BANGKOK, May 17 (Reuters) - Brazil has been announced by the FIFA General Assembly to host the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup, beating Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany to become the first South American country to host the tournament.
Brazil's bid to host the 10th World Cup was supported by the 119 member associations of the FIFA General Assembly, while the European bid received 78 votes. "We know we're going to celebrate the victory of women's football and women in South America, and you can be sure that we're going to have the best World Cup for women without any vanity." said the president of the Brazilian Football Federation, Edunardo Rodríguez.
The results of the FIFA technical assessment, released last week, showed that Brazil scored 4 out of 5 before Friday's vote, while the Belgian-Netherlands-German bid scored 3.7, with Brazil having a slight advantage before the vote.
Last month, the tournament was scaled back to two after the United States and Mexico canceled their joint bid to host the 2031 World Cup.
In his opening remarks at the conference, Infantino pledged to increase access to football around the world and sought to put an end to what he called a "futile debate" about the number of matches.
He said FIFA organizes about 1 per cent of club competitions, organizes 1 to 2 per cent of national team competitions, but is helping 70 per cent of its members, "without the resources provided by FIFA, there would be no football".
"I hope that these figures will show that we should stop this futile debate, which really makes no sense, and instead focus on what we need to do, which is to organize the best competitions and develop football around the world," he said. ”
The Assembly also listened to calls from Palestinians to suspend the Israeli Football Federation, accusing it of repeatedly violating FIFA regulations, including the Gaza conflict and the inclusion of teams located in the Palestinian territories in the Israeli league.
Infantino said the FIFA Council will immediately conduct a legal assessment of the allegations and convene an extraordinary congress at the end of July to resolve the issue. The Gaza offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians since a Hamas-led cross-border attack by gunmen killed more than 1,200 people on Oct. 7, according to Gaza health officials.
The president of the Palestinian Football Federation, Jibril Rajub, urged Congress to hold a vote to suspend all football activities of the Israeli Football Federation and to respect the Palestinian territories.
"FIFA cannot remain indifferent to these Palestinian violations or the ongoing genocide," he said. I ask you to be on the right side of history...... If not now, when? ”