When the U.S. launched a joint bid to host the 2026 soccer World Cup with Canada and Mexico last year, it looked like the biggest open goal in the game.

The tournament was expanding to 48 teams for the first time and here was a bid with enough hulking stadiums, hotels, practice facilities and functioning airports to host it at a moment’s notice. Plus, the North Americans had nailed their timing. With the rest of the world losing interest in hosting major sporting events, theirs was the only bid.

Then, last August, an opponent emerged: Morocco, a serial bidder that has tried and failed to host four World Cups since 1994 and a country with nowhere near the infrastructure of North America. Even with two bidders, it didn’t look like much of a race.

But two months before FIFA makes its choice on June 13 in Moscow—and right as FIFA conducts its inspections of venues in North America and Morocco—factors from geopolitics to internal bureaucracy at soccer’s world governing body have made the formerly one-sided race impossible to call.

“We’re not taking any vote for granted,” U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro said. “We’re going to keep working very hard for every vote right up until June 13.”