Montevideo, Aug 17 (EFE).- FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, has a responsibility to ensure the success of the joint bid by Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to host World Cup 2030, the head of the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) said Thursday in Montevideo, site of the first World Cup in 1930.
“We don’t think the centennial is just another World Cup,” Alejandro Dominguez said at a forum organized by Uruguayan newsweekly Busqueda, adding that FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, have a “very great responsibility.”
“Everybody understands that this World Cup (2030) needs to be celebrated in a different way,” he said.
The centenary tournament, Dominguez said, should be played “where everything was born, which was in Uruguay and Argentina.”
Speaking at the same event, Uruguay’s secretary of sport, Sebastian Bauza, said that Uruguayan officials have been working since 2010 to bring World Cup 2030 to South America.
South American soccer “is uniting around this idea” that “transcends” differences between governments, Uruguayan Football Association president Ignacio Alonso said.
“Under different modalities, at every moment, the idea was developing. In a more organized way in recent years we could establish this coordination among governments and federations for which Conmebol provided the fundamental impulse, the fundamental support,” he said.
The forum included a presentation about impending renovations to Montevideo’s Centenario stadium, the venue for the 1930 World Cup.
The plan calls for reducing the size of the pitch to accommodate an expansion of seating capacity to 72,000 while “very zealously” preserving the stadium’s architectural lines, Bauza said. EFE rmp/dr
