“They’re utterly shameless; 2030 WC is going to them”- Fans slam FIFA after Saudi Arabia bags hosting rights of 2023 Club World Cup

FIFA announces that Saudi Arabia will host the 2023 Club World Cup in December.

“They’re utterly shameless; 2030 WC is going to them”- Fans slam FIFA after Saudi Arabia bags hosting rights of 2023 Club World Cup

Saudi Arabia to host 2023 Club World Cup. (Image via Getty)

FIFA confirmed on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia will host the 2023 FIFA Club World Cup in December. The Middle Eastern countries have lately gained control of football with Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup earlier this season.

“We are honored and extremely excited to be given the opportunity to welcome the world’s leading football clubs and their fans to Saudi Arabia,” stated Saudi Arabia’s sports minister, HRH Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal. However, what’s interesting to note is that just like Qatar, Saudi Arabia too, has a barbarous human rights history.

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Amnesty International and the Reprieve human rights group said, “FIFA has yet again disregarded Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record. Hard on the heels of awarding the Visit Saudi tourism site as a sponsor of the Women’s World Cup, it has announced the kingdom as host of the Club World Cup without any consideration of freedom of expression, discrimination or workers’ rights.”

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The Club World Cup format will be revised in 2025 when 32 teams will be eligible to compete. In addition, Saudi Arabia has also proposed to host the 2030 Men’s World Cup, demonstrating its dominance and power in the world of football.

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Twitter reacts to FIFA’s decision of hosting the 2023 Club World Cup in Saudi Arabia

(Image via Nike)

Saudi Arabia has stringent human rights regulations, and FIFA does not consider freedom of expression, discrimination, or workers’ rights. As a result, fans criticized FIFA’s choice to host the club world cup once it was revealed.

FIFA has once again ignored Saudi Arabia’s complicity in obvious sports washing. Thus, fans slammed the football governing body for turning its blind eye towards human rights issues among other significant important factors like discrimination against laborers who build the football stadiums. Here are some of the fans’ reactions on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/strawhats7390/status/1625546613270941698?s=20&t=baXB_ljiVTWfWeGAST5bvw

Despite receiving a lot of criticism, especially from the English and Western media over the conduct of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar led a successful campaign and pulled off one of the best FIFA World Cups of all time. Thus, it will be interesting to see that after this kind of bashing and slamming, will Saudi Arabia be able to follow a similar road and organize a successful FIFA Club World later this year or not.