World football’s governing body FIFA may take another decade to decide on the host of the 2030 finals, but the region’s football federation (AFF) are the second party to express an interest in hosting the soccer showpiece event, after Argentina and Uruguay stated an interest in lodging a joint bid.
AFF nations will form a committee aimed at promoting their bid, the details of which will include special lanes at regional airports to facilitate transport to games, Malaysian foreign minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman told Bernama news agency.
“It will be a unifying factor for the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) community if we could host the World Cup,” he said, after a foreign ministers meeting on Monday.
The proposal is likely to involve all 11 of the AFF’s member nations, which will raise logistical and financial questions.
“We thought if we made a joint bid, if we share facilities, then it’s a bearable cost,” Singapore foreign minister George Yeo told Today newspaper.
“ASEAN, as a whole, will be a big country like Brazil or the United States and if they can host it so can we.”
The 2014 finals are set to be staged in Brazil, followed by Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
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