By Paul Nicholson
July 7 – USA, Canada and Mexico have officially formed a United Bid Committee for their joint pitch to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. With the deadline for the submission of the formal bid to FIFA being 16 March 2018, the Bid Committee will begin discussion with potential host cities and stakeholders immediately.
John Kristick will be the Executive Director for the United Bid Committee for the three CONCACAF member federations, and will have Jim Brown as Managing Director, Technical Operations alongside him.
Kristick was managing director for the USA Bid Committee to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and previously working for more than 10 years in Europe leading sporots rights agency Prisma Sports before that business merged into Infront Sports & Media where he was executive director. Infront held FIFA broadcast and sponsorship rights at that time.
The 10-person bid board is understandably skewed heavily towards the US which is expected to host the bulk of the group games in an expanded 48-team World Cup, and likely all the knock-out rounds. Board chairman is US soccer federation president and FIFA Council Member Sunil Gulati, who is joined by fellow USSF board members Carlos Cordeiro, Donna Shalala, and Dan Flynn and MLS commissioner Don Garber.
Canada is represented on the board by Peter Montopoli, CSA president Steven Reed and Victor Montagliani, CONCACAF president and FIFA vice-president.
Mexico is represented by FA president Decio De Maria and Guillermo Cantu.
Kristick, Montopoli, Brown (Canada Bid Director) and Televisa vice president Yon De Luisa as Mexico Bid Director, will form a four-member executive reporting to the board.
The three nations have a powerful claim to hosting 2026 and are runaway favourites, though as the US found in 2022, the vagaries of FIFA politics can be an uncleared minefield, and the principle of rotation around confederations isn’t really a principle when it comes to the vote.
Peter Montopoli, general secretary of the Canadian Soccer Association, said of the bid timeline: “It’s everybody working together, all hands on deck, to make this happen for the united bid by March 16, there’s no doubt about it. Certainly there’s not the luxury of time.
“But in viewing these things, it’s not necessarily a bad thing as well because it gives everybody who wishes to be engaged the necessary momentum to get things done in an accelerated time frame. If the will is there, we believe it can get done.”
The three nations have hosted 13 FIFA World Cups combined (men’s, women and youth), which they point out is more than any other trio of geographically-connected nations. They also highlight that they set attendance records for five of those events. The World Cup was last hosted in the CONCACAF region in the US in 1994. Canada hosted the 2015 Womens World Cup.
“For my country today is a very important day,” said De Maria. “These three countries will be very happy to receive the rest of the world and to validate that football allows us to unite countries, that it is a celebration, and that we will receive all those who want to come to enjoy this great party. Offering the possibility for Mexico to organise a third World Cup is very special.”
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