48 makes 12 pools of 4. Top two from each pool advance. That leaves 8 wild cards. For third place teams, first tie breaker is not being tied for 4th. Second tie breaker is goals scored (max credit of 4 per game). With goals being a critical tiebreaker, teams will have an incentive from the first game to get goals on the books.
That would be better, but according to the great Wikipedia, the current plan for 2026 is to have 16 groups of 3, as alluded to by @AndyMead.
That would be 72 group stage games + 32 knockout stage games. FIFA didn't want to jump from 64 to 104 matches. So they're going with 80 total matches which you get with 16 groups of 3.
What I'm interested to know is if the decision as to who will referee the Final has already been made by FIFA. Have they told the referee himself or are they waiting until the match up is set? And then making the decision? Is it set now or depending on the match up will they change their choice. For example, Croatia loses to England. Would that open the door for Mazic? Or is it Cakir or Ricci no matters what? From my knowledge this has always kind of varied from tournament to tournament.
Yes—I was just responding about what you can do with 48. While I understand why they went the way they did, I don’t like it. I would even have preferred the pools of 4 and letting the top 8 pool winners have a first knock out round buy. (But I suspect the knockout games are more marketable, so they prefer to increase the number of those rather than the number pool games, regardless of the impact on the pool games.)
He was about 5 yards behind the play when Mandžukić was taken down on a tactical foul at midfield early in the 2nd Extra Time half for a caution. Pretty impressive considering the ball had just been cleared from Croatia's own penalty area seconds earlier and it was this late in the match.
The current WC should always be the best one; it's always going to be the only one where we don't know the outcome! What were the memorable matches from last World Cup? I'm trying hard to remember. For me, the Belgium-Brazil, France-Argentina, and Belgium-Japan have been fantastic games in this one (not to mention Spain-Portugal). There also seems to have been a lot more late winners and late equalizers in this tournament, which makes it seem better. Also how many scoreless draws have we seen so far?
I'm not announcer, my fandom "only" goes back to the 70s, my team is not there, and so far it's the best cup I've seen. Now if we see 2 0-0 semi finals go to penalties, and a final that does the same, my view could change.
The ancestral teams I followed before the US qualified in 1990, were England where my maternal grandmother was born, and (West) Germany for my father's whole side of the family. My maternal grandfather was born in old Russia, where the Ukraine now is, so they get honorable mention on occasion. The Welsh usually spell Lloyd: Llwyd!