Mexico pledges support for U.S. World Cup bid
Mexican federation head Justino Campean and U.S. federation president Sunil Gulati.
The U.S.-Mexico rivalry is among soccer's fiercest. But on Friday night before the sold out Mexico-Ecuador friendly at the New Meadowlands Stadium, federation presidents Sunil Gulati and Justino Compean stood side by side on a number of issues.
At a press conference to announce Mexico’s support for the USA’s bid for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, the Mexican federation dropped its own candidature to join the rest of the CONCACAF region in support of the USA.
And with several media critics waiting for soccer to pronounce itself on the immigration controversy in Arizona, Gulati and Compean were unanimous in their assessment of the situation. The first question in the press conference asked Gulati whether he was considering removing Glendale, Arizona from the list of 18 potential sites in the World Cup bid.
“No,” Gulati said. “We’ve got 18 cities that are part of the bid process and it’s is a long way between now and 2018 or 2022. At this point I think it’d be premature to make any decisions given the fact that the law is being challenged in a number of ways both legally and obviously by public opinion.
“It’s obviously a very difficult issue for the governor and legislators,” he continued. “I think the balance that everyone involved in such issues tries to find between the law and human rights, civil rights and humanity is probably off the mark here in this particular piece of legislation and hopefully they’ll find a very different balance quickly.”
Compean was asked for the Mexican federation’s official position on the same Arizona issue and he echoed his counterpart’s comments.
“We’ve played there [in the past] and we’ve filled the stadium,” Compean said. “And in February [2011] we begin our tour and we will wait to see what happens. We could start in Arizona or we can eliminate it [as a tour stop]. Our support for our fellow Mexicans in Arizona is total and unconditional.”
Gulati announced that the USA Bid Committee had delivered 2000 pounds of documents to FIFA House featuring 175,000 contracted hotel rooms and agreements with stadiums, cities and government agencies.
The U.S. has delivered everything FIFA could imagine for a World Cup and its infrastructure and commercial potential is unsurpassed. Now it comes down to politics and winning or exchanging votes from the other confederations from now through December.
Asked to rate the USA’s chances from 1 to 10, Gulati and Compean went for an 11.
“I’m confident for the World Cup,” Gulati said. “If we didn’t think we could win, we wouldn’t have entered. We’re confident in our bid and confident that FIFA will make a great decision.”
That comes down in December.
