Hosting World Cup matches in 2030 would be “the dream of people who survived the horrors of war”, Ukrainian soccer federation president Andriy Pavelko has said after his country launched a joint bid with Spain and Portugal amid the invasion and occupation by Russia. The leaders of the three soccer federations joined together at the Uefa headquarters on Wednesday to present a campaign they hope will connect people beyond the world of sports.
“This is the dream of millions of Ukrainian fans,” Pavelko said in translated comments at a news conference, “the dream of people who survived the horrors of war or are still in the occupied territories and over whom the Ukrainian flag will surely fly soon.” Pavelko said the project is backed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It aims to bring the World Cup back to Europe 12 years after Russia hosted the event in 2018. The expected Spain-Portugal bid, which has been in the works for more than three years, previously was made Uefa’s preferred candidate. Fifa’s 211 member-nations will vote on the host in 2024.
“Now it’s not the Iberian bid, it’s the European bid,” Spain soccer federation president Luis Rubiales said at the launch. “Together we represent the power of transformation football has in society.”
No details were given about how many games at the 48-team World Cup would be staged in Ukraine or in which cities. The 70,000-seat Olympic Stadium in Kyiv hosted the finals of the 2012 European Championship and the 2018 Champions League. The European bid is facing a South American candidacy with co-hosts Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, which wants to mark the centenary of hosting the inaugural 1930 World Cup. Saudi Arabia, which has built close ties to Fifa and its president, Gianni Infantino, has been preparing to anchor a bid potentially including Egypt and Greece.
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin had a front-row seat for part of the launch though he left before the end and no Uefa official formally took part or took questions. Rubiales, who, like his Portuguese counterpart Fernando Gomes, is a Uefa vice-president, said soccer officials in Spain had recent talks with the national government and royal family as part of the process toward teaming with Ukraine. Pavelko said he believed since the first days of the war in February that soccer could help unite the world with Ukraine, which co-hosted Euro 2012 with neighboring Poland. That event had just 16teams playing in four cities in each country, while the 2030 World Cup will have 48 teams likely needing about 15 venues.
