A big tournament, three continents, six countries and 48 teams. The colossal and transnational structure devised by FIFA to organize the World Cup in 2030 is unprecedented and has generated a multitude of unknowns, among which how the hell is a pie of such large dimensions distributed.
The starting point, which will have to be ratified in an extraordinary assembly in December 2024, is as follows: Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, a nation that hosted the first World Cup in history in 1930 and will have the opportunity, therefore, to commemorate the centenary, they will host the first three matches with their respective selections. Once these matches have been played, the competition will move entirely to the countries that defended the winning bid, that is to say, Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
If logic is applied, an element of little use by FIFA in recent times, it must be said everything, the distribution of the three most important matches will not differ from the following: the final for Madrid as the capital of the organizing country, is in say, at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, and semi-finals for Lisbon (Portugal) and Casablanca (Morocco) as an equitable solution.
Where is Barcelona in this equation? Apparently marginalized if it weren't for the Catalan Football Federation's interest in proposing a plan. It would consist of considering the three previous CONMEBOL matches in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as an appendix to the World Cup compatible, therefore, with the celebration of a first match in Barcelona, the new Camp Nou in this case, turned into a second welcome party, a kind of second opening match.
With the aim of not generating acclimatization problems for the footballers who play the three initial matches on the American continent, with temperatures and time zones different from European and North African ones, it is planned that these matches will take place with enough time compared to the restart of the competition in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. This margin would give meaning to this second inaugural meeting in Barcelona.
The Catalan Federation, with a lot of weight on the Spanish Federation which is now in a period of transition until new elections, intends to get two headquarters for Barcelona, the one mentioned for a Spotify Camp Nou then already remodeled and a another for Cornellà, in Espanyol's usual stadium. In the absence of specifying the distribution, this distribution of seats is foreseen: nine for Spain (two places for Madrid, two for Barcelona, two for the Basque Country; one for Seville, one for Valencia and one very contested for Murcia or Zaragoza, Galicia would be left out); three for Portugal (two for Lisbon and one for Porto), and four for Morocco (including Casablanca and Rabat). The negotiations between now and the final approval of the World Cup at the end of 2024 will be constant, will involve political agents and may motivate quite a few modifications to the final map.
Barcelona was already the setting for the opening ceremony at the 1982 World Cup in Spain. The Camp Nou hosted that event as well as the semi-final between Italy and Poland. For its part, the Sarrià stadium hosted a legendary second phase that included matches between Argentina, Italy and Brazil.
