The governing body of world football sent a letter to the ANFP explaining the decision not to use the Viña del Mar venue for the global tournament. From Quilín they were working to add the seat of the Fifth Region, despite construction delays, but from Zurich they stuck to the fact that they only wanted four seats. Santiago, Valparaíso, Rancagua and Talca were chosen.
The holding of the Under-20 World Cup approaching with giant steps. Concretely, the competition that Chile will receive will take place between September 27 and October 19, 2025. In this context, the championship venues have already been confirmed. And the national federation suffered its first setback.
The original plan predicted that the cities that would host the competition would be Santiago, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Rancagua and Talca, as proposed by Quilín. However, this Monday, around noon, the FIFA sent a letter to Quilín with the determination to remove the Sausalito stadium from the list, according to information collected by El Deportivo. The reason? Non-compliance with the various tasks assigned in recent weeks. Despite Quilín’s attempts to retain the Fifth Region stronghold, Zurich clung to the idea of staging the World Cup at just four venues to avoid cumbersome logistics.
Thus, four of the places proposed by the ANFP were selected : Julio Martínez Prádanos National Stadium, Santiago de Chile; El Teniente Stadium, Rancagua; Fiscal Stadium, Talca; Elías Figueroa Brander Stadium in Valparaíso.
FIFA deadlines
At the beginning of October, Pablo Milad predicted that the decision, although the federation had already presented it to the cities, was in the hands of the body chaired by Gianni Infantino. “The shortlisted venues are subject to responses from the authorities regarding the requirements of FIFA, who are very concerned about the training grounds, there we need to invest, where it will be for our football, the rating is from 1 to 5 and in Some had 1, some had 3 and some had 4, but we have to invest, where FIFA will invest in our country because they want us to leave a legacy,” he said.
“There are three dates that need to be ratified within a year, we are working closely with FIFA, they have come to inspect the hotels and the grounds, experts have come. There we will take advantage of the training of all the cancheros in our country to improve quality. In Quilín the fields are magnificent, we installed automatic irrigation that did not exist, we changed the 186 meter deep well and we are doing something for Training Soccer, which is the José Sulantay complex,” added the president of Chilean football.
The strongholds chosen are some of those that Christian Schmölzer, director of men’s tournaments, and Roberto Grassi, head of youth tournaments at FIFA, met during their trip to Chile in April. On this occasion, they visited Arica, Iquique, La Serena, Coquimbo, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Santiago, Rancagua, Concepción and Temuco. We knew that the sub-districts would be between four and six and one of the priorities was that they had an airport nearby. This initially played against Talca, but the capital of the Maule region will host the World Cup.
For everything to culminate in the global competition, it will cost nearly 20 million dollars. This figure will be sent from Zurich to Quilín. Expenditures will be on infrastructure and other elements related to the event. In Argentina, spending on the U20 World Cup was around $30 million. As will happen in Chile, the edition organized in this trans-Andean country had four sub-sites. On this occasion it was La Plata, Mendoza, Santiago del Estero and San Juan.
In addition, the budget portfolio also contributes to this. The National Sports Institute plans around 15 billion for the improvement of the venues which will host the football event. However, the budget law allocated an additional $11 million for the organization of the event. In other words, the state’s contribution will amount to approximately $25 million.
The Under-20 World Cup is taking shape. Once the sub-sites have been defined, the next step is sporting: knowing who will compete and what the groups will be. Chile, as host country, already has its place assured. Despite this, he must participate, in a more testimonial way and to reach a competitive pace, in the South American Sub 20. So far, in addition to Red Sub 20, Cuba, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Mexico, Norway, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Panama and Ukraine have already qualified. There are 12 out of 24, so half remains to be defined.
Source: Latercera
I’m Scott Moore, a professional writer and journalist based in the US. I’ve been writing for various publications for over 8 years now, and have been working as an author at athletistic for the past five years. My work has been featured by some of the leading sports websites and magazines across Europe.
