groups it has wooed via gestures in recent years. FIFA, meanwhile, has been fantastically corrupt for more than half a century; vile, human rights–abusing dictatorships have been chosen to host World Cups for almost as long as the competition has existed. (Indeed, its second installment took place in Mussolini’s Italy in 1934.) The only way to change this would be to change FIFA, which seems impossible.
If things have always been like this, how can they ever be any different? And yet, there has been a real, commendable, and widespread effort to make soccer more inclusive and social justice–minded in recent years. It has made soccer better and more welcoming. There has been an effort to make soccer reflect a better, more open and inclusive world, not simply the fractious, deeply unfair, and often miserable one we all find ourselves in. That effort has been stalled, if not reversed.
Soccer, like much of the wider world, is in the midst of a reactionary moment. Efforts to promote diversity and inclusion have stalled seemingly everywhere. Hatemongers, hucksters, and demagogues are ascendant. Whether it comes from exhaustion or apathy, there is seemingly little effort to push back against the sport’s increasing takeover by rapacious actors, whether they come from high finance or from petrostates like Saudi Arabia (which, by the way, also owns the Premier League’s Newcastle United). Now Saudi Arabia has won the World Cup. It should be seen as a low moment for the sport, if not a nadir. Instead, it’s business as usual.
