Ready to wear: (from left) Argentina’s Sports minister Matias Lammens, president of the Argentine Football Association Claudio Tapia and Economy minister and presidential candidate Sergio Massa holding jerseys with the year 2030. The first three matches of the centenary World Cup will be played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. — AFP
FOOTBALL’S World Cup will be staged in six countries on three continents in its centenary edition in 2030, an unexpected and complex alteration to its traditional format that was approved last Wednesday in a meeting of FIFA’s governing council.
In the unusual arrangement, three South American countries — Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay — each will host a single opening match on home soil and then join the rest of the field for the remainder of the tournament, which will take place in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
The six countries had initially joined forces regionally in separate bids for the hosting rights to the 100th anniversary World Cup, a globe-stopping, month-long football festival that produces billions of dollars in revenue for FIFA every four years.
The offer from the South American nations had long been considered an outsider, however, to the three-nation bid from Spain, Portugal and Morocco, which was officially declared the sole bidder for 2030 last Wednesday. But under the new arrangement to recognise the tournament’s centenary, each nation will get to take a turn as a host.
“In 2030, the FIFA World Cup will unite three continents and six countries, inviting the entire world to join in the celebration of the beautiful game, the centenary and the FIFA World Cup itself,” FIFA said in a statement after the meeting.
“The FIFA Council unanimously agreed that the sole candidacy will be the combined bid of Morocco, Portugal, and Spain, which will host the event in 2030 and qualify automatically.”
Then and now (below): An aerial view of the Centenario Stadium in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1930. Right: The view today. A centenary World Cup ceremony will be held at the stadium where it all began. — AP
In sharing the 2030 tournament among three continents, FIFA also significantly narrowed the field of nations eligible to bid for the 2034 event. That opened the door for Saudi Arabia, a nation that has made no secret of wanting to host, to win the rights when that host is selected next year.
The first World Cup was held in 1930 in Uruguay, when the championship was a compact, 13-team affair held over two-and-a-half weeks in a single city, the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. It has since grown to be one of the most valuable and most watched sporting events in the world, a financial juggernaut that FIFA project will produce record revenues of at least US$11bil (RM52bil) for its current four-year cycle, almost double what it earned in the last one.
The complexity and size of the World Cup has grown steadily in recent decades, with the next edition — in 2026 — expanded by 12 teams to 48 in total, making it the largest in history. That size, and FIFA’s exacting requirements for bidding countries and stadiums, mean that few nations are now capable of staging the event alone.
The 2026 tournament will take place mostly in the United States, but games also will be staged in Mexico and Canada — the first time the tournament will be played in three countries. The complexities of holding that event have yet to be worked out, and officials are still grappling with a wide range of complications, including visa-free travel for spectators and taxation.
Let there be lights: A view of the Conmebol headquarters decorated with lights announcing the 2030 World Cup in Luque, Paraguay, on Oct 5. — AFP
Speculation that FIFA was preparing to make a surprise announcement was tipped by the South American soccer head Alejandro Dominguez, a FIFA vice president, who took to social media as the meeting was taking place to post a video of himself dancing, suggesting in Spanish “something global is coming for all football fans.”
Dominguez then broke the news in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, before FIFA had a chance to make its announcement.
“We believed in big,” Dominguez wrote in Spanish. “The 2030 Centennial World Cup begins where it all began.”
Taking the tournament to all six countries allows FIFA and their president, Gianni Infantino, to avert some difficult political choices, and could allow Infantino to deliver the next tournament to a reliable ally. In FIFA’s statement announcing the plans for 2030, they said that only teams from Asia and Oceania could bid in 2034 — creating an opportunity for one of his closest backers, Saudi Arabia, to secure a tournament, and a global stage, that it covets. — NYT
