Spain and Portugal's position threatens the 2030 World Cup: what about Morocco? | Goal.com

Veröffentlicht am 31 Jul 2026 | Lesezeit: 3 Minuten

The 2030 World Cup, scheduled to be held in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, has entered a zone of uncertainty. The crisis between world football's governing body FIFA and European football's governing body UEFA has escalated over FIFA president Gianni Infantino's plan to create a new commercial company and sell a stake in it to private-sector investors.

Opposition to the project is growing across several continental confederations. Push ahead, the warnings go, and FIFA could threaten the future of the World Cup itself, whether the participation of national teams or the organisation of the tournament.

FIFA want to manage the commercial rights of their tournaments, the World Cup chief among them, through a subsidiary named FIFA Forward Enterprise. The company is valued at around 20 billion dollars, and the plan is to sell 20% of its shares to raise around 4.2 billion dollars, according to the figures the governing body is relying on.

Under the project, the funding allocated to each national association would rise from 8 million dollars during the 2023-2026 cycle to 20 million dollars in the 2027-2030 cycle. Each association could also obtain an additional 20 million dollars through the FIFA Fast Forward programme dedicated to strategic projects.

The money has done nothing to ease the objections. Several football bodies believe the project goes beyond simply boosting revenues and cuts to the heart of how the game and its tournaments are governed.

More than 10 times his salary: how much would Infantino earn if the World Cup privatisation project went ahead?

UEFA have taken a decisive stance, rejecting the proposal outright with the backing of all 55 national associations that make up its membership.

The UEFA statement read: "No national team affiliated with UEFA will take part in any tournament organised by FIFA as long as this proposal remains in place."

That position opens the door to an unprecedented crisis. Drag the dispute on without a settlement and you threaten the staging of the World Cup in its current form, because you cannot conceive of a tournament without the European national teams, an essential part of the competition on both the sporting and commercial fronts.

The next World Cup will not kick off before 2030, yet the current crisis already places it under pressure.

According to a report by the Spanish newspaper "El Español", Spain and Portugal belong to UEFA. Their commitment to the European governing body's position means that, should the crisis continue, they would not take part in FIFA tournaments, which would also be reflected in the hosting of the World Cup.

Should the project go ahead and win the approval of a majority of FIFA's member associations, staging the tournament in its planned form may be thrown into doubt. A World Cup without European national teams is hard to imagine, and their absence would directly hit the sporting and commercial value of the competition.

Morocco muddy the picture further. The third partner in hosting the 2030 tournament does not belong to the European governing body but to the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

Unlike UEFA, CAF have not announced an explicit rejection of the project. Instead they have confirmed they will hold an internal meeting during the coming week to study and evaluate the FIFA Forward Enterprise initiative before taking an official position.

Morocco, then, may find themselves in a different position from Spain and Portugal, should the African confederation end up backing the project or declining to oppose it. That could add fresh complications to the organisation of the tournament, particularly with the ongoing debate over some of the host stadiums and the identity of the country that will stage the final.

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