The 2030 World Cup final will be held in Spain, Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president Rafael Louzan insisted on Saturday, dismissing any suggestion that the country could lose hosting rights for the showpiece match.
Spain is co-hosting the tournament with Portugal and Morocco, with FIFA expected to decide on the final venue in 2028.
Spain is pushing for Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu Stadium to host the final. Morocco, however, has proposed the 115,000-capacity Hassan II Stadium, currently under construction in Benslimane, near Casablanca. Portugal does not have a stadium considered suitable for the occasion.
“There is no other plan than for the final to be held in Spain,” Louzan told a conference at the RFEF’s Ciudad del Futbol headquarters on the outskirts of Madrid.
“I am not currently considering the possibility of withdrawing from Spain, as the prospect of Spain not hosting the final is not on the table,” he added.
Louzan was responding to comments by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of Spain’s right-wing People’s Party (PP).
In a television interview on November 5, Feijóo said that if he became prime minister following the November 29 general election, he would push for Spain to withdraw from hosting the tournament if Morocco were awarded the final.
Louzan dismissed the suggestion as entirely hypothetical.
“That notion simply doesn’t exist,” he said, adding that under FIFA’s tradition of rotating World Cup hosting rights, the final “belongs to the European continent”.
Louzan also revealed that a delegation of FIFA technical experts had spent the previous week inspecting Spanish stadiums seeking to host matches during the tournament.
AFP
