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

The 3-team groups plus the addition of more weak teams leads to more teams speculating and parking the bus.

If you add the possibility of getting an additional point through penalty shoot outs, it's even more incentive to play for a tie for weaker teams.

This is not looking good.

 

Nope. It's going to be a disaster IMO. Even worse that the first 48 team one is going to be in the United States.

Hopefully the rest of that tournament from the knockout stage on will be entertaining because I think the group matches are going to be horrible.

 

What is the issue with the US holding the tournament (or parts of it)? My problem with a 48 team tournament is with the watered down talent, qualifying will be mostly meaningless, and because of an endless possibility of scenarios in the first round that could affect the integrity of the play. The location though is not an issue, as far as I can see.

 

For those of us who live in North America and would like to attend as many matches as possible it can be a bit of an issue. I'm sure there are many people who will be willing to shell out however much it costs to attend matches just because it's the World Cup. But for those who share you opinions (myself included) on the potential problems a 48-team field may present we may very well be weighing the options on whether or not the money spent will be worth one's while.

 

Oh no I think it's awesome we are hosting it. I'm just saying with it being the first one with 48 teams, when people look back at it and see that marking the beginning of the watered down games, that's what people are going to remember the most about it unfortunately.

 

I've never been to a World Cup but at the current 48 team format.......I wouldn't go to the group stages at all.

The knockout phase will still be good tho.

 

I definitely agree.
But it will likely be that in order to buy tickets you must buy a package for a set venue which includes group stage plus (in such cases) a Round of 32 and maybe even a Round of 16 match. At least, when the tickets are initially made available. I'm sure single match tickets will be made available later but sometimes it could be risky to wait until then.

 

Stopped following this thread sometime ago, but I had to come back to stay that at this stage of the WC (end of round of 16), I can't imagine watching more games. I can't watch all of them now. It will be interesting to see if the 48 team cup has people like me watching less games, or the same number of games (but a smaller percentage of the over all games). I know people who have watched nearly every game, will they be able to watch even more? It will be a lot.

 

WC fatigue does set in, more so to those who attend the tournament.

 

Thea are the potential teams left out of this year’s WC if it was 48 teams...

Africa
Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon

Asia
Syria, China, uAE, Lebanon

CONCACAF
USA, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Carauco

Conmebol
Chile, Paraguay

Euro
Netherlands, Italy

There are some good teams here... about 8 of them are quality teams. If a team like Iceland or Poland or Panama or Egypt get a chance then these teams should be there.

 

We had one day in this World Cup with four consecutive matches, on the first Saturday. It was just too much for most people, and that was at the start of it all. The group stages of a 48-team tournament will be 4 consecutive matches every day, unless I'm mistaken. It will mean people dipping in and out far more than they would have done in a 32-team tournament, sadly.

 

Trying to be a bit more realistic about it, here's a list of teams that might actually have been added if the hosting had been switched late in qualifying from Russia (32 teams) to USA etc (48 teams) with hosts included and no playoffs.

AFC: Syria, Uzbekistan, UAE
CAF: DR Congo, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Ivory Coast
CONCACAF: Honduras, USA, Trinidad & T, Canada
CONMEBOL: Chile
OFC: New Zealand
UEFA: Italy, Northern Ireland, Greece

32 out of 48 group games would have involved one of these teams.

With a few obvious exceptions, I can't see many of these selling out - especially in huge stadiums.

 

My problem, too, with this over-inflated World Cup is that the qualifiers will be meaningless and, coming from the perspective of a fan of the USA team, I worry about not having enough (or any) games that can help improve a team or keep them in shape. But this would surely be a problem for any association. Because of this, I think that there should be *more* inter-regional playoffs. I think that half of the spots should be playoff spots so a team like the USA or Mexico would have to finish in the top three to win a guaranteed spot rather than to go to a random playoff against another nation to advance. Watching the USA struggle in the end was painful but it was also invigorating. And I'm sure the Mexicans, Italians, etc. can say the same thing. Qualifying is critical because there really are no guaranteed spots and it should be kept that way.

 

This would be great.

Intercontinental-playoffs with a twist: Best squads of confed ABC against worst squads of Confed XYZ.

That will ensure meaningful qualifiers, since nobody will want to risk an intercontinental playoff vs the best teams from another confederation.

 

What I'm saying is that instead of six teams making it from one confederation, we leave it as it is now for the guaranteed spots but have the spots four to six determined by inter-regional playoffs. So, to take CONCACAF, as an example, the USA would not qualify outright just by making it to the hexagonal stage. Instead, they would still have to finish in the top three. The games would have worth. Finishing fourth through sixth would mean that they, along with 31 other teams from around the world would be put into a random draw for one last playoff series to qualify. They could meet the Netherlands, Italy, any team from Africa, etc. The games would be meaningful rather than just needing to beat Curacao to qualify, and if that fails, to have ten more chances against other minnows before they miss another World Cup.

By "more" inter-regional playoffs, I don't mean that it would be a part of the qualifying system proper but rather used at the end, where the last 32 teams would have one playoff against another team from another region to add the final 16 to the qualifying 32.

Or, instead of qualifying, other regions could incorporate that Nations League that Europe is doing, where meaningful games could take place and the tournament itself be used to qualify teams. Anything is better than the top or middle level teams just needing to show up three or four times to be guaranteed a spot.

 

The qualifying games will still have meaning and battles... the battles will be against the 4 - 8 ranked teams instead of the 2 - 6 ranked.

And I think the group stage has essentially become international playoffs to make the 32 team knockout tourney.

 

Wonder if there's some sort of rule change they could make to make teams really "go for it", or implement some sort of punishment for parking the bus / playing extremely defensively (i.e. Japan-Poland)

 

It's hard to find something, other than only allowing the group winner to advance. Since soccer is low-scoring, there is an incentive for weaker teams to do just that and park the bus.

 

The thing is the countries ranked 5-8 tend to be quite a bit smaller. So in the end, it is interesting for fewer people. E.g. Instead of qualifying being interesting to the US or Mexico, it will become more interesting to T&T and Guatemala.
(I assume you were talking about CONCACAF, but this is true in general except maybe in Asia where there are countries with huge populations that are currently not good enough to even make a serious run in qualifying for a 32-team WC).

 

As we saw in Euro qualifying there were still good teams left out even with expansion so it made qualifying MORE interesting in my eyes.

Plus teams that had never or rarely made it before felt more confident (or at least played like it.) because they knew that their chances of making it were better.

 

Well Guatemala is bigger then Sweden and Portugal. Haiti is about the same size as these two. There are about 8 countries with bigger populations then Costa Rica... also there is Canada at 36 million that now might be in the mix of qualifying.

I have the feeling that Concacaf qualifying process is going to have a drastic change for the 2026 cycle. My guess is the 2022 cycle will be the last of the hex.

My hope is USA, Mex, and Canada still perticipates in quals. They could give an award to the winner of qualifying... maybe the winner could earn a top seed, because there is no way we should get 3 top seeds in 2026.

 

I generally agree with your views on the 2026 CONCACAF qualifying process, but I am thinking bigger picture / more generally. For US and Mexico the days of playing truly meaningful qualifying matches will end after 2022. For Costa Rica, qualifying will become totally routine for them too starting 2026 so I don’t get why you use them as an example.

 

Because they are a 5 million person nation with a good record of qualifying. It’s not all about the population size. And if you are looking for bigger populations there are 7 or so countries bigger then CR not including Mexico, USA or Canada.

 

Once again, I am talking overall / big picture. Obviously there are examples of a smaller nation doing better than larger nations. But overall the nations that will be on the cusp of qualifying for a 48-team WC will tend to have smaller populations in each region than nations on the cusp of qualifying for a 32-team WC.

But anyway, I'm more upset about the 3-team groups than the expansion to 48 teams so I won't harp on about this. Especially since qualifying in UEFA won't be hugely impacted.

 

I am pretty sure the "final" Hex will go away with more spots for concacaf.

Perhaps 2 or 3 groups of 6 teams (so 3 "hexes") with top 2 of each going to the world cup, basically more like Europe and their groups, but with preliminary rounds for the CFU countries.