May 8 – Brazil’s bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup was given a small boost, perhaps a surprising one, after being ranked slightly higher than the rival joint European bid submitted by Germany, Netherlands and Belgium (BNG) in FIFA’s technical report.
The Brazilians, who have been noticeable by their lobbying absence with international federations, achieved a ranking score of 395 out of 500, against the BNG bid of 373. For FIFA’s report the Brazilian bid was rounded up to 4.0 against the BNG’s rounding down to 3.7 – in reality the gap is even closer than FIFA’s spin would have you believe.
In the overview to the report, the bid inspectors say: “Taking all aspects into consideration, both bids have clearly demonstrated the capacity to successfully host the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027.”
In what will be an open vote on the hosting by the FIFA membership at their Congress in Bangkok on May 17, the FIFA bid inspectors said that both “the Bid Evaluation Task Force has determined that both bids qualify for consideration by the FIFA Council and the FIFA Congress, due to both having exceeded the minimum hosting requirements in the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027 technical evaluation.”
The report was compiled by a three-person evaluation team led by FIFA’s chief women’s officer Sarai Bareman after extensive inspection visits by officials to the only two applicants earlier this year.
Although it will have no binding impact on the 211 Fifa members, it is a major pointer as to FIFA’s own preference.
Last week, Mexico and the United States withdrew from the race to concentrate their efforts on hosting the 2031 tournament where they are expected to face competition from China, Morocco, South Africa and potentially England and Spain.
FIFA said staging the tournament in Latin America would have “a tremendous impact on women’s football in the region.”
However, the report highlighted the BNG bid’s “compact tournament footprint” with “short distances between the proposed venues”, while Brazil would require air travel between host cities “which is carbon intensive”.
Although the report admits the BNG application “presents a sound all-round bid” the stadiums proposed “have relatively smaller capacities”.
In a traffic light system of marking the respective bids, the only red flag for either was for the legal contractual framework in the BNG bid. The report explained that “a number of material changes were made to the hosting documentation, which would result in a more complex legal framework as the point of departure for planning the tournament if the bid were successful.”
It went on to say that “such deficiencies potentially expose FIFA to significant risks, including increased cost obligations, significant dilution of its rights (including the stadium authorities’ liability capped to the stadium rental fee) and a loss of operational control.”
No South American nation has ever previously staged the women’s World Cup though Brazil has successfully hosted the 1950 and 2014 men’s tournament.
Europe last staged the Women’s World Cup in 2019 but triple hosting would be unprecedented. Before the 2023 tournament, shared by Australia and New Zealand, the women’s tournament had never before even been co-hosted.
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