UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin is confident that the 2030 World Cup will be jointly organized by Spain and Portugal.
The two countries signed an agreement in 2020 to bid for the arrangement together, and officially announced their intention in June this year. “This tender is destined to win, and we will do everything we can to help both countries that are passionate about our sport and have good infrastructure.” – announced the Slovenian sports director in a video conference on Monday in Lisbon.
FIFA will decide the location of the 2030 World Cup in May 2024. According to the application of Southwest European countries, 12 cities will host the 48-team event, and Spain will provide 14 stadiums for Portugal and three stadiums to host the matches.
Spain hosted the World Cup in 1982, and then applied jointly with Portugal to participate in the 2018 tournament, which Russia eventually won. The Portuguese have never hosted the World Cup finals, but in 2004 they did host the European Championship. Earlier, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay announced that they would submit a joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup, 100 years after Uruguay hosted the first World Cup in football history in 1930. The four football associations in the United Kingdom also considered a joint bid with Ireland, But this idea was eventually rejected, just as the joint request of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Romania also fell through.
The official ball of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar (Photo: EPA/Mohamed Ali Abdel Wahed/FIFA)In 2018, Morocco announced that it was applying to host the 2030 World Cup, and newspapers later wrote that this candidacy could also be joint, namely with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. According to media reports, China will also bid for the 2030 event. Qatar will host the World Cup this year, which kicks off on November 21, and in 2026 it will be hosted by Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Cover Photo:
Aleksander Ceferin, President of UEFA. Environmental Protection Agency/Jean-Christophe Bot
