The Ladies’s World Cup will happen in South America for the primary time after Brazil was chosen to host the 2027 version at a FIFA congress Friday marked by debate concerning the onslaught in Gaza.
After the success of Australia and New Zealand in 2023, which earned a document $570 million in business income, FIFA selected to proceed its push to broaden girls’s soccer to new continents.
Delegates assembly in Bangkok voted by 119 votes to 78 to ship the tenth Ladies’s World Cup to the land of samba soccer, which beat a joint bid from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
The choice sparked jubilant celebrations from the Brazilian bid crew. Brazil, dwelling of girls’s soccer nice Marta, scored increased than its European rival in FIFA’s analysis report.
The FIFA inspectors famous the “large influence on girls’s soccer within the area” that South America internet hosting the Ladies’s World Cup would have.
Brazil’s bid consists of 10 stadiums used for the lads’s World Cup in 2014, with Rio de Janeiro’s well-known Maracana lined up for the opening match and last.
However work must be completed, particularly to the Amazonia stadium in Manaus which has stood nearly unused for a decade.
The Brazilian Soccer Confederation has additionally been in turmoil with authorized challenges to its president. Not like their male counterparts, who’ve received 5 World Cups, Brazil’s girls have by no means lifted the trophy and made a group-stage exit in 2023.
Final 12 months’s match defied fears that growing the scale from 24 to 32 groups would dilute the spectacle, with over 1.4m followers streaming by the turnstiles to witness a number of shocks, dramatic turnarounds and breakthrough outcomes.
Gone had been the lopsided scorelines that had been a characteristic of the earlier eight World Cups, reflecting a progress in the usual of girls’s soccer.
Seven groups notched their first World Cup wins and the USA and Germany, who between them had received six of the earlier eight tournaments, had been each dumped out early.
The one bitter notice got here within the aftermath of final 12 months’s last in Sydney, by which Spain beat England 1-0.
Spanish soccer federation chief Luis Rubiales sparked outrage when he forcibly kissed midfielder Jenni Hermoso throughout the medal ceremony, and now faces prosecution for sexual assault.
Gaza debate
The 74th FIFA congress, making its debut in Thailand, made its selection by open vote for the primary time because the organisation seeks to maneuver on from the corruption and shady dealing that dogged it previously.
Delegates had their selection simplified final month when the USA and Mexico withdrew their joint bid, deciding as an alternative to deal with making an attempt to win the precise to stage the 2031 version.
Because the Brazil match approaches, the main target will likely be on the large monetary disparity between males’s and girls’s soccer.
Prize cash for the 2023 Ladies’s World Cup was a document $110m, however nonetheless far in need of the $440m on provide to groups on the 2022 males’s finals in Qatar.
The congress additionally heard a name from the Palestinian FA (PFA) to droop Israel from the world physique and ban Israeli groups from FIFA occasions.
PFA head Jibril Rajoub mentioned the Israeli FA (IFA) had damaged FIFA guidelines, including:
“FIFA can’t afford to stay detached to those violations or to the continuing genocide in Palestine.” His Israeli counterpart Shino Moshe Zuares rejected the decision as “cynical, political and hostile”, insisting the IFA had not damaged any FIFA guidelines.
FIFA supremo Gianni Infantino mentioned the physique would take unbiased authorized recommendation on the matter and resolve by July 20 what motion to take, if any.
Statute modifications
The congress additionally accredited modifications to FIFA statutes, eradicating the rule fixing the organisation’s headquarters in Zurich, the place it has been since 1932.
The rule now says the placement of the HQ will likely be “decided by a choice handed by the congress” — opening the best way for it to maneuver from the Swiss metropolis.
Delegates additionally voted to multiply the variety of committees from seven to 35, reversing steps taken in 2016 to scrub up FIFA after it was rocked by a wave of corruption scandals.
The remits of the brand new committees embody girls’s soccer, the struggle in opposition to racism and eSports, however critics say they threat re-establishing a patronage system the reforms had sought to abolish.