World Cup 2030: A global opportunity | Soccer | Sports

There is exceptional news that arrives in the middle of football days like Wednesdays and their Champions League matches, and that makes them go a little to the side. Maybe it’s also because we live in such a present world that we forget to look to the future to find paths and paths. Since that will come, we believe that we will attend to it when it arrives, when it generates issues, controversies and discussions, and that we will have time to attend to it.

It is also true that when they talk to you about a 2030 project everything sounds far away. And on top of that, you get more distance when that issue is the proposal for a soccer World Cup that should be held with six countries as venues, three on each side of the Atlantic, as if they were going to build a subway between both shores that would allow teams to travel, delegations and fans.

FIFA had just welcomed the 2022 World Cup in Qatar because being played in the small (geographically) country of my friend Fahad allowed football fans to watch up to three matches live each day and immerse themselves in the atmosphere of all the hobbies, sharing spaces. , illusions and shops without changing hotels, without taking a plane other than to get to and from your house, which results in rest for the players. A permanent home where you can leave your belongings and not have to put wheels on your suitcase to fly, travel, change mattresses and time zones.

Of course, FIFA has also had to understand that the World Cup party is always expensive for whoever organizes it and there is not always a Qatar to pay for it, although Saudi Arabia is already looming in 2034. That there are many federations that must be satisfied, that there are continents football fans who also deserve to experience the magic of football’s biggest event firsthand, and where geopolitics also plays a role, so organizing a World Cup in Europe, Africa and South America, with 48 teams, is a hat trick diplomatic.

I am not going to go into how a balanced competition can be developed in such conditions, at least until we know more about how the structure of the event is planned, although we can confirm that for the first time there will be six teams classified by organizers. But I would like us to be able to reflect together on this opportunity for our football and, possibly, for our country.

The ball and politics

I remember that that 1982 World Cup, with Naranjito and a door to modernity that opened for Spain after many dark years of dictatorship, was also an element of that Transition that should take us along the paths of full democracy. Once again, football and society united in what we so often deny, which is the connection between football and politics. The economy could be relaunched, stadiums and airports could be renovated, and tourism and hotels could be helped. Come on, the world of money was doing very well.

I wonder what common goals we could set for football in 2030, and I can think of a couple of them before we start scratching our heads over who is going to host it and why, and how those supposed football theaters are going to be distributed. the dreams that are the stadiums and their works.

The first of them would be to connect this football event that interests many but not all with that 2030 agenda for sustainable development adopted by the UN, and where we play issues that, yes, interest and concern us all. Well, almost everyone.

The second would be related to knowing, connecting, trusting our co-organizers so that at the end of this 2030 World Cup we have woven networks with Portugal and Morocco, with Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, that last and transcend the ball. And that we can talk about how this 2030 World Cup has marked a before and after in the relationships between all of them.

call me naive or simple, but there are days when I think that all that football is there to give us happiness and build better and better distributed worlds.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes in Facebook y Xclick here to receive our weekly newsletter.