World Cup Expansion to 48 Teams (Update: FIFA Council Agrees 2026 Slot Allocation)

No doubt CONMEBOL will want a$ many qualifying matche$ a$ po$$ible.

 

as if they wanted to prove me right.

denmarks equalizier... an own goal
australias lead... a deflection

 

add to that Sweden's lone goal...

 

and there is the hand penalty for australia. triple prediction completed.

 

The expansion means we're going to see less and less of the matches that people actually want to see. That's the big matches between the traditionally big teams.

Italy and Portugal have never faced off at a big tournament; with these expansions they might never do so. Germany and Brazil have played each other twice competitively in a big tournament. Uruguay and the Netherlands have played two competitive matches. Spain and England have met in three competitive matches in the last 37 years.

We're not seeing enough big gun matches in international football. Imagine a champions league where you rarely got to see Real Madrid play Man Utd or Juventus v Bayern Munich. That's what we're getting with international football and it's only going to get worse.The competition is being diluted; less is more.

I dream of a competition called the World Cup winner's Cup where every team who has won the world cup plays each other. In my opinion, something like that is the way to save international football as club football is taking over in the hearts and minds of players and fans.

And this expansion also means that the WC becomes less prestigious; qualifying isn't going to be special anymore for the small teams; so what's going to replace that?

Is Panama getting beat 4-0 by Brazil going to be something their fans can be proud of and look forward to? Their president or whatever called a national holiday after they qualified this time round; there's going to be no more national holidays when it becomes commonplace to show up at these big tournaments for a few games and a flight home.

 

On the contrary, depending on how they seed the round of 32 I think we could see more matchups between the top teams before the quarters than ever before.
Sort of like how we got a bracket of death in the last Euro where all the traditional powers seemed to get put on one side of the elimination tournament.

 

Euro 2016 had just 2 matches between top teams in the group-stage if you count Croatia v Spain (otherwise 1). Plus another 2 in the round of 16 if you count Croatia v Portugal (otherwise just 1). A total of 7 in the whole tournament.

In Euro 2012 there were 7 marquee matchups in the group stage alone, counting Croatia (otherwise 5). The entire tournament had 12!

That's 18% of all matches compared to 39% featuring 2 top teams.

World Cup of course is a bit different though since some effort is done to keep teams from the same confederations apart. But if I think about it, it seems pretty hard for England and Spain to meet in the Round of 32 in 2026 - a lot needs to happen. And there will be 0% chance of them meeting in the group-stage, unlike now.

 

All depends on how things are calculated for the second round.
But I see your point.

 

FIFA acknowledges that quality of play could drop by adding 16 more of its 211 member federations.


The "absolute quality" of soccer — with high-ranked teams playing each other most often — is achieved by the 32-team format being used in Russia and at the 2022 event in Qatar. FIFA said it made 10,000 tournament simulations to reach that conclusion. If not perfect, certainly a proven and popular success since it was introduced at the 1998 World Cup in France. The 64-match bracket is perfect: Two teams advance from each group into a Round of 16.

“The format with the highest absolute quality (of play) would be achieved under the current format,” FIFA acknowledged.

Infantino: "From a sporting point of view it is ideal to have 32 countries, while 48 is complicated…. The World Cup is very well organised in its system of competition with 32 countries, groups and classifications for the second round, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final."


Politics and commercialism ... at the expense of sporting value, the highest absolute quality of play, the perfect World Cup formula ... a load of nonsense driven by greed ... SMH ... just drop the charade and collect the 48 biggest brown envelopes.

Group of Death, WC2026

New Caledonia
Germany
Montserrat

FIFA ... for the greed ... not for the game.

 

although it is already out of scope, i like to mention my proposed format (also proposed to fifa) again.

it would have resulted in numberous clashes, top matches in group stage.



in a mock draw the following matches would have been on schedule already at group stage

England v Uruguay
Argentina v Portugal
Netherlands v Colombia
Chile v France

A pity, FIFA didnt even consider it. still disaplointed because if that.

 

The greed aspect is the driving factor. I don't think anyone can argue against that.

But I will say that it makes me and others around the world scratch their head when a tournament that is supposed to be the showcase of the 32 best teams in the World does not include teams like Italy, Netherlands and Chile but does include teams like Saudi Arabia, Panama and Tunisia.
Not truly based on merit. Not truly based on achievement. But based solely on which continent they just so happen to be located in.

Expansion to 48 will make it less likely for teams to be left out of the tournament who are of better quality than the teams in the tournament.

And I for one love that residual effect.

 

It the end anytime you put limits on the amount of teams from a specific confederation can go, it's no longer the "best" 32 teams.

Then again if I just took FIFA rankings, like 90% of the teams would be from UEFA or CONMEBOL. Then could you really call it a "world" cup lol

 

My motto is as long as they play in this World it is a World Cup.
The early era World Cups did not have teams from Asia and Africa and were called the World Cup.

 

I think after expansion there will still be a lot of scope for the likes of Netherlands, Italy and others to miss out. Europe's allocation will only go up by 3 to 16. Netherlands managed to miss out on a 24-team Euro very recently.

Of course, that underlines how poor the Netherlands have been recently. but expansion may still lead to teams likes this missing out while arguably weaker teams from Africa and Asia do qualify.

Europe's qualifying format doesn't help however, and is in need of a rethink if Uefa want to ensure the best 16 teams from Europe qualify.

 

Well I never said that it would absolutely guarantee the three teams to qualify, just that it would be less likely for those type of teams to miss out.
And it will have an effect on how the UEFA qualifiers are structured.

 

Every team knew at the start what they needed to achieve in order to qualify. If they couldn't meet those demands, sucks for them and better luck next time.

 

True.

No one is arguing against that point.

 

It's totally unfair, but I couldn't watch to the end of this because I could only think of:



J

 

awe c'mon, not that difficult at all.

in one paragraph:

8 groups of 6. Each group split into 2 pools of 3. "only" 3 matches for each team against one strong, one mediocre and one weaker team of the twin pool (ain't that fair?). 3 matchdays with 9 group matches result in the overall final standing for the group of 6. last matchday with 3 parallel matches. top 2 advance to round of 16.

 

Well, the tricky bit is the bit you sort of slide over there with a flippant "ain't that fair?" comment. AIAI (S)trong team A plays (M)edium Team A, (W)eak Team A and (S)trong Team B, while MA plays SA, WA and MB - while WA plays SA, MA and WB - so it seems that the weak team gets an easier ride because they are weak. Or am I not getting this?

To put it back to you, imagine if I sort of made a possible WC2018 draw (I'll just run one of the ULtrazone ones) into a double group situation (ie, instead of starting with groups of 3 I start with groups of 4).

GROUP 1 - FRA-ESP-EGY-JPN
GROUP 2 - POR-URU-SWE-KSA

Are you saying that you would have, FRA play ESP, EGY, JPN and POR while JPN would play ESP, EGY, FRA and KSA. Because I think that might raise some "questions"

J

 

I can't believe I miss Sepp Blatter. That Infantino guy destroyed the World Cup.

 

As an Englander I have to say that 2 of my favorite World Cups were 1974 and 1978 when England didn't qualify. And not qualifying for 1994 was a stroke of luck as our fans were an embarrassment at the time, so we packed the pubs and cheered for Ireland and their squad of English born veterans.

 

Infantino is keeping a campaign promise that most of the federations wanted and pushed for. Oh how horrible Infantino is for keeping a campaign promise! The nerve of a politician keeping a promise!!!!!


Anyway, One man's trash is another man's treasure. You see it as destroying the World Cup I see it as progress. And I bet anything you and others will still watch most of the games.

 

Just as YOU will watch "a tournament that is supposed to be the showcase of the 32 best teams in the world that does not include teams like Italy, Netherlands and Chile but does include teams like Saudi Arabia, Panama and Tunisia."

 

Yes. But just as I embraced expansion from 24 to 32. I Am also embracing progress in this instance.