{"id":495622,"date":"2025-09-24T03:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T07:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=495622"},"modified":"2025-09-24T03:30:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T07:30:43","slug":"infantino-meets-conmebol-leaders-to-discuss-64-team-world-cup-idea","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/infantino-meets-conmebol-leaders-to-discuss-64-team-world-cup-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Infantino meets CONMEBOL leaders to discuss 64-team World Cup idea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FIFA president Gianni Infantino sat down in New York on Tuesday with CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dom\u00ednguez and South American federation leaders to discuss the possibility of expanding the men\u2019s 2030 World Cup from 48 to 64 teams.<\/p>\n<p>The proposal, first raised by a Uruguayan delegate in March during a FIFA Council meeting, was formally presented to Infantino for the first time this week. Joining Dom\u00ednguez were the federation presidents of Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay\u2019s president Santiago Pena, and Uruguay\u2019s president Yamandu Orsi.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">NEWS: FIFA held discussions on Tuesday about expanding the men\u2019s World Cup to be a 64-team tournament in 2030 after receiving a formal pitch from a South American delegation.<\/p>\n<p>\u270d\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AdamCrafton_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@AdamCrafton_<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/gLmLnu3qt8\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/t.co\/gLmLnu3qt8<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/X3ZUe3CfUt\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/X3ZUe3CfUt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheAthleticFC\/status\/1970720611837378865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">September 24, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe believe in a historic 2030 World Cup!\u201d Dom\u00ednguez wrote afterwards on social media. \u201cThank you, President Gianni Infantino, for welcoming us and sharing this journey toward the centennial of football\u2019s greatest celebration. We want to call for unity, creativity, and believing big. Because when football is shared by everyone, the celebration is truly global.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The World Cup will expand from 32 to 48 teams in 2026, but a further jump to 64 would be unprecedented. It would create a 128-match tournament\u2014twice the size of the editions held between 1998 and 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The 2030 event is already the most ambitious in the tournament\u2019s history, with six co-hosts spanning three continents: Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Montevideo is scheduled to stage one symbolic match to mark the centenary of the first World Cup in 1930.<\/p>\n<p>Argentina FA president Claudio \u201cChiqui\u201d Tapia also hailed the talks. \u201cIt was truly a pleasure to have represented our country at this important meeting,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe are family and we have done our part to request this meeting so our dream can become reality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dom\u00ednguez has argued that the centennial edition must be unique. \u201cAs we get closer to the date, we must reiterate that this cannot be just another event, it cannot be just another World Cup. We believe this is a once-in-a-century opportunity to have the group stage matches played in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FIFA president Gianni Infantino sat down in New York on Tuesday with CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dom\u00ednguez and South American federation leaders to discuss [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":495623,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[26814,17367,17810,16724],"news_category":[14236,14235,16715],"gn_keywords":[26815,20983,21743,432],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"The World Cup in 2030 that will mark 100 years from the first tournament could feature record-breaking number of participants ","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/495622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/495622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495624,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/495622\/revisions\/495624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495622"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=495622"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=495622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}