KEEGAN: All the glamour and glitz at the 2034 World Cup in Saudi but no booze

Even before FIFA president Gianni Infantino confirmed it, they’d been planning for a World Cup in Saudi Arabia. The truth is that they had been doing so for some time.

As you read this, unimaginable sums are being spent in a land where money is no object.

In Dammam, close to the border with Bahrain, work has commenced on a stadium which will be finished in time for the 2027 Asian Cup and which will no doubt play a key role 11 years from now.

Significant upgrades are being carried out to another two stadiums in Riyadh and one in Jeddah. More will follow.

A vast, futuristic metro system for Riyadh, which is likely to be the main hub of the tournament, is also under construction. The cost? More than £18billion.

Over at Riyadh’s airport, a seen-to-be-believed extension is under way as part of a mega-project that will involve no fewer than six new runways built.

They are expecting 120 million passengers a year by 2030. To put it into context, that is close to twice the number who passed through Heathrow last year.

With 11 years to go, there is one thing you can say with certainty — Saudi will be ready.

This will be a glitzy, glamorous event with world-leading facilities backed by state-of-the-art infrastructure. However, there are questions which need to be answered. It remains to be seen whether fans will be allowed to drink alcohol in stadiums.

In Qatar, infamously, a late U-turn by organisers ensured that would not be the case. However, booze was readily available — albeit at an almighty cost — in many of the hotels around Doha.

Some even had sports-themed bars in which punters could sink £10 pints of Heineken while watching World Cup matches.

It was a similar story on the cruise liners anchored off the Corniche which hosted many