Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. The six countries that will host the final stage of the 2030 World Football Championship, let’s see how this extraordinary and revolutionary choice was reached.
48 teams, five time zones
“A wonderful message of peace, tolerance and inclusion.” This is how Gianni Infantino described the choice of the six federations of Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to organize the 2030 World Cup together. Declaration of hope and detente As such, it is a far cry from the growing protests in many quarters that currently appear destined to be the most chaotic and disjointed World Cup in history.
While it will be the first time a World Cup will be played on more than one continent, the only example of organizational sharing is in 2002, when South Korea and Japan decided to combine their bids. On the other hand, joint organizations have become an increasingly common standard not only in football. The ratio between residual costs, possible revenues and risks of dramatic failure is very high and therefore More and more countries are deciding to join forces In the nominations: The latest example concerns the next Football World Cup in 2026. It will be organized by the USA, Mexico and Canada.
2030 World Cup on 3 different continents
Of course, there is still a long way to go to organize a competition spread across three, and the risk, already highlighted by many enthusiasts, is that the result will not be equal. The aim of the 2030 World Cup is to have three opening matches in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, with the first match to be played in Montevideo. We celebrate the centenary of the Uruguay World Cup 1930. From there we will move between Morocco, Spain and Portugal, where the rest of the competition will take place. The first and obvious oddity is that there will be six teams from the right among the countries participating in the organization.
Another very specific element will be seasonality. In fact, although June and July are summer months in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, these months are winter months in the southern hemisphere. For this reason, You will encounter a surreal situationSix teams are forced to play matches thousands of kilometers away in freezing temperatures before flying halfway around the world in the middle of the hottest season of the year. All in a few days.
There is also the ethical climate issue, with the enormous impact such a change would have in terms of emissions and sustainability. However, an accusation was returned to the sender by FIFAIt speaks, frankly vaguely, of “implementing a robust sustainability strategy for the event, doing everything possible to maximize the experience of teams, fans and officials while minimizing impact on the environment.”
Will it still be a fans’ World Cup?
The most pressing question facing this massive World Cup project is: What do the fans think? How much of this new competition structure is geared towards fans, how much of it is an imagined version of the World Cup geared towards television use and consumption? It’s going to be a logistical nightmare for fans.even having to opt out of three South American matches that could not be reached between three countries and two continents.
The neutral feeling is that FIFA pays little attention to the efforts a fan must make to follow his team in two or three different countries. French coach Didier Deschamps also talked about this I’m not at all convinced by this turning point multinational, multicontinental, world cup.
“In addition to the fact that it is a trend for world tournaments to be held in more than one country, there is also a distinctive aspect here that three matches are played in South America,” Deschamps said at a recent press conference. “I don’t know which countries will be involved but that definitely means which countries will be participating South Americans will have an advantage and that the three teams, namely the three non-South American teams, would be at quite a disadvantage given that they would have to travel to and play the opening matches, but rather travel there and return to Spain, Morocco or Portugal”.
Deschamps concluded: “I don’t know who makes the decisions, but I won’t hide from you that I like everything better. Consistent on a sporting and ethical level: I don’t think there is much consistency in this project.”
