Morocco wants to celebrate the 2030 World Cup final with the advantage of the largest stadium in the world | Sports

Morocco has decided to prepare in a big way to host the 2030 Soccer World Cup, which it co-organizes with Spain and Portugal. Last week, an official body awarded the design of the Casablanca Grand Stadium, with capacity for 115,000 spectators, to the American architecture firm Populous, responsible for the project of the new Wembley in London (90,000 seats). With a planned budget of 460 million euros, the football facility also hopes to be the largest in the world, above the future Bernabéu (80,000 seats) and Camp Nou (105,000), and even the Primero de Mayo mega stadium (114,000) in Pyonyang, the North Korean capital. As anticipated in October by the president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, Fouzi Lekjaa, the new Casablanca coliseum will reinforce the aspirations of the Maghreb country to host the 2030 final.

Portugal has voluntarily withdrawn from the race for the final World Cup match. The Luz stadium in Lisbon, home of Benfica, with 65,000 seats, is the largest in the country. They are followed by Sporting, also in the capital, and Porto, both with 50,000. None of them will be expanded to accommodate at least 80,000 seats – the capacity required by FIFA to host a final – as announced by the coordinator of the tripartite bid. the Portuguese António Laranjo. In this way, the fight over the designation of the venue in which the World Cup will be held, which FIFA will not decide for two years, is limited to Morocco and Spain, where the Santiago Bernabéu has faced competition.

The Populous team has teamed up with the French-Moroccan architectural firm Oulalous and Choi to design the new stadium, located on a 100-hectare plot of land in El Mansuria, 38 kilometers north of Casablanca, in the large coastal urban agglomeration that connects with Rabat. The National Agency for Public Facilities (ANEP) has selected its project, which evokes the traditional Moroccan tents, against proposals presented by studios such as Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners or the Spanish Cruz y Ortiz, which designed the Metropolitan stadium. Its creators say they were inspired by the spirit of traditional celebrations and social gatherings known as musin, where tents are erected in the middle of nature.

Its construction is scheduled to be completed in 2028. For now, neither the model nor the plans for the future Casablanca Grand Stadium are yet known. One of its designers, the Moroccan architect Tarik Oualalou, has advanced that the project aims to “embody modernity with the tradition of Moroccan hospitality.” The new sports facility, which will have athletics tracks, an indoor swimming pool, a shopping center and a hotel, will be home to Casablanca’s two big teams: Raja and Wydad.

The project is part of the stadium construction and renovation plan for the 2030 World Cup, with a budget of 1.3 billion euros and which affects six other stadiums – in Tangier, Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir, Marrakech and Fez –, which They will also host the 2025 African Cup. After having tried alone for three decades on five occasions without success (1994, 1998, 2006, 2010 and 2026), Morocco will finally organize a World Cup with Spain and Portugal.

The president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, Fouzi Lekjaa, on the 19th in Oeiras (Portugal). JOSE SENA GOULAO (EFE)

Lekjaa, president of the Federation – as well as Minister of Budgets and head of the national committee for the 2030 World Cup – has rushed to make moves to host the final match. “We hope to experience an extraordinary final that honors the continent and the young generations in a stadium in Casablanca that will be extraordinary and wonderful,” he assured, to express a will shared by the entire population.

Morocco seems to have taken the opportunity to get the ball rolling for the designation of the venue for the final. Meanwhile, the Royal Spanish Football Federation, which has always targeted the Madrid stadium as the venue for the World Cup final, is still waiting to elect a new president, mired in the mess of Civil Guard records at its headquarters due to alleged irregularities in contracts on the celebration of the Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia and for works on the La Cartuja stadium in Seville. The investigations have also extended to the Granada home of the former president of the federation, Luis Rubiales.

Passionate about football, Moroccans vibrated in 2022 with the victories in the Qatar World Cup of Los Leones del Atlas, as the red-green national team is popularly known. Their players reached the semi-finals there for the first time, after precisely defeating their current bidding partners – Spain, in the round of 16, in the penalty shootout, and Portugal (1-0), in the quarter-finals – and setting a precedent for Arab and African football.

After having fallen in the round of 16 in the last African Cup, held at the beginning of the year in Ivory Coast, the Moroccan team is being reinforced with quality players such as Madrid player Brahim Díaz, who has been received in Rabat in recent days as a ball superstar. Qualified to be fielded as a second-generation native of Morocco, Díaz has already made his debut in friendly matches with the Atlas Lions after allegedly feeling relegated in La Roja, whose shirt he has worn in all categories.

Morocco began to modernize its large sports facilities in 2022 to organize the Club World Cup, a competition it had already hosted in 2013 and 2015. It also aspires to host the 2029 edition of the Mundialito in a new format of 32 teams. The experience accumulated in international competitions has driven the stadium renovation and construction program.

The global cost of organizing the 2030 World Cup has been estimated at around €5 billion by the Société Générale de Maroc bank. This Moroccan budget, of which half will be borne by the State, amounts to slightly less than a third of the total amount of the joint candidacy with Portugal and Spain. In parallel, the Maghreb country accelerates the development of its infrastructure within the framework of the so-called Vision 2030. It includes the completion of the only high-speed train line in Africa, from Tangier to Marrakech, passing through Rabat and Casablanca; the expansion of the motorway network, particularly those around the new Grand Stadium, and the expansion of international airports.

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2024-03-27 04:15:00
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