By Andrew Warshaw
March 30 – Gianni Infantino’s insistence that the voting process to choose the 2026 World Cup hosts will be scrupulously fair and clean has come under grave scrutiny amid suspicions of underhand tactics by FIFA over the scoring system being used to assess the two contenders.
In a move viewed in some circles as a ploy to throw Morocco out of the race and hand the tournament to the North American favourites – understood to be Infantino’s preferred candidate – Insideworldfootball has learned that FIFA added previously undisclosed changes to the eligibility criteria in the final hours before the deadline for bid books to be handed over earlier this month.
Morocco say they knew nothing about the last-minute alterations, which they claim affect them far more than the heavyweight USA-Canada-Mexico bid and came as a complete surprise. The timing of the additional requirements makes them technically impossible to be met ahead of the all-important inspection visits by FIFA’s evaluation panel next month.
So angry were the Moroccans that federation president Fouzi Lekjaa wrote directly to Infantino, copied to members of the FIFA Council and the evaluation team, in protest at the apparent delaying tactics.
The correspondence, in French and seen by InsideWorldFootball, expresses Morocco’s “concerns about the equity and transparency of the bidding procedure.”
Lekjaa says his federation made requests to FIFA over several months to clarify the precise methodology of the Task Force’s scoring system in terms of what elements needed to be covered in the bid book.
“You will be aware that this information was of a nature that could affect some or all of the content of the bid book which was being put together by the FRMF,” he wrote.
“To my great surprise the scoring system was only finally transmitted to us on March 14” – 24 hours before Morocco handed in its dossier and 48 hours before the FIFA-imposed deadline.
Under the scoring system, which was publicly released this week and which FIFA is trumpeting as an important break with its corruption-plagued past, infrastructure, of which half relates to stadiums, accounts for 70% of the panel’s mark. The remaining 30% is based on projected costs and revenues.
In a scoring system of 0 to 5 – where 0 means is ”no requirements met/very weak” and 5 is ”requirements exceeded/excellent” – a bid must average a total of 2, or ”minimum requirements met/sufficient,” to be approved ahead of the vote on June 13 in Moscow
In addition, bids must score at least 2 for individual aspects of stadiums, teams and referee facilities, plus accommodation and transport links. Failure to score 2 from the task force means a bid ”has been evaluated as `high risk’ and represents a material failure,” according to FIFA, whereupon ”FIFA shall terminate this Bidding Registration.”
Critical for Morocco to stand any chance of upsetting the odds is actually making it as far as getting on the ballot paper in Moscow. To do that, they and United 2026 must be scored highly enough, then formally cleared to proceed by the FIFA Council three days before the vote.
Hence why the Moroccans are furious at the raft of newly-imposed conditions they claim were not part of the original bid requirements ratified by the FIFA Council last October.
Among the new demands is a guarantee that host cities must have a population of at least 250,000; minimum airport capacity of 60 million passengers a year; increased size of fan fests; and a maximum 90-minute distance between airport and host city. Conversely it is also understood that FIFA have watered down the need for government guarantees, something the Moroccans believed would be a pre-requisite and which could play into the hands of United 2026.
“In effect, the scoring system adds several new technical criteria which were not part of the original regulations,” writes Lekjaa. “These elements were never conveyed to the FRMF (Moroccan FA) during the preparation of the bid book.”
Such comments will only serve to question whether the workings of the Task Force will be as transparent as Infantino would have us believe. When FIFA published the bid books earlier this week, Infantino boasted: “I challenge anyone to point out an organization that conducts a bidding process as fair, objective and transparent as the one that FIFA is carrying out for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.”
Yet there is considerable scepticism about the make-up of the evaluation panel that will grade and score the bids. None of its members are independent, most of them FIFA officials who were either appointed or approved by Infantino himself, a scenario not lost on the Moroccan bid team which, it is understood, is calling for an urgent meeting to clarify the rules.
In his letter to Infantino, Lekjaa, who will be at the forefront of the bid’s intensive lobbying campaign over the next few weeks, requests the FIFA president to personally respect the statutes and suspend the scoring system “in order to guarantee a just and transparent procedure.”
“The FRMF cannot accept that FIFA can introduce substantial differences … at such a critical late stage in the proceedings,” he concludes.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714107772labto1714107772ofdlr1714107772owedi1714107772sni@w1714107772ahsra1714107772w.wer1714107772dna1714107772