By Andrew Warshaw
May 29 – As tension mounts ahead of the eagerly awaited technical inspection report that will determine whether 2026 World Cup candidates Morocco can join the heavyweight North American bid on the ballot paper next month, both contenders have been summoned to FIFA for final talks with members of the evaluation team.
Whilst it is not clear exactly what questions will be put to the pair, publication of the Task Force’s verdict is imminent – possibly as early as Wednesday, possibly not until Monday.
For weeks, the Moroccan underdogs have been sweating over the report’s findings having consistently cried foul over a perceived bias towards the joint US-Canada-Mexico bid.
For the first time ever, bidding rules allow for the evaluation team to disqualify a candidate before the ballot even takes place. Whatever the Task Force recommends will almost certainly be approved by the FIFA Council in Moscow which meets three days before the all-important vote at the FIFA Congress.
Morocco’s bid team strongly believe that if they can overcome the crucial hurdle of being officially cleared to have met all the necessary criteria, they stand a fighting chance of upsetting the odds and being awarded hosting rights after four previous failures even though United 2026 are out in front when it comes to financial and infrastructural muscle.
The FIFA-appointed panel inspected both bidders’ facilities in April before Morocco, tellingly, was visited a second time by a back-up team of experts to clarify more details about its project, given that 2026 will be the first World Cup to comprise 48 teams.
With every vote crucial, Morocco’s campaign team have managed to secure what they might perceive as a partial moral victory following their request for four countries to be pulled from the ballot.
Morocco has complained that the US territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands should not retain a vote because of a conflict of interest since they are governed by the US.
The North American bid has strongly denied it has gained an unfair advantage and FIFA has been loath to take a stance one way or the other. But FIFA secretary-general Fatma Samoura has now reportedly contacted every single voting federation, setting a deadline of June 11 – two days before the vote – for them to declare any conflict of interest.
While Samoura’s letter does not single out any association, seasoned observers point to the timing of her intervention which came following a second submission by Morocco and is understood to have highlighted Clause 4.2 of the bidding regulations.
This provides expressly that: “In the event that a delegate of the FIFA Congress has a conflict of interest, such delegates shall not perform their duties in connection with, and the member association represented by such delegate shall decline to participate in, the voting process of the FIFA Congress for the decision to award the right for the hosting of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.”
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