2024 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup

2024 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup
The 2024 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup will be the 12th edition of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, the premier international beach soccer championship contested by men's national teams of the member associations of FIFA. Overall, this will be the 22nd edition of a world cup in beach soccer since the establishment of the Beach Soccer World Championships which ran from 1995 to 2004 but which was not governed by FIFA; all world cups took place annually until 2009 when it then became a biennial event.
This edition was originally set to be the 2023 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup; at the FIFA Beach Soccer Workshop in November 2017, it was announced that the World Cup would continue to be held biennially in odd-numbered years for the period 2018–2024. The bidding process for said edition was subsequently opened by FIFA in October 2021, concluding with the selection of the United Arab Emirates as the hosts in December 2022. The tournament was initially set to take place from 16 to 26 November 2023. However, in June 2023, the tournament was delayed until 15 to 25 February 2024, in order to provide more time to the organisers to prepare for the event. As a consequence, it's original 2023 branding was dropped, and it subsequently became referred to as the 2024 edition. It will take place in Dubai, the second city to host multiple times having also hosted the 2009 edition.
Russia are the defending champions. However, all senior Russian national teams are currently banned indefinitely from competing in FIFA competitions.
Host selection
The original bidding schedule to determine the hosts was as follows:
6 October 2021 – FIFA opens the bidding process.
29 October 2021 – Deadline for national associations to declare interest of hosting to FIFA.
1 November 2021 – FIFA circulates documents detailing the application campaign and conditions of participation to the bidding associations to analyse.
26 November 2021 – Deadline for associations to reaffirm their bidding intentions by agreeing to the terms of the documents.
30 January 2022 – Deadline for nations to prepare and submit their complete bidding packages to be evaluated by FIFA.
31 March 2022 – Hosts announced by FIFA.
On 8 December 2021, FIFA revealed that five associations had affirmed their bidding intentions:
(Bahrain Football Association)
(Colombian Football Federation)
(Seychelles Football Federation)
(Football Association of Thailand)
(United Arab Emirates Football Association)
On 14 February 2022, FIFA announced that three of the five associations had submitted bids through to the final stage of the process, with Colombia and Thailand withdrawing.
Confirmation of the awarding of hosting rights was due to be announced at the FIFA Council meeting in Doha, Qatar on 31 March 2022. However, no announcement was made; it was then due to be awarded at its meeting in Auckland, New Zealand on 22 October 2022, but it was announced at the meeting that the decision had been deferred again until a subsequent Council meeting. The United Arab Emirates was awarded the hosting rights to the 2023 tournament, while Seychelles was awarded for the 2025 edition on 16 December 2022.
Qualification
A total of 16 teams have qualified for the final tournament. In addition to the United Arab Emirates who qualified automatically as the host country, 15 other teams qualified from six separate continental competitions. The slot allocation was approved by the FIFA Council on 14 March 2023.
The process of qualification to the World Cup finals began in October 2022 and ended in August 2023.
Note: The appearance statistics below refer only to the FIFA era of world cups in beach soccer (since 2005); see this article for the inclusion of World Championships era stats (1995–2004).
Draw
The draw to split the 16 teams into four groups of four took place at 18:30 GST (UTC+4) on 6 October 2023 at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Library in Dubai. The drawing of lots was performed by Bakhit Saad and Christian Karembeu. It was conducted under the following procedure:
The teams were first divided into four pots of four based upon a ranking created by FIFA considering each team's performances at the World Cup over the past five editions (since 2013); the more recent the tournament, the more weight was given to those results. Bonus points were also awarded to the teams which won their confederation's championship during qualifying. Using this ranking, the best performing teams were placed in Pot 1 (plus the hosts), the next best performers were placed in Pot 2 and so on. This resulted in the following composition pots:
The draw started with Pot 1. As the hosts, the United Arab Emirates were automatically assigned to position A1. The highest-ranked team, Brazil, was automatically assigned to position D1. The other teams were then drawn – the first out was placed into Group C and the second, D. The teams from Pot 2 were then drawn – the first out was placed into Group A, second into B and so on. The same was repeated for Pots 3 and 4. The exact positions in the groups the teams were allocated to was determined by the drawing of lots from an auxiliary pot. Teams from the same confederation could not be drawn into the same group.
The draw resulted in the following groups:
Group stage
The match schedule was published on the 6 October, following the draw.
In the group stage, if a match is level at the end of normal playing time, extra time shall be played (one period of three minutes) and followed, if necessary, by kicks from the penalty mark to determine the winner. Each team earns three points for a win in regulation time, two points for a win in extra time, one point for a win in a penalty shoot-out, and no points for a defeat. The top two teams of each group advance to the quarter-finals.
Tiebreakers
The rankings of teams in each group are determined as follows:
If two or more teams are equal on the basis of the above three criteria, their rankings are determined as follows:
All times are local, GST (UTC+4).
Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Knockout stage
Quarter-finals
Semi-finals
Third place match
Final
References
Notes
Citations
External links
, at FIFA.com
Beach Soccer Worldwide, official website
2024
Fifa Beach Soccer World Cup
International association football competitions hosted by the United Arab Emirates
Scheduled association football competitions
Sports competitions in Dubai
February 2024 sports events in Asia