April 19 – Oceania have come out in favour of allowing the tripartite US, Canada and Mexico bid for co-hosting the 2026 World Cup to be speeded up.
The 11-nation Oceania confederation, which has never staged the event, is backing the move to scrap FIFA’s timeline under which, in theory, the hosts will not be announced until 2020.
CONCACAF plans to make its proposal to bend the rules at May’s FIFA Congress in order to have more time to plan for the tournament, which will feature 48 teams for the first time. It would ideally hope to be given the green light to prepare a technical report by March next year without any competition from rivals.
Oceania’s FIFA vice-president, David Chung, said “it makes sense on a rotational basis” for the 2026 edition to return to North America for the first time since the US hosted in 1994.
Chung added CONCACAF should have “an exclusive period of negotiation” with FIFA but critics say ditching a full, competitive bidding process would not go down well in terms of public perception given the vote for 2018 and 2022 that prompted the biggest corruption probe in FIFA history.
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