The final of the 2026 Men’s World Cup, which will bring together 48 teams for the first time and will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, will take place in New York on July 19.
The announcement was made by FIFA on Sunday.
The opening ceremony and match will take place at Mexico City’s historic Azteca Stadium on June 11.
“The fan experience is going to be incredible,” promised FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, author, in a beige hooded jacket and white sneakers, of the announcement during a televised ceremony from Miami. Italo-Switzerland hopes for “6 million supporters” and “6 billion viewers” for a tournament more impressive than ever.
The format of the competition has been expanded to 48 teams, compared to 32 since 1998, for a total of 104 matches distributed between 16 stadiums already revealed in 2022: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Boston , Philadelphia, Miami and New York in the United States; Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey in Mexico; Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.
MetLife Stadium, host of the New York Jets and Giants American football teams, located precisely in East Rutherford in New Jersey (west of Manhattan), was therefore preferred to Dallas and Los Angeles, other cities considered to host the final.
Halves in Dallas and Atlanta
The Azteca, the beating heart of Mexican football enthusiasts, will be the first stadium in history to have the honors of opening the competition for the third time, after 1970 and 1986, editions which ended respectively in the same venue. , to the coronations of Pelé’s Brazil and Maradona’s Argentina.
The semi-finals of the next World Cup will take place in Dallas and Atlanta, FIFA revealed during its ceremony in the presence of guests from all walks of life: comedian and actor Kevin Hart, Canadian rapper Drake, the star Kim Kardashian, or the former Brazilian world champion Cafu.
Canada will play its first match in Toronto on June 12 and the United States in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium the same day, before playing its second match in Seattle.
The match for third place will take place in Miami, where FIFA has set up offices and where superstar Lionel Messi has been performing at Inter Miami since last year. The Argentine, aged 36, winner of the previous edition in Qatar in December 2022, has not closed the door to a presence in 2026.
In the meantime, Messi is already expected at the Copa America, played this year in the United States from June 20 to July 16, a sort of “pre-World Cup” for the host country two years before the big event.
The 48 teams competing in 2026 will be divided into twelve groups of four. The first two in each group as well as the eight best third-placed teams will advance to the round of 16, extending the knockout phase by one step, which until now started at the round of 16.
This next World Cup must be one of all commercial records for FIFA, while the windfall from the men’s tournament represents the bulk of the income which it then redistributes to its 211 member federations.
ats, afp
2024-02-04 22:01:58
#final #York #tournament #Mexico
