Saudi Arabia should be odds-on favourites to stage the World Cup finals in 2034 with many of the mysteriously-financed offshore betting outfits whose weird labels litter Premier League stadia.
But those who think that the Saudi assault on football’s establishment – never mind golf and boxing – has only just exploded out of the desert sun have not been paying attention.
No use panicking now at the prospect of Saudi petro-dollars buying European clubs or of FAs funding themselves in hock to its state sponsors. No use bleating at the advance of sportswashing on a grand scale; Saudi Arabia has been hammered over human rights abuses and mass executions for so long it has become part
