The Strait of Hormuz Shakes: Gulf Football and the Rhythm Problem Ahead of World Cup 2034

On Thursday night in Busan, I sat in front of a screen rewatching footage from an afternoon training session of a K League club. An old habit: noting every run, every change of direction, every quiet gap between two halves. My phone buzzed. Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia claimed to have intercepted six ballistic missiles and several drones. At the same time, officials confirmed that an urgent defence meeting between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan would be held within the week.

I put down my notebook. The first thing that surfaced in my mind was a ball.

Because the country that had just intercepted missiles in that report is also the country that will host the 2034 World Cup. And the strait under threat — Hormuz — is the shipping lane that, according to energy analysis firms, once carried roughly 20 per cent of global oil exports. Oil feeds the economy. The economy feeds football. That chain sounds distant, but when you sit in Busan watching a Gulf match at two in the morning, you understand how close it is.

A defence pact and a football ambition

According to the report, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan are moving towards activating a mechanism called the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. Its core principle: an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. This is the collective binding that security analysts usually call all-for-one. The urgent chiefs-of-staff meeting follows waves of missile and drone strikes by Houthi forces targeting Saudi territory.

The wider backdrop is far more complicated. There is a pause in fighting between the United States and Iran. There is a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. There are secondary sanctions that Washington has imposed on third-country firms doing business with Iranian entities. There is an overflight ban on an Iranian airline. All of this belongs to geopolitics, and I leave it to those who work in geopolitics.

But there is a thread connecting it to football, and that thread is called oil.

What is striking is that the security experts quoted in the report themselves disagree on how much control Iran exercises over the Houthis. One side argues that Tehran offers only political backing. The other argues there is direct direction from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That disagreement matters, because it determines whether this conflict escalates into state-on-state confrontation — and if it does, then every long-term plan in the region, football plans included, has to be rewritten.

Saudi Arabia is not merely hosting the 2034 World Cup. The country has poured billions of dollars into football over the past half-decade. The Public Investment Fund took over four major Saudi Pro League clubs from 2026. The biggest jolt was the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo at Al Nassr in January 2026, on a deal widely reported at around 200 million euros a year. Since then, a stream of European stars has followed him to the Gulf. A league that barely anyone in Asia bothered to switch on a decade ago is now broadcast to hundreds of countries and territories.

Turkiye and Pakistan each carry their own football stories worth noting. Turkish football is one of Europe's stronger traditions, with Galatasaray winning the UEFA Cup in 2026 and the national team finishing third at the 2026 World Cup. Pakistani football sits at the opposite end, largely outside the world football map, with a FIFA ranking that frequently falls outside the top 150. When three countries with three football traditions on three different tiers sit at the same security table, it reminds me that football is never just football.

That entire structure rests on one assumption: that oil money will keep flowing into football for decades, at least until the 2034 World Cup closes.

And that assumption is now being tested.

When geopolitics touches the touchline

I am not the person who makes forecasts about war. But I have followed football long enough to notice one thing: Gulf football does not operate like European football. It operates as part of a national strategy. When a state budget tightens because of conflict, football is among the first lines to be slowed — not cut immediately, but stretched out.

Look at what happened in the recent past. When oil prices collapsed in 2026–2026, Gulf clubs were forced to cut spending on expensive foreign signings. When tensions escalated around the 2026 Gulf diplomatic crisis, regional fixture lists and broadcasting contracts were disrupted. The rhythm of Asian football always lags political rhythm by one beat — but it moves in the same direction.

This is where I remember the line I still tell myself whenever I sit at the corner of a pitch: Every player has his own rhythm. I only look for where it begins. For Gulf football, that rhythm begins at an oil well, passes through a budget balance sheet, and only then reaches a stadium.

More concretely, there are three points Vietnamese fans should watch.

The first is the international calendar. If the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea become unstable for a prolonged period, travel and insurance costs for teams moving within the region will rise. World Cup 2026 and Asian Cup qualifiers involving Gulf sides could be moved, or played at neutral venues — something that has already happened to several Asian teams on security grounds. I once sat in the technical area of a qualifier that was relocated exactly two days before kick-off. The atmosphere of a match thrown into disarray like that is entirely different from a normal one: sparser stands, players entering with a different mindset, and even the coaching staff preparing as if they were playing away from home.

The second is the flow of foreign players. The Saudi Pro League lives on oil money and on signing stars. If prolonged tension pushes up defence spending, pressure will reach the sports budget. Not immediately — signed contracts must still be honoured — but in the transfer windows that follow, people will see quieter deals, less famous names, and more young domestic players. For Asian football, that is both an opportunity and a challenge: an opportunity for young players to be given room to play, a challenge for those used to living off exporting football labour to the Gulf.

The third is the 2034 World Cup itself. FIFA awarded hosting rights to Saudi Arabia at its congress in December 2026. This is the largest sporting event ever granted to the region. An escalating regional conflict could force organisers to recalculate their security arrangements. Historically, no World Cup has ever been cancelled because of a regional war. But there have been World Cups that were boycotted, and matches that were moved. Those are precedents no organiser wants to mention, and no organiser is permitted to forget.

What outsiders often get wrong

There is a common reading I hear in football cafes: sport is sport, politics is politics, and the two should be kept apart.

The reality in the Gulf runs the other way. Football here is bought with state money, organised by state corporations, and used as a tool for positioning a country on the world map. A Saudi Pro League match can be a sporting event, but it is also a diplomatic product. When you watch Ronaldo take a free kick in Riyadh, you are also watching a national strategy on display.

The second misunderstanding is to think that if a geopolitical event has an effect, it will show up immediately. It does not. Its influence seeps in through each transfer window, each broadcasting contract, each fixture relocation. It is like a crack in the foundation: you do not see it standing on the pitch, but a decade later it decides the whole building.

A line I still keep in my notebook: There are things that never show on the scoreboard, yet they decide everything.

And there is one more thing I learned after years in this trade. In football, people tend to notice what is loud: a goal, a transfer, a controversial remark. But what truly shapes the landscape is usually silent. A meeting in Riyadh does not make the front page of a sports paper. A defence pact in Makkah has no highlight reel. Yet they are the foundation of everything that happens on the grass above.

A rhythm-keeper in Busan, looking towards the Gulf

I live in Busan, about seven hours by air from Riyadh. I have no private sources in defence meeting rooms. What I have is a habit of observing small things: a player training late, a coach standing still watching the pitch, a stand emptying as the home side loses. Those details taught me how to read larger shifts.

Busan is not the spotlight, but it taught me how to keep the rhythm. Working here, I realised that the biggest changes in Asian football never begin with a match. They begin with a decision taken away from the pitch — a meeting, an agreement, a flow of money.

I was in Kazan in June 2026, for the match in which South Korea beat Germany 2-0. I stood in the mixed zone when Kim Young-gwon scored in the 90+3rd minute. The stands erupted. But what I remember most is not the goal, but the coach's line afterwards: they won because the players trusted each other.

That trust does not appear by itself. It is built in training sessions, on trips, in the moments when a squad sits down together after a defeat. And it also needs a stable foundation — a foundation that, in many Asian football nations, lies beyond the control of the people who actually work in the game.

Where does Vietnamese football sit in this picture? In a small corner, but not entirely detached. Our clubs have played friendlies against Gulf sides. Vietnamese players have been invited for trials in the region. If Gulf money slows, part of the overseas opportunity for Southeast Asian players may shift — towards less glamour, but also less dependence on a single market. That may be unwelcome news for agents, yet it is a chance for regional football nations to reconsider their own development path.

Three things to keep watching

I always close a notebook piece with a few things to watch. This time is no different.

First, whether the urgent defence meeting between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan turns into an enforceable commitment or stops at a statement. That decides the level of regional tension, and indirectly decides the rhythm of everything else.

Second, the state of the Strait of Hormuz. If this shipping lane remains under threat, it is not only oil prices that rise, but the operating costs of the entire regional sports system.

Third, the international calendar of West Asian national teams over the coming months. If any match has to be relocated, that will be the first sign that instability has seeped onto the pitch.

Not every match has spectators. But every match has someone keeping the rhythm. Sometimes the rhythm-keeper is not a referee or a coach, but a meeting nobody streams live. And sometimes, the rhythm of a season is struck from a room thousands of kilometres from the stadium.

From Busan, I am still sitting there, taking notes, waiting to see where the next beat will come from.