Former FIFA President Blatter Slams 2030 World Cup Hosting Decision as ’Absurd’

On Wednesday, FIFA announced that Morocco, Spain and Portugal are the host countries for the 2030 World Cup, while Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay will host the opening matches. A decision criticized by Sepp Blatter, 87. "It’s absurd to destroy the tournament in this way," he told the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick. The World Cup final "must be a compact event". According to the one who led FIFA from 1998 to 2015, "for historical reasons", the centenary edition "should have belonged exclusively to South America", the first edition of the event having taken place in 1930 in Uruguay. This is not the first time that Blatter has criticized the decisions of his successor. He had described the attribution of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar as a "mistake".

Before Blatter, the former head of the world football governing body tainted by FIFAgate at the end of 2015, environmental protection associations and experts in sports ecological transition have lambasted the choice to organize the 2030 World Cup on three continents (South America, Europe and Africa). "FIFA is taking the path of a more scattered competition than ever, when it had the opportunity to design for 2030, a decisive year for the climate, what could have been an ecological revolution in the format of international events," said Jérémie Suissa, general delegate of Notre affaire à tous, to L’Équipe.