2023-10-10 08:56:00
The names Kanya Leomany, Razvan Burleanu, Pedro Chaluja or Datuk Haji Hamidin Bin Haji Mohd Amin are unlikely to mean anything to you. However, these people are part of the committee which, on October 4, decided that only one candidacy would be retained for the organization of the 2030 World Cup: that of Spain, Portugal and Morocco. This committee is the “FIFA Council”, the former Executive Committee of Sepp Blatter reviewed and corrected by Gianni Infantino after his election as president of the Zurich body in 2016.
As the rules of the game must be respected in form if not in spirit, it will be up to the next FIFA Congress, in 2024, to ratify the decision (taken unanimously, it goes without saying) by Infantino’s council of ministers. The 211 member associations of the body should not procrastinate for too long, given that there will only be one box to check, which is becoming a habit on the side of FIFA, whose president has already been re-elected two times by acclamations in the absence of any declared opposition.
The flag of Saudi Arabia during the 2022 World Cup.
Credit: Getty Images
CONMEBOL maliciously dismissed for 2034….
That’s it for 2030; but here is also for 2034. This same FIFA Council, by offering a group match each to Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay
, was not only awarding a consolation prize to the South Americans and celebrating the 100 years which will have passed since the Frenchman Lucien Laurent scored the first goal in a World Cup, in Montevideo. This symbolic gesture also had the advantage of excluding the confederation to which these three countries belong, CONMEBOL, from a possible candidacy to organize the 2034 tournament. As required by the principle of continental rotation adopted for a long time by FIFA.
CONCACAF taking charge of the competition in 2026, and UEFA and CAF not being able to organize two World Cups in a row, this means – as the FIFA press release took care to specify in full – that only the OFC (Oceania) and AFC (Asia) could put themselves in the running to hope to host the 2034 World Cup. Member associations tempted to apply were given…twenty-five days to do so .
Gianni Infantino
Credit: Getty Images
Saudi Arabia did not wait long to place itself The operation was not sewn with white thread, but with mooring rope. This was to open wide the barrier behind which Saudi Arabia had camped for a long time. In fact, the Saudisimmediately applied , and his supporting troops did not waste a second to provide their support. First it was the president of the Djiboutian federation Suleiman Waberi, one of Gianni Infantino’s most loyal supporters in Africa. Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain immediately followed suit. Then camePakistan
, Nigeria, Syria, Bangladesh, the Maldives – even Panama! It has already been explained here how Saudi Arabia had launched an unprecedented diplomatic offensive for two years with federations and confederations ready to listen to its arguments, in signing more than forty bilateral cooperation protocols, the most significant of which were concluded with the African and Oceanian confederations, which together have sixty-five votes in the FIFA Congress. The process is not new; but it has never been exploited with such vigor and consistency of ideas, or rather a fixed idea, which is to place Saudi Arabia in the first rank of footballing nations.
It is the diplomatic counterpart of the transformation of hundreds of millions of the Saudi championship into a competition which intends to establish its domination over Asian, then intercontinental, football. It will do this through a FIFA Club World Cup expanded to include thirty-two clubs, including four from Asia, from 2025. This is Gianni Infantino’s wish. This is also the wish of the Saudis. And this is not the first or last time that the wishes – and interests – of one will be aligned with the wishes of the other, and vice versa.
Saudi Arabia fans during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Credit: Imago
Australia limited by time
Saudi Arabia has done nothing other than adapt the modus operandi of Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter, who had not escaped the fact that the voice of Lesotho counts as much as that of England when the ballots are counted. It therefore turned to nations or confederations for whom any financial support is a gift from heaven, from Guam to CAF. No need to slip an envelope stuffed with dollars under a hotel room door when you can build a stadium in broad daylight (like in Mauritius), invite selections of young people to participate in training courses in Jeddah (like Malawi) or provide free training for referees (like those in Liberia).
The opposition encountered by this strategy jointly implemented by Gianni Infantino and the very clever Yasser Al Misehal, protégé of Mohammed bin Salman and president of the Saudi federation since 2019, has been almost non-existent. It certainly did not come from France, whose new president Philippe Diallo recently signed one of these famous “memorandums of understanding” with his Saudi alter ego. Nor did it come from Kanya Leomany, Razvan Burleanu, Pedro Chaluja or Datuk Haji Hamidin Bin Haji Mohd Amin, paid 245,000 euros net of tax to take part in two FIFA Council meetings per year. Silence is golden, sometimes.
The memory of 2010…
Certainly, there is talk of a possible Australian candidacy for 2034, perhaps in conjunction with New Zealand, its ally for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, and Indonesia. The time allocated to prepare for this candidacy is, however, so short that it is difficult to see the Australians embarking on the adventure, when it is obvious that the Saudis have the support of Infantino and knew in advance what reserved this day of October 4, 2023 when, without carrying out any public consultation or vote whatsoever, FIFA opened the doors to 2034 wide.
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