U.S. to Bid for FIFA World Club Championship
The United States will make a formal bid to stage the third FIFA World Club Championship in 2003.
The news was revealed, almost by accident, on Monday during a light-hearted exchange between Julio Grondona and Alan Rothenberg at Futbol de Primera’s soccer symposium in Beverly Hills.
Grondona, FIFA’s senior vice president, was commenting on the increasingly comfortable relationship between world soccer’s governing body and soccer leaders in the U.S.
“If for any reason FIFA has a problem with any of its championships, I can get on the phone with Alan and we know the U.S. could step in [and take over any tournament],” Grondona said.
Rothenberg, the power behind the hugely successful 1994 World Cup and 1999 Women’s World Cup, leaped at the opportunity.
“Good, we’d like the World Club Championship in 2003,” he said, reaching across the table to shake hands with Grondona, president of the Argentine soccer federation for the past 21 years.
The deal won’t be that easy to accomplish, but the U.S. is making it clear it wants to host the newest of FIFA’s world championships.
The first edition was held in Mexico in 1999, and the second is scheduled for next July 30-Aug. 12 in Spain. Two Major League Soccer teams, the Galaxy and Washington D.C. United, have the chance to qualify in January.
Rothenberg, former president of U.S. Soccer and founder of MLS, believes the tournament would be well received by American fans.
“We haven’t put the formal bid in yet,” he said, “but at FIFA’s Executive Committee meeting in Rome [two weeks ago], we told them to expect us to put a bid in.
“I think it would be great. Right now they’re keeping it to 12 [teams] but I hope they get it to 16. There was talk about that. There’ll be the usual tug-of-war with the big European clubs, obviously, but I think it would be terrific.
“Imagine how our big cities would respond to seeing [teams such as] Manchester United and Real Madrid and Bayern Munich [competing in the U.S. in meaningful tournament].”
No other candidates for 2003 have yet been announced, but the U.S. is likely to be a front-runner no matter which other countries decide to launch a bid.
The tournament is much smaller than the 32-team World Cup, and, if the U.S. is awarded the event, it likely would be confined to the East Coast, if only for the convenience of European television audiences.
“FIFA knows what we can do,” Rothenberg said. “We’re sort of like the default choice on any tournament. It’s kind of funny after all those years of us being just kind of out in the woods.”
