Demystifying | Why are 6 countries co-hosting the 2030 World Cup? The FA scandal did not prevent Spain from becoming the biggest winner
On Wednesday, local time, FIFA issued an announcement confirming that it "made key resolutions" on the hosting rights of the 2030 World Cup. The announcement pointed out that the 2030 World Cup is planned to be hosted by six countries on three continents: Spain, Portugal and Morocco to host most of the matches, and Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to host the first three matches as a commemoration of the centennial World Cup.
Morocco, Portugal and Spain (in alphabetical order) will host the 2030 World Cup, while Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay in South America will host the first three matches of the World Cup.
Behind the scenes behind this bidding war, according to the information that has been made public, the following characteristics can be seen:
Infantino attacked Eurocentrism as a European and in multiple European languages at the World Cup in Qatar, but he did not have any desire to truly stand on the opposite side of Europe, and his strong ability to steer flexibly showed his strong steering ability by happily posing with German government officials wearing rainbow armbands in the World Cup stands.
After the 2022 World Cup, handling the 2030 World Cup bid has become a top priority on Infantino's calendar. With Blatter's past experience, Infantino definitely does not want the World Cup bid to really complete the canvassing and voting procedures in accordance with the procedures, and in today's highly developed information, the probability of such a model being exposed to scandals is extremely high. Infantino wants to be a persuasive coordinator to get the bid finalized through consultations.
In June, the author published an article talking about Saudi Arabia's withdrawal from the 2030 bid (← click on the left link for details), which may be behind Infantino's promise to the 2034 World Cup. The 2030 World Cup plan, which is now surfacing, confirms my judgment.
Saudi Arabia was once interested in joining Egypt, Greece and other countries to bid, which could lead to a huge rift, diversion of most of the votes that Spain, Portugal and Morocco had been ironclad to get from Africa and UEFA, and then a canvassing scandal. So Saudi Arabia's dissuasion was Infantino's first major achievement, followed by finding a balance of interests for the 2030 World Cup.
From the perspective of economic strength and hardware facilities, South American countries such as Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay currently participating in the bid do not have the ability to host the World Cup. Argentina is even poor enough to repay the World Bank loan, and a new election could bring extremists to power. However, if the 2030 World Cup refuses to return to the "place where the dream began", it seems unjustifiable in terms of historical tradition, politics, etc., does too high standards mean that most poor countries are automatically blocked?
Poor countries do not have enough ability to run a competition, but it is not a problem to run a competition well, right? CONMEBOL is a long-term ticket holder for Infantino, and he does not emotionally want South American countries to feel excluded. So this "the first three games in the three South American countries" scheme is a clever solution to the thorny problem, and the South American countries themselves are not sure that they can eat the next 48-team World Cup.
Among the three countries, Uruguay is the first host country and the first World Cup champion in the history of the World Cup; Argentina is Infantino's iron buddy, and this year temporarily took over the World Junior Championships originally scheduled to be held in Indonesia; The same is true of Paraguay, whose long-held Yugoslav Football Federation was a key supporter of Gianni Invantino's initial election as FIFA president.
Morocco's participation in the Spanish-Portuguese bid occurred after Ukraine withdrew from the Spanish-Portuguese joint invitation, and Ukraine had no intention of doing anything else in the war. Inviting Morocco is an important creative move for Spain and Portugal, which has never succeeded in its bid many times, but has brought the support of many African countries to Spain and Portugal. At the same time, it also solved a real problem for Infantino: the World Cup was held on a rotational basis, and Morocco came to take the lead, so that poor Africa would already be rotated. In fact, according to the information disclosed by the current media, between the three countries of Spain, Portugal and Morocco, there will be a big difference in the distribution of competition venues, with Spain accounting for the majority, then Portugal, and Morocco accounting for the small.
This is a bit like the World Cup hosting plan calculated and distributed by AI, including one for each of the three South American countries. In the future, this approach may be adopted by more regions and countries of the United States, rich and poor, but each has different tasks and responsibilities. And since Infantino himself has said that it is no longer realistic for a country to host the 48-team World Cup alone, many countries that were not able to host the 24-team or 32-team World Cup independently can now join the consortium to jointly host the World Cup.
Ten years later, visitors to Zurich to FIFA headquarters found that the museum was more important than the office, and FIFA was left with only the legal department – not a prophecy, but something that was quickly becoming a reality.
Infantino is a Swiss and descendant of Italian immigrants, who in many ways bore the Swiss obsession with the law, integrity and other issues. In recent years, he has been working on moving FIFA out of Switzerland, and it is already taking shape.
Not long ago, FIFA headquarters sent letters to hundreds of employees who would face dismissal if they did not accept to work in FIFA offices in other countries. Infantino did not say much about this beforehand, but he did a particularly solid job, such as the office in Paris, France, which was strongly supported by Macron.
In the future, FIFA's various departments will be scattered in offices in Zurich, Switzerland, Paris, Miami, Miami, Asia, Singapore and other places, and the central position of the Swiss headquarters will be completely diluted. It may be more of a legal department to be retained here, because FIFA's annual handling of various football lawsuits is the handling of various football lawsuits, and it must deal frequently with the International Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.
Hosting the World Cup across three continents also largely aligns with Infantino's idea of decentralization. This approach has something in common with the multinational and multi-city hosting of Euro 2020, on the one hand, it is conducive to avoiding one or two host countries making excessive and unreasonable investment for a competition, on the other hand, it is a symbol of peace and development, because the transnational and transcontinental holding of the competition must be based on information, smooth transportation, and peace across regions.
The 2026 World Cup will be held in North America, the 2030 World Cup will take care of South America, Europe, Africa, and the 2034 World Cup will be held in Asia and/or Oceania, which is very logical, but after reading the above analysis, you can understand: Saudi Arabia is in a very advantageous leading position, the only question is who Saudi Arabia will invite to bid together. Previous options such as Egypt and Greece must continue to be established, but Saudi Arabia can also find other companions.
If Saudi Arabia wants to host the World Cup in winter like Qatar, there is no doubt that Australia, New Zealand and other Oceanian countries can also be invited to co-host, unless these countries make their own consortium to bid, such as Australia and New Zealand also pull some other Pacific countries.
If Saudi Arabia has one competitor to worry about most, it will undoubtedly be China. Saudi Arabia hopes to use the 2034 World Cup as a window to show the country's innovation and transformation, on this topic, China can show too much content, not like Saudi Arabia's plan, but has already built, not only high-speed rail, highway network and other highly developed infrastructure, in the development and utilization of environmental protection energy, China is also at the world's leading level. At the same time, don't forget that Hong Kong, Macao and Taipei are also members of FIFA, so China can play a card that no one else has: a joint bid by multiple associations in the same country.
The Western Football Association scandal does not hinder hosting the World Cup, spending 1.4 billion to earn 10 billion!
The 2030 World Cup, spread across three continents and six countries, is about to arrive in seven years' time, and the biggest winner of these six countries will undoubtedly be Spain. As the main host country, most of the 104 World Cup matches in 2030 will be held in Spain. According to preliminary estimates from the Spanish government, hosting the World Cup will generate more than 10 billion euros in the country's economy.
At the Women's World Cup award ceremony in August this year, the then president of the Spanish Football Federation, Ruviales, kissed the female footballer Hermoso with an extremely inappropriate kiss, which caused unprecedented shocks within the Spanish Football Federation. With the intervention of FIFA and all parties, Ruviales was eventually pressured to resign, Pedro Rocha became acting president, and the rest of the football association's top management was also significantly changed. As soon as this matter came out, the outside world once put a question mark on whether Spain could successfully bid for the World Cup.
In fact, the process of Spain's bid for 2030 is still progressing in an orderly manner. Since September 16 this year, Rocha, the acting president of the Spanish Football Federation, has been consulting with the president of the Portuguese Football Federation, Fernando Gomes, and the president of the Moroccan Football Federation, Lecca, to discuss the bid, and the three parties have accelerated their talks in the past week. In response to concerns that the "Ruviales incident" may affect the bid, Victor Francx, president of Spain's High Sports Council, assured the media that the Spanish side respects all FIFA's decisions and reflects on the possible consequences of this incident to ensure that the process of Spain's bid for the 2030 World Cup will not be affected.
After the Spanish High Sports Council communicated with FIFA, Spain's acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (above, right) also took the opportunity to travel to New York to participate in the International Economic Forum and met with FIFA President Gianni Gianni Infantino, who also traveled to New York. After a series of meetings between Spanish dignitaries and FIFA, and conveyed Spain's confidence in trying to host the 2030 World Cup to Infantino, Spain was not affected by the "Ruviales incident" and won the World Cup with Portugal and Morocco.
"4 October 2023 is a historic moment for Spain and we will host the World Cup again after 48 years." The Spanish media used the above phrase when reporting this moment, and the Royal Spanish Football Federation issued a statement at the first time, guaranteeing that Spain will work with Portugal and Morocco to create the best World Cup in history in 2030. Franks, the hero behind the scenes, was cautious as he celebrated: "There is still very important work ahead of us, and we need to fulfill the requirements of FIFA. After years of tireless efforts, it is believed that Spain can meet the standards required by FIFA. "FIFA will verify the host country's hosting conditions at the December 2024 Congress.
The newspaper "As" wrote that the qualification for the 2030 World Cup is an exciting moment for all of Spain, and the humiliating scene after this year's Women's World Cup final did not make Spain lose the opportunity to show itself to the world. The article also said that while talking about football, of course, it is also necessary to talk about wealth, and Spain hosting the 2030 World Cup will bring considerable economic benefits. According to the Spanish government's preliminary forecasts, the 2030 World Cup will generate more than 5 billion euros in commercial revenue for Spain and more than 5 billion euros in tourism revenue, as well as more than 80,000 jobs. For Spain, where the economic downturn after the pandemic has been evident and the labor market has not been optimistic, this is undoubtedly a very considerable economic gain.
Due to the improvement of sports facilities in the country, the Spanish government expects that only 1.43 billion euros will be invested to host the World Cup, of which 750 million euros will be invested in infrastructure and another 680 million euros will be spent on the organization of events, which is much lower than the World Cup in Qatar, which invested more than $200 billion, and the World Cup in Brazil, which invested about $15 billion. At present, 15 stadiums in Spain have been submitted to FIFA for verification, in addition to the Bernabeu and Camp Nou, Atletico Madrid's home stadium Metropolitan, Athletic Bilbao's home stadium New San Mamés, and the Cartuja Stadium in Seville, which hosted Euro 2021, are all on the list of stadiums submitted for review.
The Spanish government also believes that in addition to the considerable economic benefits, since the World Cup will be held in different parts of the country, it can unite the inhabitants of different regions of Spain in the name of football, and also enhance Spain's image at the international level. Therefore, in terms of football, economy and promoting popular unity, Spain's hosting of the 2030 World Cup is a sure thing.
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