The official announcement by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) of which countries would host the 2030 World Cup was not expected until December. Yet the suspense came to an end on Wednesday, October 4. For the first time, the competition will be played on three continents: Morocco, Spain and Portugal. And three first-round matches will also take place in South America.
The news came during a videoconference meeting between Fouzi Lekjaa, Pedro Rocha Junco and Fernando Soares Gomes da Silva, presidents of the Moroccan, Spanish and Portuguese federations, respectively. The meeting's purpose was to discuss their joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup until South America upended the original schedule.
Alejandro Dominguez, president of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), had just announced that the sub-continent would host three first-round matches. Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay had submitted a joint bid to host the 100th anniversary of the World Cup, the first edition having been held in Uruguay in 1930. The Argentine federation immediately confirmed the bid, followed a few minutes later by FIFA.
A 100th-anniversary ceremony will be held in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, and Argentina and Paraguay will each host a first-round match. "The presidents of the Spanish, Portuguese and Moroccan federations knew about it. It made sense to leave the announcement to South America," explained a Moroccan source.
But the real winners of this eventful day were Morocco, Spain and Portugal, as they will host 101 of the 104 matches in the final phase.
Morocco had already bid five times to host the tournament (1994, 1998, 2006, 2010 and 2026), but always on its own. During the FIFA Congress in Rwanda in March, it announced that it would be joining Portugal and Spain's bid, an initiative quickly supported by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). In 2019, there had already been talk of a joint Spain-Portugal-Morocco candidacy, but FIFA President Gianni Infantino had stated his opposition to the World Cup being held on two different continents.
In 2022, Spain and Portugal considered joining forces with Ukraine, attacked by Russia, but the project went no further than a simple statement of intent. The Spanish and Portuguese then reached out to Morocco to propose a tripartite bid. The first discussions took place at the highest political level in the three countries in the second half of 2022 since a bid to host a World Cup can only be authorized with the agreement of the governments concerned. King Mohammed VI was quick to approve the project.
The Spanish-Portuguese candidacy was helped by their countries' official relations with Morocco. After a ten-month standoff between June 2021 and April 2022, marked by a breakdown in diplomatic relations, relations between Spain and Morocco have warmed considerably, particularly in terms of trade, the fight against terrorism and illegal immigration, and the issue of Western Sahara, with Madrid aligning its positions with those of Rabat. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's recent visits to Morocco, where he met with his counterpart Aziz Akhannouch, helped push the tripartite bid forward.
The three countries, which are geographically close, politically stable and considered safe, also decided to join forces because of the quality of their respective infrastructures. They boast numerous FIFA-approved stadiums, functional training centers, extensive accommodation capacity, hospitals, freeways and several international airports – all criteria required by FIFA's specifications.
"Spain, Morocco and Portugal, which are great footballing countries and used to hosting international competitions, are very popular tourist destinations. They are well-equipped to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors. In short, there will be virtually nothing to build, just a few small projects here and there. This is a very solid candidacy," boasted a source close to the Moroccan federation.
The next meeting between the three federations is scheduled for the end of October and will focus in particular on the allocation of the 101 matches. Spain could host six groups in the first round, while Portugal and Morocco could host three each. The distribution of knockout matches should be more equitable. Morocco would like to host the opening match in the 93,000-seat stadium it plans to build near Casablanca, while Spain is targeting the final.
Morocco, which won the rights to organize the 2025 African Cup of Nations (CAN), will include five or six stadiums in its bid: In addition to its new stadium in Casablanca, Tangiers, Agadir, Rabat, Fez and Marrakech have been cited as possible venues.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.