MUNICH (GERMANY), Oct. 14 (dpa/EP) –
Former footballer Philipp Lahm, world champion with Germany in 2014 and director of the Euro 2024 Championship in Germany, has claimed that FIFA has neglected the environmental aspect by awarding the 2030 World Cup to six countries from three continents, including Spain.
FIFA announced last week that the tournament will take place in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, but that one match will also be played in each of the South American countries of Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, pending final approval by Congress. of FIFA.
The three matches are part of the celebrations of the centenary of the tournament, whose first World Cup was played in 1930 in Uruguay, precisely the team that lifted the trophy.
Teams and fans will have to travel enormous distances for these matches, and Lahm told the Münchner Merkur/tz newspaper this Saturday that he finds this “difficult” to understand, although he likes the idea of returning to Uruguay for the centenary. “We are trying to organize the greenest Euro Cup in history while FIFA neglects this aspect,” said the director of the Euro 2024 tournament in Germany.
In addition, he stated that travel will be reduced to a minimum in the Euro Cup and that he will not use a helicopter to see all the teams and visit the 10 venues, as the tournament organizer, Franz Beckenbauer, did at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. “Now “It doesn’t fit in today’s times to travel around the country by helicopter. Regardless of that, I am not a fan of helicopter flights,” he said.
Lahm added that the scattered 2030 edition will also make him miss “the idea of a football festival.” “We meet, we see each other and we show how we want to live together,” he said, ensuring that all this “will not be like that” in FIFA’s plans.