World Cup 2026

Does this mean that the national teams of USA, Mexico and Canada all get automatic selections? If so, that’s 3 of the spots right there. Figure Costa Rica for another. Jamaica, Honduras, and the like would be favorites for the other.

 

Probably since they're increasing the number of teams to 48.

 

In the expanded format CONCACAF gets 6 spots. The wiki page (so take it for what its worth) states that number will remain the same even with hosting countries. What will be interesting in CONCACAF qualifying for 2026 then, will be who will be the 3 teams (well 2 teams besides Costa Rica) that get in.

Also: A play-off tournament involving six teams will be held to decide the last two FIFA World Cup berths,[17] consisting of one team per confederation (except for UEFA) and one additional team from the confederation of the host country.

So really it'll be VERY similar qualifying for 2026 in CONCACAF except Canada, the US, and Mexico won't be involved. I wonder if they'll keep the HEX, in fact, given the similarities of 3.5 CONCACAF teams getting in.

 

So how does qualifying work then? Does the US and Mexico still play in the qualifying games like normal? Or do we just do friendlies with various other teams instead? I've never paid attention to what the other host countries do during WC qualifying.

 

Likely just friendlies. There is no reason to compete and be in the way for countries that are actually playing for something. Advantage is that we can play who we want and have a tougher schedule maybe. Disadvantage is that the players will just be playing in a bunch of warmup games for a couple of years outside of the Gold Cup.

 

Friendlies
During FIFA windows for the 2026 qualifiers we'll setup friendlies with other nations that don't have games at that same time. Russia did the same thing this cycle. What is cool about this is that we'll for sure play Mexico a few times leading up to it, so that won't go away. Though the true competitive nature of it might be smaller.

 

I figured that was likely the case. It would be nice if we can get some higher profile games in, especially if it's against other WC bound teams.

 

they will, just not when those other teams are in qualifiers. Its the catch 22 of hosting. I expect we'll play a lot of games with Euro teams as they have off rotations for their qualifiers, typically, as groups are an odd number of teams sometimes.

 

16 groups of 3

The draw will matter even more for making it into the first or second elimination rounds

 

Right now each team plays at least 3 games. With groups of 3 each would play 2. With groups of 6 each would play 5. Two seems too few. 5 seems excessive.

 

This Colombia/Japan game is an example of what I dislike about soccer. Colombia goes down a man in the 5th. They spend the rest of the half diving and rolling around in attempts to get the official to even it. They do manage to get a free kick close to the box on a foul that wasn’t a foul. If anything the Colombian player committed the foul. The free kick is converted to make the score 1-1. Colombia is a man down still, but I fully expect to see them spend the remainder of the game with similar theatrics and probably being rewarded for their antics.

 

I can’t argue with the point of the story. At the same time there are a whole lot more people (ie, viewers) around the world who will be invested.

 

The ironic thing is that the most boring game of this tournament so far, for me, was France v Denmark. A matchup that would feature in (obviously) a 32 team tournament and even less.

Sure, the qualifying for knockout round stuff is going to be weird, but I don't think it's going to be as awful as people (myself included) have made it out to be.

 

I will miss the simultaneous for-all-the-marbles games. But if, as I presume, the games go 1 v 2, 1 v 3, then 2 v 3 (that way to give the top seed the advantage of rest in the knockout stage), the final game will usually determine who will advance so it will be more intense than it otherwise might. No one will be out before its second group game, even if they got thrashed in game one.

 

Would you rather have a 48 team world cup every 4 years, or, have a 24 team world cup every 2 years

 

Every four years is right, so continental championships and Summer Olympics can fit in between.

 

The four year cycle is best. In the 2 year cycle every national team will be immersed in qualifying all the time, which hurts their club teams too. It’s too intense. Great question though!

 

What will be very interesting with Qatar is the "winter" schedule. There has been a lot of talk, especially by Seedorf, about the lower level of play from the top teams. He attributes, or at least contributes some of it, to the long club season many of those players have gone through. With a "winter" world cup, you get players with half as many miles logged. That's huge.