Market Desk (sports): Morocco will join with Spain and Portugal in race to host the tournament of 2030 FIFA WC. On March 14, King Mohammed VI made such an announcement. War-torn Ukraine is likely to drop out of bid as a result of the announcement.
Morocco committed to taking part in the 2030 bid more than 4 years ago, immediately after losing the vote for the 2026 tournament. It was in talks with the Iberian nations for a while but had never been officially included in the bid.
Last October, Spain and Portugal were joined in their longstanding European candidacy by Ukraine, which is not likely to remain in the bid.
Spain and Portugal jointly announced their bid to host the WC in 2021 before Ukraine announced its bid to host the WC last October.
The Iberian bid was challenged by a South American alliance consisting of Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia also expressed hope of hosting the WC with Greece and Egypt.
The WC has been jointly organized before. In 2002, the World Cup was jointly hosted by Japan and North Korea. The United States, Mexico and Canada are going to jointly host the 2026 WC, where among 11 out of 16 venues are in the US. According to the format announced by FIFA on Tuesday, the number of matches will be 104. However, the number of matches in the WC held in Qatar last year was 64.
However, Morocco also participated in the bid to host the 2026 WC. However, the country came second in the polls by a large margin. It was the fifth time that Morocco participated bid in 1994, 1998, 2006 and 2010.
