United States-led 2026 World Cup bid in jeopardy to Morocco's

METHODOLOGY

FIFA released its guide to the 2026 World Cup bidding process this week, which, on the surface at least, promises a democratic and transparent way of deciding who gets to host the first 48-team World Cup in the tournament’s history.

That is a welcome change. When choosing the hosts of previous World Cups, technical reports and the suitability of a country to actually host the tournament were thrown out the window when it came round to the Executive Committee’s vote, with Qatar, ranked as "high risk" in one of the technical report's categories, coming out on top for the 2022 World Cup.

The bidding for the 2026 World Cup is decided by a vote of all 211 FIFA member states.

UNITED BID FAVORITE, representing the U.S., Mexico and Canada

The new bidding process for the 2026 World Cup should be music to the ears of the United Bid Committee. The North American bid will score highly on most of the technical categories, with:

- great infrastructure and opportunities for FIFA to rake in commercial revenue,
- not to mention enough stadiums to probably host a 200-team tournament.

While the U.S. national team shocked the world on the pitch by managing to miss out on next year’s World Cup in what is probably the easiest confederation to qualify from, surely it won’t also miss out on a chance to host, along with Canada and Mexico, the 2026 World Cup.

MOROCCO, THE DISTANT OUTSIDER

Ahmed Ahmed, the Malagasy head of the African Football Confederation, has already pledged his support for Morocco’s bid, and it’s likely that a lot of African nations, which make up about a quarter of the total votes, and some Arabic-speaking nations may support Morocco.

It’s assumed that Europe will generally back the North American bid, but the continent has reason to back Morocco, as the short distance and similar time zones between Europe and Morocco make it more practical for European fans to enjoy the World Cup than they would if it were held on the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, it’s not the fans who vote, and soccer’s governing body often ignores their wishes. Either way, the voting will be much closer than the landslide victory some North Americans might expect.

Before the vote, each bid is assessed by the technical committee, but Morocco is unlikely to fall down here. It didn’t have any glaring problems in its 2010 World Cup bid, with decent stadiums, excellent infrastructure and a hotel sector described by FIFA as "first rate." If this were a 32-team World Cup then Morocco’s bid would have no problems at all, as shown by their 2010 bid. 48 teams is a big step up, but given Spain and Portugal’s proximity, teams could base themselves on the Iberian Peninsula, which European clubs often use for pre-season fitness camps due to the world-class facilities on offer.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has already said that Morocco is capable of hosting the competition, and they have hosted the Club World Cup, FIFA’s showcase club competition, twice before in 2013 and 2014.

THE BATTLE COULD BE CLOSE

Many Americans feel the U.S. deserves to host the World Cup in 2026 because they were "cheated" out of the 2022 World Cup, but there have also been allegations suggesting that Morocco was cheated out of the 2010 World Cup which went to South Africa, with claims that the Morocco bid actually got the most votes. Also, the USA has already hosted the World Cup, and Mexico has hosted it twice. Given FIFA’s remit to try and spread football to new regions of the world, a North African World Cup may have a lot of support from inside FIFA.

Morocco’s bid still has plenty of question marks over it, from the dismal human rights situation in Western Sahara, which is occupied by Morocco, to its widely criticized decision to pull out of hosting the African Cup of Nations in 2015 over fears of Ebola -- the competition was played that year in Equatorial Guinea instead. While Morocco looks capable of hosting a 32 team world cup, the tournament’s expansion might be a step too far for the nation. Morocco isn’t as wealthy as South Africa or Brazil, and its economy may struggle to digest the ever-increasing costs of hosting soccer's top tournament.

But despite these problems, FIFA politics is unpredictable, even if it does become more transparent. Although North America’s bid still looks the heavy favorite to win the rights to host the 2026 World Cup, while Morocco are in the running, the United Bid Committee can’t afford to be complacent.
 
Rood said:
this article is worth a read. I'll be surprised if Morocco win but I hope they do - both Mexico and USA have hosted in recent history and I prefer to see it go to new countries.

Why the US Could Lose Its 2026 World Cup Bid to Morocco
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2765861-why-the-us-could-lose-its-2026-world-cup-bid-to-morocco
Click to expand...
Good read.

It seems the US is being a bit hypocritical with it's bid. Most of the NFL stadiums are being built with taxpayers money and absolutely no investment from the people wanting the stadium. But, then FIFA comes along and says you need to provide this that and the other and all of a sudden it's a problem.

Honestly though, as far as being ready North America is already there. They have the stadiums and now they even have a culture to host. How much investment would be needed to get this to World Cup standard? Probably not much. The only problem would be the sheer amount of travel needed to go from one WC city to another. It takes 6 hours to go coast to coast in a jet.
 
Rafateria said:
By that statement you are virtually ruling out the whole of Asia (except China perhaps), Oceania and Africa ? That is an incredibly parochial attitude. How are you going to promote football in those continents if you keep the WC in Europe and The Americas ? Besides which Morocco has a fine footballing history, alongside which the USA's pales beside, and the whole nation is passionately football mad. It just doesn't happen to be a very large country. However if you want to look at how successful a football WC could be staged in an African country you have only to see the incredible Rugby & Football World Cups staged by South Africa.
Click to expand...
Not true, Japan can probably hold a WC tomorrow and make it work
 
baskinginthesun said:
Good read.

It seems the US is being a bit hypocritical with it's bid. Most of the NFL stadiums are being built with taxpayers money and absolutely no investment from the people wanting the stadium. But, then FIFA comes along and says you need to provide this that and the other and all of a sudden it's a problem.

Honestly though, as far as being ready North America is already there. They have the stadiums and now they even have a culture to host. How much investment would be needed to get this to World Cup standard? Probably not much. The only problem would be the sheer amount of travel needed to go from one WC city to another. It takes 6 hours to go coast to coast in a jet.
Click to expand...
im pretty sure they will just simply do some sort of region play. Not like they will schedule a team to go from NE USA to SW Mexico back to North Canada or something. Makes a lot more sense than a country who doesn't even have the stadiums spending like 15 billion or whatever it was going to be for Morocco to try and host this larger than normal WC. With region play teams will prob take like a 1-3 hour jet to their games, which will prob be in some fancy ass jet that is nicer than some of our houses haha.
 
48 team WC, basically only a handful of countries can host them without cohosting.

England, Spain, Germany, France, US, Japan, China.

Anyone else?
 
Cal? said:
48 team WC, basically only a handful of countries can host them without cohosting.

England, Spain, Germany, France, US, Japan, China.

Anyone else?
Click to expand...

Italy, they are pretty much like Spain. Then there is Russia and Turkey if you look at the numbers of category 4 stadiums.
 
Cal? said:
48 team WC, basically only a handful of countries can host them without cohosting.

England, Spain, Germany, France, US, Japan, China.

Anyone else?
Click to expand...

you actually dont need that many stadiums if things are planned differently - its just FIFA who force countries to build new unnecessary ones

For example in Rio they built that stadium in the jungle and in the end only 4 matches were even played there - I dont see why there cant be a match every couple of days at one stadium, each group could be based at one stadium rather than the current system where teams and fans have to move around for every match
 
Rood said:
you actually dont need that many stadiums if things are planned differently - its just FIFA who force countries to build new unnecessary ones

For example in Rio they built that stadium in the jungle and in the end only 4 matches were even played there - I dont see why there cant be a match every couple of days at one stadium, each group could be based at one stadium rather than the current system where teams and fans have to move around for every match
Click to expand...
im guessing logistics play a huge role in that. The more you condense games, the more you put a strain on surrounding infrastructure. Fans will be travelling to and from games, as well as support staff such as security, vendors, workers at stadiums, etc. The more you condense the schedule and have huge groups moving to and from areas, the more likely things can go wrong.
 
I just don't understand where Morocco would get the supposed $16bn required to host it. I know they're pretty well off by African standards but that's still 15% of their nominal GDP for feck sake!
 
Last edited:
Massive Spanner said:
I just don't understand where Morocco would get the supposed £16bn required to host it. I know they're pretty well off by African standards but that's still 15% of their nominal GDP for feck sake!
Click to expand...

16bn! FIFA needs to relax the stadia criteria or else the World Cup will be limited to about 10 first world countries or continue down the F1 route of going to authoritarian oil rich states.
 
FerociousCorgis said:
im guessing logistics play a huge role in that. The more you condense games, the more you put a strain on surrounding infrastructure. Fans will be travelling to and from games, as well as support staff such as security, vendors, workers at stadiums, etc. The more you condense the schedule and have huge groups moving to and from areas, the more likely things can go wrong.
Click to expand...

Maybe - although I actually went out to Morocco for the 2014 FIFA Club World Cup and they had matches played in the same stadium on consecutive days, granted it is does not attract the numbers of fans that a WC would but still

Massive Spanner said:
I just don't understand where Morocco would get the supposed $16bn required to host it. I know they're pretty well off by African standards but that's still 15% of their nominal GDP for feck sake!
Click to expand...

Ive seen it mentioned in articles but where does this €16bn figure come from? it cant possibly be as high as that
 
Rood said:
Maybe - although I actually went out to Morocco for the 2014 FIFA Club World Cup and they had matches played in the same stadium on consecutive days, granted it is does not attract the numbers of fans that a WC would but still



Ive seen it mentioned in articles but where does this €16bn figure come from? it cant possibly be as high as that
Click to expand...
well it's a 48 team world cup so you're talking about building 10+ stadiums, at least (not sure how many Morocco have that can be used yet). FIFA also have a lot of rules around infrastructure, accomodation for fans, transport etc.

Still, I don't know where it came from really, it cost South Africa about $3bn didn't it?
 
Massive Spanner said:
well it's a 48 team world cup so you're talking about building 10+ stadiums, at least (not sure how many Morocco have that can be used yet). FIFA also have a lot of rules around infrastructure, accomodation for fans, transport etc.

Still, I don't know where it came from really, it cost South Africa about $3bn didn't it?
Click to expand...

did a quick search and saw estimates that Russia will spend €12bn for this WC so perhaps it is not so crazy

However I think these kind of estimates include things like upgrading airports, improving public transport, building hotels etc - much of which would probably happen whether a WC was awarded or not.
 
JPRouve said:
Italy, they are pretty much like Spain. Then there is Russia and Turkey if you look at the numbers of category 4 stadiums.
Click to expand...
I get the impression that a lot of stadiums in Italy need upgrading.
 
Rood said:
you actually dont need that many stadiums if things are planned differently - its just FIFA who force countries to build new unnecessary ones

For example in Rio they built that stadium in the jungle and in the end only 4 matches were even played there - I dont see why there cant be a match every couple of days at one stadium, each group could be based at one stadium rather than the current system where teams and fans have to move around for every match
Click to expand...
The problem with using the same stadiums over and over again is that you end up with an even bigger concentration of travelers in the same cities, whilst the likes of Tokyo and London have the infrastructure to handle that, not many cities around the world can
 

As expected France is backing and lobbying in Europe for Morocco.
 
The United States and Mexico to co host would make for one of the best World Cups in recent times I reckon.
 
wow shocking that corruption and bribery might come in to play. Cut the trump crap we are having the world cup in two countries that make our leader look like a damn saint. Putin is ten times worse and freaking qatar is killing people making stadiums (not even counting their downright lies during the bidding process. Hows that no winter tournament and state of the art air conditioned stadiums working out?) The world cup is going to be expanding and the joint bid of north america makes much more sense than some small african nation that would have to spend upwards of 15 billion dollars to create everything or get stuff up to snuff. As for safety guessing Morocco isn't having anything being built next to Western Sahara.

Anybody who has a vendetta against the US can take their pick on what excuse they use to vote for the clearly inferior bid. US led bid has every possible box ticked. Morocco has pretty much none. Not our fault that bribery screwed over morocco when south africa won their bid. Also not our fault that the DOJ busted up the illegal ring of crap that fifa was knee deep in. Won't be surprised when Morocco gets the bid over the US. Maybe 2030 can have the world cup Suriname or somewhere and just continue the excellent choices of world cup hosts. Screw it lets just knock the lying and deception off and just have an ebay style auction bidding and see who can bid the highest amount and go from there.
 
Mexico could have had a chance if they bid alone. Heard great thing about the old WC. Combine with the US under Trump is asking for trouble.
 
Is the format and all already decided for 48 nation world cup? and surely, many of the matches will function as qualifiers but just named differently, no?

If there are too many matches to be held, then US is no brainer. In case Morocco happen to win the bid over US, imagine Trumps' wrath on Morocco/FIFA :wenger:
 
ti vu said:
Mexico could have had a chance if they bid alone. Heard great thing about the old WC. Combine with the US under Trump is asking for trouble.
Click to expand...

Can't tell if you're really that stupid.

We were screwed out of it by QATAR, glad someone is finally having the balls to stop making us get fleeced by other nations.

I'm just pissed Canada and Mexico are in the bid. Canada has no desire for football and Mexico is literally the most dangerous country in the world right now. There are travel advisories against going there. Spring breakers are turning up dead on beaches.
 
Flytan said:
Can't tell if you're really that stupid.

We were screwed out of it by QATAR, glad someone is finally having the balls to stop making us get fleeced by other nations.

I'm just pissed Canada and Mexico are in the bid. Canada has no desire for football and Mexico is literally the most dangerous country in the world right now. There are travel advisories against going there. Spring breakers are turning up dead on beaches.
Click to expand...
Common sense. Mexican gangs ain't happy with Trump and target Americans. Without common sense even the next town is dangerous. How about Chicago? Last World Cup was hosted at Brazil which more often than not top homicide chart every year, yet it's not bad.

This WC is years away so thing can change. One important thing: Trump.
 
Captain Obvious said:
Eh, the US gave us Trump who has slandered everyone thats not a white christian american male.

Hope they don't get it. It's a shithole. Can they not just give it to Canada and Mexico?
Click to expand...

Sweeping statement is sweeping.

Also: Shithole?

Some of the most beautiful countryside in the world.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.