CONMEBOL proposes 64-team for 2030 FIFA World Cup

The 2026 World Cup will have 48 teams competing for the trophy.

South American governing body CONMEBOL has formally proposed increasing the number of teams in the men’s 2030 FIFA World Cup.

Uruguay, Spain, Morocco, and Portugal will host the tournament, but the opening matches will be held in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay.

The FIFA 2026 World Cup will serve as the first competition with 48 teams, but CONMEBOL hopes to add more for 2030, the competition’s 100th anniversary.

“This will allow all countries to have the opportunity to live the world experience and so nobody on the planet is left out of the party,” said CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez at the body’s congress on Thursday.

“We are convinced that the centennial celebration will be unique because 100 years are celebrated only once.”

The Uruguayan Football Federation president, Ignacio Alonso, first “spontaneously raised” the proposal at a March meeting of the Fifa Council.

Speaking at Thursday’s Conmebol Congress, FIFA President Gianni Infantino emphasized the “exceptional milestone” that the FIFA 2030 World Cup would mark.

The expansion is criticized for undervaluing the qualification process. Earlier this month, UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin called the proposition a “bad idea”.

“This proposal was maybe even more surprising for me than you. I think it is a bad idea,” Ceferin said at a news conference.

For the first time, the FIFA 2030 World Cup will take place on three continents.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the inaugural World Cup event, opening games will take place in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay before the rest of the competition will be played in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, who are selected as the tournament’s hosts in 2024.

Uruguay, who won the competition’s first title in 1930, has now been named a co-host and will host one match of the FIFA 2030 World Cup.

It would be fascinating to see how the ultimate decision turns out, though, as they have already put the proposal and many other officials will have varying feelings about the proposal given how taxing the football schedule has been over the years.

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