A vote without a vote: the Saudi World Cup is an act of violence and disdain |

 

"The award of the 2034 World Cup to what campaign group Reprieve describes as “one of the world’s most brutal authoritarian regimes” is an act of structural violence under the eyes of the world. “People will die,” Amnesty has said. We know this. We have data. We have 21,000 migrant worker deaths since 2016. We have the absence of proper reforms governing how the next 10 years of feverish construction are supposed to work.

Football is out there making death happen because this is politically and financially expedient. Choose mass executions, torture, enforced disappearance, male guardianship and imprisoning homosexuals. Sport has always been complicit and corrupted. The world has always been brutal. Fifa has now given us this in its most extreme form, wrapped up in a laughable pretence of governance and good intentions. And in the end everyone involved is complicit, every note of online acclaim another rap of the coffin lid, from Infantino himself to our own home football associations.

And so all the fish are now sold. All the fish were already sold. Frankly, the fish were never really up for sale in the first place"

more in the article by Barney Ronay

A vote without a vote: the Saudi World Cup is an act of violence and disdain | World Cup 2034 | The Guardian