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Saudi Arabiaâs World Cup: how close could Fifa get to corporate manslaughter?'...
In a country where thousands of migrant workers have died since 2016 a huge building project lies ahead. Decemberâs coronation will stand as surely the most wretched, bloody, damaging act in the history of global organised sportwww.theguardian.com/football/2024/nov/15/saudi-arabias-world-cup-how-close-could-fifa-get-to-corporate-manslaughter
a snippet...'âPeople will die.â
Amnesty International
âYou can never say again that you did not know.â
William Wilberforce
We are at least approaching a decisive crossroads on this journey. Fifa is due to announce the winning bids for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups live from Zurich on 11 December via an âextraordinary virtual congressâ, which certainly sounds like an exciting kind of congress.
In reality this process is extraordinary in one specific sense. The candidates to stage the 2034 edition of the grandest and most lucrative entertainment event on the planet line up as follows. Favourites: Saudi Arabia. Shortlisted: Saudi Arabia. Dark horses: Saudi Arabia. Chief sponsor of Fifa: Saudi Arabia. Only bid not eliminated by a gathering sense of inevitability: Saudi Arabia.'
and...'And make no mistake, these are stark. The recent ITV documentary, Kingdom Uncovered, gave us another number to go with the World Cup bid bookâs excitable talk of 11 new stadiums, 185,000 new hotel rooms and Fifaâs estimated $1bn sponsorship deal with Aramco, Saudi Arabiaâs state-owned oil company.
That number is 21,000, or the total of Nepali, Bangladeshi and Indian workers reported to have died since the launch of the Vision 2030 programme in April 2016, a process hardly likely to be halted by a World Cup green light.
Death is not a distant hypothetical at this stage. Itâs here in the room with us. We have data from Qatar. We can even make a fair estimate of the total deaths a Saudi tournament will leave in its wake without serious reforms, a calculation presumably factored somewhere into Fifaâs planning, just another part of the bidding algorithm under Gianni Infantino.'
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