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Thursday March 28, 2024

United States, Mexico and Canada win race to host 2026 World Cup

By AFP
June 14, 2018

MOSCOW: The United States, Mexico and Canada will host the 2026 World Cup after a clear victory over underdogs Morocco in a vote by FIFA member nations on Wednesday.

The joint North American bid received 134 of the 203 votes, while Morocco polled 65 in the ballot at a FIFA Congress held in Moscow on the eve of the 2018 World Cup.It means global football’s showpiece event will return to the North American continent for the first time since 1994 when the United States hosted the tournament.

Bid leader Carlos Cordeiro said his team was “humbled by the trust our colleagues in the FIFA family have put in our bid”.He said the tournament had an opportunity to put football “on a new and sustainable path for generations to come.”

It will be the first World Cup to be expanded to 48 teams, posing an enormous logistical challenge for the hosts, one of the issues that is thought to have undermined the Moroccan bid.FIFA President Gianni Infantino was believed to have strongly backed North America behind the scenes because the trio of countries involved supported him in 2016 when he took over after the corruption-tainted reign of Sepp Blatter.

Delegates had been faced with a clear choice in the 2026 vote.The joint North American bid boasted modern, established stadiums and well-developed transport links underpinned by Mexican football fervour.

Morocco, on the other hand, promised a “European” World Cup in Africa, playing on its proximity to Europe and an appeal to take the tournament back to the African continent for just the second time.

But compared to North America, Morocco’s bid existed largely on paper — many stadiums and roads would have had to have been built and critics questioned how it would have coped with an expanded tournament.

FIFA inspectors classified the north African nation’s stadiums, accommodation and transport as “high risk”, awarding it just 2.7 out of five in an evaluation report, with concerns raised over several critical aspects.

They warned “the amount of new infrastructure required for the Morocco 2026 bid to become reality cannot be overstated”.The report made the US-Canada-Mexico bid the clear favourite after rating it four out of five, and Morocco was not able to bridge the gap.

The 1994 World Cup in the United States set an attendance record that still stands, with nearly 3.6 million spectators for only 52 matches.That suggests that North American bid leaders’ promises to deliver a record $11 billion profit for the 2026 tournament are feasible.The decision will be a shot in the arm for football in the US, after the national team failed to qualify for 2018 in a huge setback for the game there.