The 2030 World Cup will be played in six countries. Most matches will be played in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, but the opening matches will take place in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. More teams than ever before, more matches than ever and the longest World Championship ever, about 40 days of competition. Everything seems to indicate that no World Cup has so far generated economic benefits. However, the 2030 World Cup aims to break all dimensions of sports shows. Meanwhile, the consequences of climate change and the need to turn towards a new economic model that does not need sustained growth are becoming increasingly apparent, which must turn its back on the myth of continued growth and redefine the sense of borders.

Is this gigantic World Cup in 2030 compatible with strategies to break the effects of climate change? The centenary of the first World Cup in Uruguay, 1930, will be celebrated in 2030. Was it not enough to celebrate the centenary? The institutional messages that institutions transmit to society are not only those that are disseminated through institutional campaigns, but are reflected in the policies and projects they promote on a daily basis, as well as in the nature of the indices used to measure the welfare of society (GDP, for example, includes activities that harm throughout the plundering of nature, i.e. does not foresee future adverse effects, shortages). It is up to the Administration in the future direction, in the vanguard, the existence of the former and not to promote the paradigms they will need from the past.

Oscar Longo Imatz, sociologist and worker of the Basque Youth Observatory