TheCable

The United States, Mexico and Canada have announced a joint bid to host the 2026 World Cup.

The announcement was made on the floor of the One World Trade Center in New York on Monday.

If the ambitious three-nation bid is successful, it will be the first time a World Cup will be hosted by multiple countries since the 2002 tournament in South Korea and Japan.

The proposal would be for the USA to host 60 matches, while Canada and Mexico will host 10 games each.

The bid also comes at a time when the relationship between Mexico and the United States has become strained, with the US president, Donald Trump, vowing to build a wall on the Mexican border.

“We have the full support of the United States government in this project,” said the US soccer president, Sunil Gulati.

“The president of the United States is fully supportive and encouraged us to have this joint bid.

“He is especially pleased that Mexico is part of this bid. And that’s in the last few days we’ve gotten further encouragement on that.

“We’re not at all concerned about some of the issues that other people may raise.

“We looked at bidding alone and decided in the end we wanted to bid with our partners in North America, and we have a strong encouragement from President Trump to that very end,” Gulati added.

The United States last hosted the World Cup in 1994, which had the highest average attendance in the tournament’s history.

Mexico has hosted the tournament twice – in 1970 and 1986, while Canada hosted the women’s World Cup in 2015.