And Canada and Mexico will host a total of 20 games, right? Or are there any changes?
From what I know, Canada and Mexico will host 10 games each and the rest will be held in US soil. That is quite less because in this new format where 48 teams will play, there will be a total of 100+ games. I mean, it should be maximized because they also have a large stadium to host some of the games and it will be a big help to the host cities to boost their businesses.
As far as I know, this 10-match figure was decided earlier, when FIFA was thinking about a 3 team per group format. But then they changed the format to 4-team groups and therefore the total number of matches almost doubled to 104. So I guess both Canada and Mexico will get more matches to be staged within their borders. But I have a question here. If USA is hosting more than 70% of the matches, then why Canada and Mexico are being allotted automatic qualification to the 2026 World Cup? They are not co-hosts. They are just subsidiary hosts.
I guess so because I'm sure that Canada and Mexico won't be sitting quietly while they are just being handed with 10 games each while the USA will be hosting the remaining games which gives them more profits to their economy and business establishments near the venues. It's quite unfair to think that USA will be hosting 84 games if that's indeed the case.
To answer that question, Canada and Mexico aren't subsidiary hosts. They're co-hosts of USA this coming 2026, hence why their national teams did automatically got the advantage of being qualified directly. These 3 countries won the bid together, just like what happened in 2002 World Cup where Japan and South Korea hosted it together.