The Royal Spanish Football Federation announced this Thursday The fifteen stadiums that choose to host the 2030 World Cup in the event that FIFA grants Spain and Portugal, the so-called Iberian candidacy, its organization, a decision that will be adopted at the congress to be held in May 2024. “It is the most important country project that Spain can address in the next few years”, underlined Luis Rubiales, president of the RFEF, during a meeting with representatives of the autonomous communities, town halls and clubs wishing to host matches of this World Cup An appointment which, according to Cope and confirmed by ABC, no member of the Generalitat of Catalonia attended, the only regional executive absent from the meeting held in Las Rozas.
If the Iberian bid was the one designated by FIFA to organize the 2030 World Cup, only eleven of the fifteen stadiums announced yesterday would host matches because Spain would only have eleven enclosures, while Portugal would have three: Da Luz and José Alvalade, in Lisbon. , and O Dragao, in Porto. Although the Federation has not communicated the date on which the eleven finalists will be decided, everything indicates that it will be in December, after the World Cup in Qatar.
Camp Nou and Stade RCDE passed the first Federation Cup yesterday. However, the absence of representatives of the Generalitat at the meeting called by Rubiales is a trip towards the aspiration that the stadiums of Barcelona and Espanyol (in the municipality of Cornellà) can finally become World Cup venues. As with the choice of the Olympic Games, when designating stadiums for a World Cup, institutional support is an important factor. Although there were no official statements from the clubs, this newspaper confirmed the unease caused by the lack of support from the executive chaired by Pere Aragonès during yesterday’s meeting.
It should be remembered that on March 26, the national team, which had not visited Catalonia since 2004, had a mass bath in a friendly match played against Albania in Cornellà, a match in which Catalan supporters turned to Spain, filling the stands.
Madrid is the only city that aspires to have two stadiums to host the 2030 World Cup. The others are Malaga, Bilbao, La Coruña, Gijón, Las Palmas, Murcia, Vigo, Zaragoza, Valencia, San Sebastian and Seville. In the case of the Andalusian capital, neither the Benito Villamarín (Betis) nor the Sánchez Pizjuán (Seville) choose to be the place, but La Cartuja.
rival candidacy
The proposal that rivals the Iberian bid is South America shared by Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile, although Rubiales yesterday claimed they were ‘cautious, but optimistic’ about the final election by FIFA of the winning bid. In this sense, he highlighted the work carried out so that Spain and Portugal are the only European candidacy that attends this definitive electoral process. “Since 2019, the appropriate measures have been taken, silently, but correctly. We have the support of UEFA. Great Britain and Ireland had a very strong bid, but they chose to host the European Championship. Ceferin wanted a single candidacy at UEFA that will have the support of all 55 federations,” said the maximum representative of the Federation.