The host of the 2030 World Cup is due to be selected in 2024.
The only confirmed bid so far is a joint initiative by Spain,
Portugal and Ukraine.However, two rival proposals are due to
be formally launched. One will be a joint bid comprising Argentina,
Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile. The other will be a combined effort by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Greece.
When, the South American joint bid was first publicised in 2017, then Barcelona team-mates
Luis Suarez (Uruguay) and Lionel Messi (Argentina) teamed up to promote their
countries. The following year, co-co-ordinator of the bid, described Messi’s importance to the bid,
saying that: “He will surely be the flag-bearer for the World Cup.”
This May, however, a fresh development arose when Messi, arguably the greatest and most famous
footballer on the planet, signed a lucrative agreement to promote the state of Saudi Arabia.
The first thing to say is that the agreement is for Messi to promote tourism in that country,
rather than a 2030 World Cup. However, the national objective of Saudi Arabia
is tied around “Vision 2030”. This is described by government literature as “a unique transformative
economic and social reform blueprint that is opening Saudi Arabia up to the world”.
A World Cup bid for 2030, therefore,
seems heavily linked to the overall vision and promoting tourism does much to aid that cause.
Other examples include the state’s sovereign wealth fund PIF deciding to acquire the English
Premier League club Newcastle United, as well as backing the LIV Golf breakaway
tour and staging the 2019 heavyweight boxing clash between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz.
The length and terms of Messi’s agreement has not been publicised.
The Daily Telegraph previously reported Cristiano Ronaldo rejected
an offer worth more than £5million per year to promote Saudi tourism.
However, multiple sources familiar with the workings of ambassadorial roles in
the Gulf region, who wished not to be named to prevent repercussions,
suggested to The Athletic that Messi’s deal may be worth as much
as five times more than the annual fee apparently offered to Ronaldo.
Representatives for Messi said they could not clarify the figures involved owing
to the terms of confidentiality in the agreement,
while the Saudi government did not respond to emails from The Athletic.
The Saudis first promoted the Argentinian as their tourism ambassador for the country
during a trip to Jeddah, a resort city by the Red Sea, in May 2022.
“This is not his first visit to the kingdom and it will not be
the last,” said Ahmed al-Khateeb, the Saudi minister of tourism,
in a tweet that showed Messi’s welcome at King Abdulaziz International Airport.
Messi later published a picture of himself on a yacht while watching the Saudi sunset.
“Discovering the Red Sea #VisitSaudi,” read the caption on Instagram,
where Messi has over 370 million followers.
The post was labelled as a “paid partnership” with Visit Saudi, which is a subsidiary company
of the Saudi Tourism Authority, and the Visit Saudi website now has a Messi landing page.
Messi’s support team declined to comment on whether his position promoting Saudi
may conflict with his own country’s attempts to stage a World Cup in 2030.
More significantly, they declined to comment on Messi’s preparedness to take a vast cheque from a
state which has been linked to human rights abuses including the assassination of the dissident
Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as crackdowns on women’s rights activists,
LGBT people and those who speak out against the rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In 2021, the humanitarian organisation UNICEF reported that more than 10,000 children had
been killed since a Saudi-led coalition’s involvement in the conflict in neighbouring
Yemen. Messi remains a “Goodwill Ambassador” for UNICEF, a position he has held since 2010.
Messi’s representatives declined to comment on this apparent conflict,
while UNICEF did not respond.
For Messi, it is one of countless partnerships for a player who earns in excess of €30million
net to play for French champions Paris Saint-Germain, a club owned by a fund
linked to the Qatari state, which has been accused of human rights abuses of its own.
In May, business website Forbes estimated Messi had – in total,
earned more than $120million during the previous year.
In 2012, Messi visited Saudi Arabia for the first time. Since then, the relationship has
grown more cosy, and much of this is down to a curious figure named Turki Al-Sheikh.
Al-Sheikh is the chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, which
aims to promote social and economic growth in the country. Al-Sheikh is a prominent
Saudi politician and also the owner of Spanish La Liga football club Almeria,
and according to many observers of Saudi Arabia, he’s one of the most powerful men in the kingdom.
Take, for example, the account of Khashoggi, the dissident brutally assassinated in Istanbul in
2018. In a Newsweek interview recorded before his death but published after his passing,
Khashoggi said that Mohammed Bin Salman “does not have political advisors except
Turki al-Sheikh and Saud al-Qahtani”. He added: “They are very thuggish. People
fear them. Turki al-Sheikh is in charge of sport, and it is rumoured he has a
few billions at his disposal to spend on sport and keep young people busy.”
Al-Qahtani ran media operations and propaganda for MBS and US intelligence reports previously linked
him to the plot which saw Khashoggi murdered. A Saudi court cleared Al-Qahtani of charges in 2019.
Al-Sheikh, meanwhile, is a former security guard for MBS who became so friendly with
the Crown Prince that he was allowed to run the Saudi Sports Commission.
While running it, Al-Sheikh became a key interlocutor for those who wished to cash
in on the money available in Saudi. He was responsible for organising a fixture between
Brazil and Argentina there in 2019, where his football club, Almeria, published a social media
clip of Messi and Al-Sheikh hugging in the tunnel before the match with the caption “two lions”.
Messi also publicly wished Al-Sheikh happy birthday for his 40th,
and he has previously visited the politician’s home in Riyadh with other Argentina players.
It is a particularly interesting situation as, for a long time, the relationship between
Saudi Arabia and Qatar had been tense owing to a blockade of Qatar by its neighbours.
Yet Messi’s contract at PSG allows him to agree whatever commercial agreements he
likes and the past year has seen a thaw in relations between Saudi and Qatar,
to the extent that MBS and the Qatari Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,
sat either side of FIFA president Gianni Infantino during the opening match of the
World Cup on Sunday, before being spotted walking arm-in-arm through the stadium.
In conversations with prominent Argentine figures,
the unease about criticising Messi, even mildly, shines through. Fernando Marin,
the co-ordinator of the South American joint bid for 2030, however, remains convinced.
“Messi has a unique power on and off the field… He is a brand for
all of football, not for states,” he says.
“He will be a fundamental piece of a South American bid for 2030.”