FIFA President Gianni Infantino arrived in Paraguay on Thursday to participate in the Conmebol Congress, which could facilitate a possible definition in favor of Argentina for the organization of the U-20 World Cup. The Italian-Swiss leader was received by the head of Conmebol, Alejandro DomÃnguez, at the Luque headquarters and this Friday he will be part of the 76th Ordinary Congress of the governing body.
In a press conference that he gave this afternoon at the Conmebol headquarters together with the Paraguayan leader Alejandro DomÃnguez, Infantino confirmed that the AFA presented “all the guarantees” to organize the youth tournament. In this sense, Infantino highlighted the speed with which the president of the AFA, Claudio Chiqui Tapia, and the Argentine government authorities movedwhich facilitated the application.
According to what Infantino explained, heThe final decision will be announced in “two or three days”, since it must first go through the FIFA Council. The Bureau of the highest entity in world football is made up of 37 members: a president, elected by the FIFA Congress; eight vice presidents; and another 28 members chosen by the member federations. One of them is DomÃnguez himself, who has already advanced his position.
“As a member of the Bureau, Argentina already has my vote”, assured DomÃnguez, head of Conmebol, at the press conference held in the Paraguayan city of Luque.
Infantino traveled to Paraguay directly from Indonesia, where he met with the president of the local Federation to definitively cancel the organization of the U-20 World Cup in that country for political reasons. Because it is a Muslim country, Indonesia wanted Israel not to participate, something that FIFA did not accept and reacted by taking away the headquarters.
Faced with this situation, the AFA applied to host the tournament that it already organized in 2001, and the idea that Claudio Tapia could have a meeting with Infantino to discuss this issue. Peru also intends to host and the other option handled by FIFA is Qatar, which belongs to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) like Indonesia. The against for the Qataris is the time of the year of the tournament, since from May 20 to June 11, the scheduled date for the contest and ratified by FIFA despite the change of venue, temperatures a Doha are very high.
Argentina has two very important factors at this point in the calendar to become a venue. In addition to the football tradition, it has several stadiums ready to host the competition. And another important piece of information is that it could guarantee the presence of some very popular figures worldwide, such as Alejandro Garnacho (Manchester United), Nicolás Paz (Real Madrid), Máximo Perrone (Manchester City), MatÃas Soulé (Juventus) or Facundo Buonanotte (Brigthon), Otherwise, they would not be in the tournament because the Argentine National Team directed by Javier Mascherano did not get their ticket in the South American Championship played in Colombia in January.
Meanwhile, During Infantino’s stay in Paraguay, the South American leaders will also try to continue positioning the joint candidacy for the 2030 World Cup. The selected Argentine world champion came out to play the last friendly against Curaçao in Santiago del Estero with a shirt that promoted the joint organization of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
South America has strong competition as Spain, Portugal and Morocco officially launched their candidacy and the economic might of Saudi Arabia could also be added.