FIFA president Gianni Infantino knows what it is like to be under the cosh and in need of help. “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker,” he said in 2022 when justifying FIFA’s decision to stage that year’s World Cup in Qatar despite its dubious human rights record.
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His reasoning was that the World Cup would help to right the wrongs. On Wednesday, he was at it again, saying that the World Cup was a “unique catalyst for positive social change and unity”, especially for women.
Wait a moment. Is that not an admission that change was needed in Qatar and is needed in Saudi Arabia? And does that not also imply that there would be little or no appetite for change in those places if not for the spotlight that the World Cup brings?
The answers are yes, and yes to an extent.
As it happens, some things are crook in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, 21 international organisations, including Amnesty International, Saudi diaspora human rights organisations, migrant worker groups from Nepal and Kenya and international trade unions, published a joint statement condemning FIFA’s decision to put the World Cup there.
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Elsewhere, professional footballers, fan bodies and climate campaigners mounted protests. Women are particularly unimpressed. In October, 135 female footballers wrote to FIFA demanding it sever its links with the Saudi oil titan Aramco. FIFA has agreed to promote Aramco at the next two World Cups, including the women’s World Cup in 2027.
“This sponsorship is much worse than an own goal for football; FIFA might as well pour oil on the pitch and set it alight,” they wrote.
Some of the qualms about Saudi Arabia can be put down to what Fahad Nazer, from the Saudi embassy in Washington, called Western “ethnocentricity”. And it’s clear that the Saudis have made recent efforts to liberalise previously draconian laws restricting women. Improbably, Saudi Arabia is currently chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
But last year, US-based think tank Freedom House rated Saudi Arabia eight out of 100 for political rights and civil liberties, and said it was the most authoritarian regime in the world. Even to advocate for human rights there is still a jailable offence.
The Saudis object strenuously to the idea that what they are doing by putting their fingers in every sporting pie is sportswashing. That is only to be expected.
South Riyadh Stadium.
But the rest of the sporting world could stop insulting our intelligence by making out that its stampede to the Saudi door has everything to do with some sort of giant-hearted mission to spread the good sporting news and act as an angel of enlightenment in the furthest and darkest corners of the globe …
And nothing to do with Saudi Arabia’s bottomless sovereign wealth fund and Aramco and $US10 billion it has already splashed on sport in the country and around the world – and the certainty that there’s plenty more where that came from.
You can bet there’s one other international sports body that can’t take its eyes off all this, and you can just about put it in your diary now that Saudi Arabia will host the 2036 Olympic Games.
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