Dutch players join women footballers' call for FIFA to stop working with Saudi oil giant

Several professional Dutch footballers, including Oranje international Vivianne Miedema, have joined a call from women’s football for FIFA to end its partnership with oil giant Saudi Aramco. A total of 106 professional footballers from 24 countries and five continents signed a letter against the partnership, which FIFA announced in April.

Saudi Arabia owns 98.5 percent of Saudi Aramco. The female footballers called the partnership unacceptable due to Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations, especially against women and the LGBTQIA+ community. They listed multiple violations of women’s rights, including imprisoning the women who fought for their right to drive (which Saudi Arabia only allowed in 2018) and sentencing a woman to 27 years in prison for retweeting a post on freedom of speech.

“The Saudi authorities trample not only on the rights of women but on the freedom of all other citizens too. Imagine LGBTQ+ players, many of whom are heroes of our sport, being expected to promote Saudi Aramco during the 2027 World Cup, the national oil company of a regime that criminalizes the relationships that they are in and the values they stand for.”

They also point out that, Saudi Aramco is one of the corporations responsible for “burning football’s future” as the largest state-owned fossil fuel company in the world. “Grassroots football across the world is being smashed by extreme heat, drought, fires, and floods, but as we all pay the consequences, Saudi Arabia rakes in its profits, with FIFA as its cheerleader,” the footballers wrote.

“FIFA’s announcement of Saudi Aramco as its ‘major’ partner has set us so far back that it’s hard to fully take in,” they wrote.

“This letter shows that this is what we as players do not want to stand for and accept in women’s football,” 120-time international Miedema, who currently plays for Manchester United, told NOS. “It’s simple: this sponsorship contradicts FIFA’s own commitments to human rights and the planet.”

The letter was also signed by Dutch players Tessel Middag (Rangers), Loes Geurts (BK Häcken), Ziva Henry (Feyenoord), Amber Verspaget (Feyenoord), Jill van den Ende (ADO Den Haag), and Manon van Raay (ADO Den Haag).