World Cup bid tension stepped up as FIFA seeks to refute Moroccan fear
KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- FIFA appears to be growing increasingly sensitive to a backlash over the evaluation criteria for the 2026 World Cup bids.
Morocco and a cohosting bid from the United States supported by Canada and Mexico are chasing the approval of the world federation’s congress in Moscow on June 13 on the eve of this year’s finals.
However the Moroccans’ greatest concern is that their proposals for the expanded 48-team tournament will be ruled out of court by an evaluation panel comprising five men who are all, effectively, FIFA internal appointees by president Gianni Infantino.
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Hence the Moroccans have complained loud and long – and to FIFA itself – in a parallel campaign which will, they hope, shame Infantino’s men into approving their bid potential. Morocco’s reasoning is that they would then stand a serious chance of amassing the 104 votes necessary for a simple majority.
FIFA has rejected Moroccan complaints over the evaluation ‘factor scoring’ system and apparently hasty and tardy timing of bid rules and regulations.
Justification
Not content with simple refutations, however, the world federation issued a lengthy attempt at self-justification.
It stated: “In order to avoid unsustainable bids the scoring system evaluates with objective criteria how meaningful and sustainable is the infrastructure presented in the bids.
“As a matter of principle, the basis of the preparation of a bid should not be the scoring system for the technical evaluation but rather the requirements which FIFA has provided to the bidders in 2017 through the bidding and hosting requirements.
“Contrary to what the Moroccan federation has implied, the hosting requirements, which were clearly set in the bidding registration and other bidding/hosting documents provided in 2017, have not changed.
“The scoring system merely provides a methodology for evaluating and documenting the extent to which the bids submitted fulfil those requirements in certain key areas.
‘Objective criteria’
“As explained many times, the bidding process for the 2026 FIFA World Cup has been designed to evaluate the bids against objective criteria and so avoid a return to the secret and subjective decisions of the past.”
Infantino has insisted that the process must be “bullet proof” but the Moroccans fear this is not the case.
There has been mixed news for them on the voting front: Algeria has confirmed it will throw its vote behind Morocco while Saudi Arabia has suggested it may come off the Arab fence in support of United 2026.
The Saudi stance is of particular interest given that an unpredictable issue in the sports politics debate is how much international political antipathy to US President Donald Trump may influence the vote.
Saudi sports authority chief Turki al-Sheikh, an advisor to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, spoke up after some weeks of uncertainty after hosting US Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro who is a co-chair of the United 2026 bid.
Turki tweeted: “I was pleased to meet with the president of the American football association and chairman of the joint bid for US, Canada, Mexico, a strong bid for hosting World Cup 2026.”
He stopped just short, however, of unequivocally committed the Saudi vote.
Previously he had implied before that the Moroccan government made a mistake when it chose not to side with Saudi Arabia in its diplomatic feud with Qatar.
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