Tellia 2025 FMF World Cup bid

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On 27 November 2024, Tellia announced its desire to be granted the hosting rights to the 2025 FMF World Cup, the fifteenth edition of the FMF's premier international competition, the FMF World Cup. In doing so, Tellia became the first nation to submit an official bid to stage the competition.

The bid, which was tabled with the blessings of President Honoré di Scogli, set forward a list of ten stadiums which would be used for the tournament's matches, if successful. The bid matched the minimum recommendation of ten through a combination of established football venues, as utilised regularly by club teams competing in the Tellian Serie A and Serie B, and a newly-announced "national colosseum" project designed to establish a state-of-the-art multisport stadium in the former-planned capital of Metta, on the outskirts of the actual capital Romero. If successful, and once completed, the Colosseo Nazionale would become the largest venue in the nation.

Background

Neither Tellia nor its predecessor state of Gaia has ever previously hosted the FMF World Cup, though the nation's association with the competition is a storied one. As one of the founding teams of the FMF, Gaia participated in the inaugural 2006 FMF World Cup and reached the final before losing to Beaugium. Ever since, Gaia and subsequently Tellia has established itself a force in the tournament, with three further appearances in the final, including two victories in 2012 and 2017 to become part of a very exclusive list of national football teams to have been crowned world champions on more than one occasion. Besides Beaugium, which does not exist on Micras anymore, Tellia is the only existing World Cup winning nation yet to host the competition; previous bids for 2007 (as Gaia) and 2011 were unsuccessful.

Within the FMF, Tellia falls under the regional jurisdiction of the WMFA, which oversees the general area of the continent of Benacia, with members also being located on the Fifth Isle, Feanoria and the Madison Isles throughout history. In part due to the hosting rotation policy adopted by the FMF upon its change to a biennial World Cup schedule—away from its original annual staging— in 2015, no WMFA nation has been granted hosting rights since Craitland for the 2015 FMF World Cup, the first to see twenty sides participate. Additionally, Benacia itself had not seen an FMF World Cup finals match played on its shores since the 2011 FMF World Cup, in Shireroth, all of which were noted by the Tellian bidding delegation to establish the argument that ending such statistical runs is overdue.

Venues

The bid included ten stadiums, nine of which were pre-existing and with no plans of expansion ahead of the tournament. The permanent tenants of most of these were club teams with long-standing experience of playing in the Tellian top-flight league and even in international Champions' League competitions, the latter of which means an established undertaking of major matchday procedures akin to those that would be needed for World Cup finals fixtures. All of these stadiums met or exceeded the minimal capacity requirements for group stage hosting, with two also being potential final match venues.

The tenth stadium listed was unconstructed at the time—a not-uncommon situation during bidding processes, with nations often investing in new showpiece venues to improve their chances of winning hosting rights—and was the largest by seating capacity, with expectations being that it would host either the opening match or final, or both, should the bid come to fruition. This stadium, tagged the Colosseo Nazionale, has been designed to become Tellia's new national arena following the World Cup, with expectations of it hosting many other sports' cup finals, Tellian representative matches, concerts and displays.

The bid's listed stadiums are as follows, organised by largest to smallest seating capacity by default:

Stadium	Location	Capacity	Image
Colosseo Nazionale	Metta	70,000
Stadio di Romero	Romero	60,000
Stadio San Felice	Fiorecittà	60,000
Stadio Henzelli	Savona	48,000
Stadio Papa Giovanni Paolo II	Vecchiavo	42,000
DaeZoom Arena	Rossavro	40,000
Stadio Commemorativo Ebreo	Vladimizrakh	35,000
Stadio Tellia del Nord	Scoglitto	32,000
Stadio di Astrumstra Regionale	Sogrado	30,000
Stadio di Ocula	Ocula	30,000