- Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (Hurst and Company)
As if the relationship between Saudi Arabia and global soccer wasn’t already a large part of the global soccer conversation given the recruitment of international stars into the Saudi Pro League, its future hosting of the 2034 World Cup has given pundits even more reason to cast an eye at the country and its relationship with the sport as a global interest.
In Kingdom of Football, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen provides a thorough historic analysis of the relationship between the nation, the vision and goals of its ruling party and soccer as sport and commodity. As a scholar who focuses on the region and as a diehard soccer fan, Ulrichsen casts his critical eye right at the intersection. From the outset of the book, Ulrichsen makes it clear that this will not be the simple argument(s) we’ve grown accustomed to. Avoiding an analysis of Saudi moves into soccer as simple “sportwashing,” a term we are reminded that didn’t exist when a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family purchased Manchester City or when Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 FIFA world Cup, Ulrichsen provides a history that simultaneously looks into the growth and transformation of Saudi Arabia, alongside its relationship with the global game.
While this is not a book that ignores political issues or “sportswashing,” it is much more useful precisely because it provides a larger framework for both Saudi Arabia and the overall purpose of soccer within that framework. In order to help the reader have a better understanding of soccer’s role in/for Saudi Arabian, Ulrichsen broadens the context, giving the reader first a history of soccer in Saudi Arabia as well as a history of Mohammed bin Salman and his surprising rise to power.
In short, after explaining Saudi Arabia’s past history with soccer, and it’s attempts to build domestic leagues, Ulrichsen argues that the current drive to build a sustainable “major” soccer league and to host the World Cup serves some of the same purposes past attempts to craft leagues in other countries — including Japan and the USA — have served. While it is true, of course, that leagues themselves might offer profit models to owners, they also keep a nation in the world stage conversation and, especially in this case, help broaden the economic base for the country by shirting a reliance on oil to a more mixed economy that will include a reliance on tourism as their league, and the nation’s overall branding, change.
As Ulrichsen notes, and this seems fairly difficult to argue with, once the term “sportswashing” came into vogue to signify the way a nation uses large scale sporting events, like the World Cup, to rebrand themselves away from human rights violations, it has become a catch-all phrase for all types of global events. Hence, for example, a great deal of the coverage of Qatar’s hosting the World Cup in 2022 focused not only on the suppression of gay rights and women’s rights in the country but also the number of migrant deaths caused by the rapid building of stadiums for the World Cup. And while it is indeed a useful and necessary critique to be made, when it becomes the only lens through which we see the event, we not only lose the chance to look deeper in geopolitical issues and the issues of the local, but we also too easily turn a blind eye to the way “sportswashing” could be directed toward any nation.
When asked about the charges of sportwashing, Mohammed bin Salman brushed aside the term by noting that you could call it whatever you wanted to, but what he’s trying to do is simply increase the GDP of the nation and shift it away from oil-based dependence. Ulrichsen provides us a clear window into Vision 2030: Saudi Arabia’s plan for economic diversification drives most of the decisions being made right now.
The Saudi Pro League and the World Cup are simply two parts of an entire plan to restructure the economy more diversely and to provide a basis for more job growth. So, while a Cristiano Ronaldo and a host of stars draw attention to a league, as does a World Cup, they both serve the purpose of creating a new industry and, importantly, of opening up the nation for more tourism. These, along with other attempts to grow, have begun showing growth in the job market, tourism and pilgrimage, as well as a growth in independent home ownership and increased health care coverage.
Again, to stress, as Ulrichsen points out, this is not to ignore or collapse critiques of human rights violations or other political critiques, but it is to say that one cannot understand the full strategies of the Saudi Arabian moves toward soccer by simply providing a critique of sportswashing. Given that we are now getting ready to turn our eyes toward Saudi Arabia and the World Cup, there is no better time to begin thinking more specifically and more intelligently about their motivations.
Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen Hurst and Company (2025) 264 pages. (also available for Kindle)
• John M. Sloop is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt University, where his courses include “Soccer: Media, Art, and Society.” He is the author several books, including, Soccer’s Neoliberal Pitch: The Sport’s Power, Profit, and Discursive Politics.