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The Aztec Stadium in Mexico City
Photo: ALFREDO ESTRELLA / AFP
A good five months before the start of the soccer World Cup in Qatar, the venues for the subsequent World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico have been determined.
The 2026 tournament will be the first with 48 participants.
The world association Fifa also took into account the SoFi Stadium south of Los Angeles, which opened just two years ago, in the award broadcast live on US television on Thursday (local time), although the playing field of the stadium, which costs around five billion US dollars, is too narrow and has been specially rebuilt must become.
A total of 16 cities will have World Cup games: Guadalajara, Mexico City with the Aztec Stadium, which can seat more than 80,000 spectators, and Monterrey in Mexico, Vancouver and Toronto in Canada and, in addition to Los Angeles, ten other cities in the USA.
Which cities will host the final and the opening game has not yet been decided.
»We will take our time with the decision.
We will select the best cities for this,” said Fifa President Gianni Infantino.
60 of the 80 games are to take place in the USA, including all games from the quarterfinals onwards.
Ten games each are planned in Canada and Mexico.
No return to the Rose Bowl
In the western United States, Levi's Stadium of the San Francisco 49ers and Lumen Field in Seattle are represented in addition to SoFi Stadium.
The Kansas City Chiefs' Arrowhead Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys' AT&T Stadium, the Atlanta Hawks' Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the Houston Texans' NRG Stadium are the host stadiums in the middle of the vast country.
To the east are Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and New York.
The Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, which was still the venue for the final between Brazil and Italy at the last World Cup in the USA in 1994, was just as empty of the remaining applicants as Edmonton in Canada, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Nashville and Orlando.
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