Morocco was rewarded by FIFA on Friday with internet hosting rights for the following Membership World Cup in February, with an expanded 32-team version set to launch in 2025.
European champion Actual Madrid, South American champion Flamengo and Seattle Sounders, the primary CONCACAF Champions League winner from the US, will play within the conventional seven-team event from Feb. 1-11. After Morocco’s inspiring run to the World Cup semifinals in Qatar, the nation will now stage the following world soccer occasion in six weeks’ time, FIFA’s ruling council determined.
It is going to be one of many final seven-team editions for continental champions with an expanded, month-long event deliberate to begin in 2025.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino stated the supposed change was “making it actually like a World Cup.” In Morocco, Casablanca ought to stage video games with town set to offer two groups within the 10-day competitors, which options continental champions from every of the six confederations in world soccer.
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PremiumWydad received Africa’s Champions League final season and in addition the Moroccan league. The place FIFA reserves for the host nation’s home champion ought to revert to league runner-up Raja. Each groups are primarily based in Casablanca, the place the 67,000-seat Stade Mohammed V is the probably venue for among the eight Membership World Cup video games.
Morocco additionally hosted Membership World Cups in 2013 and 2014, which had been received by Bayern Munich and Actual Madrid, respectively Solely European and South American groups have received the Membership World Cup because it was revived within the present format in 2005. FIFA has lengthy needed to launch an expanded model with 24 or 32 groups in a event performed in June.
A deliberate inaugural version in 2021 in China was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although no event format had been agreed nor broadcasters or sponsors signed. A 2025 launch is now deliberate, Infantino stated, promising talks with soccer stakeholders after the ruling council permitted the precept Friday.
It could possibly be hosted in the US and function a check occasion for the 2026 World Cup, which is being hosted within the U.S., Canada and Mexico.