Brazil lift the 2002 World Cup which was in South Korea and Japan.
It takes true chutzpah to launch a World Cup hosting bid while fighting an existential war against a nuke-waving despot. But we already knew that Volodomir Zelensky has balls the size of Crimea, as do many of his compatriots.
By joining the Spain/Portugal bid to host the tournament in 2030, Ukraine is again flexing its defiant imagination. It is telling the world: “We will be here in 2030, intact and unbowed. We will be a free people at peace. And we will have a party.” And that is a vision to be applauded.
But it’s hard to applaud the current vogue for multi country World Cup hosting plans. These days, three or more countries usually team up on a bid, because a 48-team tournament is too big to be viable for one country. This only adds to the general sense that the magic of football is being diminished by the people who govern it.
Yes, the 2002 Japan / Korea World Cup collab worked well enough. For one thing, it had a poetic subtext – a former imperial occupier and now-mighty colony in a sporting embrace across the Sea of Japan.
But there is an absurd disjointedness to the new wave of joint bids. A World Cup hosted by Greece, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? What? If Greece and Egypt were to be co-host, that could just about hang together as a concept: two cradles of civilisation playing keepy-uppy over the Med. But roping in the Saudis to foot the bill is just embarrassing.
Then we have another 2030 joint bid by Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile. Why not throw in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia for good measure? They must be feeling very left out.
Poor old Morocco are the only solo bidders for 2030 at this point – doggedly trying for the sixth time to finally host a World Cup. But they don’t have the stadiums required, so in due course they will have to rope in Tunisia and Algeria as partners, or alternatively Egypt.
All this sprawl serves only to dilute the intensity and focus of the World Cup as a spectacle – a spectacle that has already been diluted by its trip to an overcapitalised sandpit in this year’s edition. When the US, Mexico and Canada host the 2026 edition, the sheer continental scale of the tournament will thin the mundial spirit to trace levels. If I do manage to swing a trip to the tournament I will simply park off in Mexico City and nurture the fantasy that I am attending the Mexico World Cup.
Yes, I understand the economic logic of sharing costs: as we South Africans discovered in 2010 World Cup, Fifa‘s demands for stadiums and infrastructure standards are almost Satanically expensive, while the developmental and reputational rewards are intangible at best and can be almost instantly squandered with a spasm of bad politics. We are now blessed with some of the fanciest and emptiest white-elephant stadiums known to humanity.
The real problem, of course, is Fifa’s scheduling demands – particularly the new ones, which will be obscenely supersized as of 2026. Sixteen stadiums scattered across North America will host 48 teams in 16 groups of three countries each, with a new first knockout round of 32 jammed into the schedule. The motive for all this bloatage is mafia-style Fifa politics: president Gianni Infantino is rewarding all his made guys – the member association presidents – for their votes and loyalty. The expanded format is a bit like Oprah Winfrey announcing “Everybody gets a car!” to her studio audience.
The cultural identity of the host country – in the singular – was essential to the great World Cups of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I fell in love with football during Italia 1990, the first tournament to be screened live in South Africa.
The setting of Italia 1990 was as intoxicating as the action: marmalade afternoon light and deep green shadow drenching the pitches in grand old stadiums with beautiful names in the heart of ancient cities. And the whole bloody point of the thing was that the world’s gaze was fixed on one country – not on a hemisphere or a landmass.
Maybe, just maybe, if Fifa stopped or even reversed its mindless pursuit of quantity over quality, allowing smaller and fewer stadiums, then Ukraine could one day host the tournament on its own. But if they really had to co-host, they might do so with a newly democratic Russia, liberated from Vladimir Putin. And that would be a joint bid with poetry on its side.
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