Inside Editorial: FIFA sambas the 2027 World Cup all the way to Brazil - Foot & Soccer*.*
Inside Editorial: FIFA sambas the 2027 World Cup all the way to Brazil

Inside Editorial: FIFA sambas the 2027 World Cup all the way to Brazil

Brazil’s success in winning the vote to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup at the FIFA Congress in Bangkok last Friday will undoubtedly provide a stimulus to, until now, a generally unloved women’s game in the country.

The success over the Belgium-Netherlands-Germany (BNG) joint bid was significant – both for South American women’s football and in assessing where power currently lies in the murky world of football politics, and who is manipulating it.

FIFA seems a little reluctant to go to a competitive vote on pretty much anything these days. The biggest examples are the last two uncontested bids for the organisation of the 2030 and 2034 men’s World Cups, and the, to all intents and purposes, bid-less awards of five consecutive men’s U-17 World Cups to Qatar and five consecutive U-17 Women’s World Cups to Morocco.

The men’s World Cup 2030 has become the compromise of all compromises with the opening three matches taking place in South America, before a journey to the other side of the world for the rest of the tournament in Europe and North Africa. In terms of what a World Cup generally looks like, this one currently has the appearance of an all-round dog’s breakfast

That the BNG 2027 women’s bid even made it to the polls is perhaps a testament to their commitment to their very clear bid mission and a blind, if ultimately naïve, belief that they were competing on a level FIFA playing field.

When the bid evaluation reports were made public, the suspicion gently reverberated around Europe that the fix was in.

South Africa had dropped out of the bidding early while the USA decided, with three weeks to go, to pull out, instead saying it would bid for hosting 2031. The US decision was probably a smart one all-round, not least because the last time FIFA humiliated the US in a vote – the 2013 vote that awarded 2022 to Qatar – it led to the mother of all responses from the US Justice Department in 2015 that (for a while)…


Source link : https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2024/05/22/inside-editorial-fifa-sambas-2027-world-cup-way-brazil/

Author : Paul Nicholson

Publish date : 2024-05-22 14:52:09

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