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

What part of my clear previous post that you don't understand?
"Chile as a better team with a long history, they had a bunch of good teams before more than Costa Rica (producing talent too)."
World Cup 1930 (beat France)
World Cup 1950
World Cup 1962 (third place)
Copa America 1967 (Chile's of the 60s arguably the first truly great team in your country)
World Cup 1974 (Figueroa)
Zamorano and Salas
Alexis and Vidal

In a weird way, though, it's good to see in case with Costa Rica, you played very nice, not need any negativity here.
But while you have always been so nice to Costa Rica, I have to give credit to the right way.

 

I don't know what you mean when you say "historically"? Which historic period are you focused on? North Korea advanced to the quarterfinals of the 1966 World Cup, beating Italy, and was beating Eusobia's Portgual 2:0 before it lost 3:2 in the quarterfinals. At the time, CAF wasn't really competing at the World Cup, although in the 1970s when it did begin to be represented at the World Cup (Morocco in Wc70 and Zaire in Wc74), its record didn't impress. Indeed, in 1978, the Afro-Asian Cup of Nations started with its inaugural match between Iran and Ghana. Iran won the first leg 3:0 against Ghana , although the revolution in Iran saw the second leg cancelled.

I accept that Africa began looking a lot more impressive and interesting in the 1980s and 1990s, even though it still remains true that the first World Cup match between CAF and the AFC in WC94 was when Saudi Arabia beat Morocco (and then Belgium) to advance from its group. And that the record between AFC and CAF, both at the World Cup, and at the Afro-Asian Cup of Nations, showed a lot more parity than you are assuming. Indeed, it wasn't until Wc2014, when the head-to-head record between CAF and the AFC became even; until then, the record favored the AFC. And the overall, historic, record favors the AFC again after WC2018. It is the same story in head-to-head match ups between the two confederations in the Confederations Cup or in other venues. Although it is undeniable that CAF has often produced more interesting and exciting teams, and the talent that CAF teams show cannot be compared to the talent shown by teams from the AFC, in terms of results what I mentioned is no less accurate historically than now. If anything, it somewhat glosses over the fact not only the historic head-to-head record favors the AFC, but that the historic ELO ratings show the top teams from the AFC higher ranked than the top teams from CAF.

On the latter, while I acnowledge CAF fans don't like ELO rankings and I totally agree that ELO underrates CAF because the parity in CAF precludes the kind of consistency that is rewarded by ELO and because there aren't marquee sides in CAF to pull up the average for everyone else like you have in Conmebol,, I still believe a comparison of the top 5 for CAF and AFC would be instructive. In this regard, refer to Historic average ratings Since 1970, where you will find the top 5 CAF sides on historic average ratings are Nigeria (#36), Egypt (#37), Cameroon (#41), Morocco (#42), and Ivory Coast (#44). By contrast, the top 5 highest ranked AFC sides on historic average (even not counting Australia at #29 because they were mostly in OFC historically) are South Korea (#32), Iran (#33), Japan (#48), Iraq (#51) and China (#52). Japan rates low mainly because, somewhat like the US, it really began to take football seriously in the early 1990s and was really poor before then. But overall, you see the same pattern. The difference isn't at the very top but the depth which makes the next best teams in CAF better than the next best teams in the AFC.

As for Mexico, incidentally, it also depends what you mean by "historically"? Historically, Mexico was rubbish. But since 1986 in particular, they are of course the side that never fails to advance from its group. That said, Mexico's average historic ELO rating (#14) would rank it above anyone in the AFC or certainly CAF.

 

Using historical average ELO rankings I think causes one to underestimate the strength of CAF. That's because CAF nations are quite inconsistent over time, compared to AFC and CONCACAF which roughly have had the same 4 or 5 top teams for decades.

What I observe in the CAF region is that when a country has a down period (e.g. Nigeria 2006 to 2016) another country would fill the void (Ghana). In AFC and CONCACAF you don't really get that. Each have 4-5 decent teams in general, but if one has a down period you're not gonna see a Panama or Iraq take their place.

But at any given time, CAF has far more decent sides than the other 2 confederations. I reckon that if you had a 48-team WC with 16 teams from each of these 3 regions, no less than 13 or 14 CAF teams would advance to the 32-team knockout stage.

 

both Elo rankings and FIFA rankings are garbage IMO.

They both are more heavily biased against CAF than any other confederation, especially ELO.

The reason is such, and it is actually Iranian Monitor who made me realize what the problem is.

The problem is that neither ELO or FIFA give you any points for a loss. They both give you ZERO points, regardless of the level of team you lose to, and regardless of the amount you lose by. This is one of my main problems with either ranking because it is absolutely absurd to get the same amount of points if you lose 4-3 to Brazil than you would if you lose 10-0 against Tajikstan. I'm sorry but treating those as equal makes a complete mockery of rankings.

In my own devised rankings system, I have mitigated this problem by rewarding points for a loss based on the rank of the team you lose to, and based on the amount of goals you lose by. So therefore losing by a single goal to Brazil will give you a much better benefit than losing 10-0 to Tajikstan.

Now how does this effect CAF more negatively than other confederations.

Well frankly teams that lose more often would be at a bigger loss. You could deduce that teams would lose more often when they play tougher competition. So you could say the tougher the competition, the more likely you are to be effected negatively by the 0 points for a loss rule.

Now one may argue that Conembol would be the hardest competition, and therefore a top team is more likely to lose a match than in any other Confederation. Yes this is true, however what saves Conembol is that while you are more likely to lose a match as you are playing tough competition, you are also more likely to gain a great number of points when you actually do beat or draw against these highly ranked sides. So despite a high likelihood of losing in Conembol they dont suffer because they are always playing highly ranked opposition, and the victories make up for the losses. In Uefa the way the qualifying is structured top teams will likely not lose matches at all, or very often. Top sides will usually only lose in actual tournaments. In Concacaf, the top teams rarely if ever lose to mid tier sides, usually losses between top sides are limited between the US and Mexico. In AFC again during qualifying top sides will not lose to other teams as much as they do in CAF.

With CAF you have a highly competative region, where the odds of losing to the average team you play are much higher than in Concacaf, AFC, Uefa, but the teams do not have the high rankings as they do in Conembol to mitigate this effect. Therefore it seems to me that with the 0 points for any loss rule, CAF teams will get screwed far more than any other region. Also CAF is known as the region where home advantage is more important than any other region, and it is very often for top tier sides to lose against 2nd tier sides when they are away from home. This doesn't happen anywhere nearly as often as it does in CAF, perhaps Conembol, but again the benefit of always playing highly ranked opposition is not present.

Also it would seem that FIFA and Elo rankings do not rate draws as much as my ranking does, which again will have a negative effect on more competative regions where draws happen quite often.

So with my ranking I give points for losses and have a higher value on draws. This IMO gives a more accurate representation of reality, and not only helps CAF sides, but any side which plays in a competative region where draws and losses to quality opponents happens frequently. Even 2nd and 3rd tier European sides benefit from this system. The only teams that dont really benefit are teams who are very big fishes in small ponds. Teams that never really lose or tie matches often, but they aren't really beating anybody of real significance.

 

This is an over simplification of ELO. Its true you lose points for a loss, but you lose a lot less points if you lose to a higher ranked team than you do if you lose to a lower ranked team. The same applies to points gained for a win. You can also gain good points for a draw if you are a lower ranked team than the team you draw with.

It does work against teams that consistently play teams of similar ability with mixed results. That's why some good African teams get ranked a bit lower, but I wouldn't get too hung up about that as really only CONCACAF and OFC don't suffer a lot from this. Europe, Conmebol and too a slightly lesser extent Asia also have this disadvantage. My own nation gained its highest ELO rankings in OFC as we usually won 90% of our matches there and continually scooped up points from the other nations. The top nations in CONCACAF also have a similar advantage but as there are 3-4 nations at the top its not as big an advantage as we had in OFC.

 

Just out of curiosity, would you mind posting, say, the top 20-40 teams in your rankings? Nothing that would give away your formula, just like a ranked list. Only if it's not too tedious.

I'd be interested in seeing how they compare.

 

Yes it is an oversimplification, and that criticism is frankly more aimed at the old FIFA rankings, but something is still very wrong with Elo IMO. I think ELo looks fairly accurate within confederations but when we mix them together it seems very off to me.

Clearly concacaf seems very over ranked in Elo. I mean the US who just went through their worst WCQ cycle in decades losing a whole bunch of matches to weak teams is still ranked as high as the top African side in Senegal.

Then we have Costa Rica above all of Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Japan as well by the way seems pretty off to me, considering they had a worse WC than all of those teams, had 6 friendly losses since WC qualification (1 to Tunisia by the way). In WCQ they drew Honduras twice, lost to Mexico once, lost to Panama once, drew to Panama once. They did beat the US twice, which is great, but its a pretty poor record beyond that. I simply dont see how a team can have a mixed WCQ qualifying result, a very poor friendly result, a very poor WC result and still be ranked ahead of all of those teams.

Comparing Asia to CAF seems off too, although you said that AFC suffers similar effects, but clearly not nearly as much.

South Korea being virtually level with Senegal based on results. I dont see it. Yes they had a great win against Germany, but other than that South Korea has had a horrible record for a long time, including friendlies and WCQ. One game simply cannot bring you so high.

Oh I take back what I said about the Elo looking accurate within confederations. How can S. Korea be #26 and Japan be #45. Again that is simply illogical. South Korea lost 2 matches. Japan beat a highly rated Colombia and drew with a decently rated Senegal. Also Japans WCQ was far superior to S. Korea, playing and getting results against much superior sides. Tbh I think Japan and S. Korea are roughly equal sides, but this ELo ranking certainly does not show it. Again I think there is something deeply flawed with their ranking.

 

This is my ranking BEFORE the Worldcup and the pre world cup friendlies. The last results include the November 2017 friendlies and WCQ's. I am working to update the new list and will publish it when I am done.

1. Brazil
2. Germany
3. Spain
4. France
5. Argentina
6. Peru
7. Belgium
8. Portugal
9. Croatia
10. England
11. Mexico
12. Italy
13. Holland
14. Switzerland
15. Colombia
16. Poland
17. Iceland
18. Denmark
19. Uruguay
20. Chile
21. Nigeria
22. Wales
23. Senegal
24. Sweden
25. Morocco
26. Cameroon
27. Burkina Faso
28. Venezuela
29. Egypt
30. Serbia
31. Tunisia
32. Ireland Rep.
33. USA
34. Ghana
35. Bosnia & H
36. Slovakia
37. Greece
38. South Africa
39. Romania
40. Iran
41. Russia
42. Paraguay
43. Ecuador
44. Austria
45. DR Congo
46. N. Ireland
47. Costa Rica
48. Turkey
49. Algeria
50. Ukraine

52. Japan
54. Australia
56. S. Korea
58. Panama
77. Saudi Arabia

 

Your ranking clearly overrates the African sides.
In what universe, are South Africa and Burkina Faso better ranked teams than Iran, Turkey, Japan, Australia, and South Korea?! Come on.

 

This may be true in retrospect, and I advise you to hold any criticism until after my post WC rankings are published. But before this WC, AFC was clearly outclassed in 2014. Therefore there are not a lot of points to play for amongst AFC competitions.

If you look at the results of these teams before the WC, they were not very good at all.

Iran had only beaten Venezuela in a friendly. That was their only really good result in a while, meanwhile they had drawn with Syria and Russia, who both especially Syria were not ranked very high.

South Korea was virtually losing to every team the played, losses to Poland, N. Ireland, Morocco, Russia, Qatar. Draws against Uzbekistan, Serbia. One good result beating Colombia.

Japan was losing to Ukraine, tying Mali, losing to Belgium, Brazil, tying against Haiti, losing to Saudi Arabia, tying Iraq.

These are all very poor records.

In roughly that same period Burkina Faso finished #3 in the 2017 African nations cup, beating the likes of Ghana, Tunisia, drawing with Egypt, along the way. In WCQ they twice drew with Senegal.

So there is absolutely justification for these results pre WC. Japan and Iran in particular will get massive boosts once the new rankings are finished.

The worldcup year is kind of like a re set to put teams in their proper order. After that it is up to each team to get as much points as they can off of their competition. If you play teams with low points you wont go up the ranking much.

with the african cup and qualifying competition, there are far more teams that getting results against will boost your points than in the asian cup and qualifying. It is just that simple. So CAF teams that get results will go up in rank. In AFC you have to basically get results from either Australia, Japan, Iran, or S. Korea to see any significant point accumilation. Either that or hammer the other top 100 sides by 3 or 4 goals, which frankly doesn't happen much. Wheras AFC has those 4 teams, CAF has like 10 or so sides that can give you a decent point accumilation.

One way in which CAF benefits is that they have a continental tournament every 2 years, wheras AFC has one every 4 years and their most recent competition was in 2015. So those results may not even have any effect any more. This may contribute to some CAF advantage over AFC. But really there is no way to mitigate that.

The same principle works for both UEFA and Conembol.

 

Here is a preview of the post WC rankings. A few teams whose points per game totals I have finished

France - 89
Spain - 73
Denmark - 64
Portugal - 61
Uruguay - 60
Argentina - 59
Peru - 57
Russia - 53
Nigeria - 52
Morocco - 51
Iran - 48
Iceland - 48
Australia - 41
Egypt - 39
S. Arabia - 32

 

I agree that ELO (including ELO historic averages) underestimates the strength of CAF teams, mainly due to the inconsistency among CAF teams arising from both the greater parity in CAF and certain issues within CAF itself. But I think the problem is one of degree and given that ELO does have the most sound methodology to rank teams, I wouldn't totally ignore them either.

That said, besides historic average ratings and to address your comment, you can also look at the highest peak ratings ever achieved by teams in CAF compared to AFC -- and see how they rank in that regard. (I personally would ignore the peak scores from before 1970, but kept them because most of them were actually from CAF and didn't want to appear biased even though I would focus on scores after AFC/CAF began regularly competing in the World Cup). Here is the top 10-12 for AFC and CAF combined:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Football_Elo_Ratings.

1- Japan (25 August 2011, 1896 ELO points, #36 highest peak score in the world)
2- Egypt (25 March 1965, 1891 ELO points, #38 highest peak score in the world)
*- [Australia's peak score of 1880 achieved in Dec.1997 around the time of their AFC/OFC WCQ play off loss on away goals to Iran is ignored because at the time Australia was at the OFC not AFC]
3- Algeria (4 June 1963, 1875 ELO points, #41 highest peak score]
4- Ghana (30 October 1966, 1872 ELO points, #42 highest peak score]
5- Ivory Coast (26 Jan. 2013, 1868 ELO points, #43 highest peak score]
6- Cameroon (26 June 2003, 1852 ELO points, #45 highest peak score]
7- North Korea (19 July 1966, 1844 ELO points, #48 ignored because before the 1970s...]
7- South Korea (22 June, 2002, 1844 ELO points, #48 highest peak score shared with N. Korea above]
9- Iran (12 April 2005, 1836 ELO points, #51 highest peak score in the world]
10-- Nigeria (5 June 2004, 1828 ELO points, #52 highest peak score in the world]
11- Morocco (11 March 1976, 1823 ELO points, #53 highest peak score in the world]
*- South Africa (1817 ELO point from 1906 ignored]
12- Senegal (16 June 2002, 1812 ELO points, #55 highest peak score in the world]

 

ELO ranking takes into consideration every single matched played in the history of each team. If a team has a run of bad form they will drop slowly like the US has. It just happens very slowly. For example back in 2014 the US was ranked at 13th. The 2018 cycle was not a great cycle for the US and now they are at 25. Keep in mind these ELO calculations are based on every single result a team has ever had. So things like 2002 V Mexico is still calculated in to the ranking. Same with 2009 at the confed Cup v Spain and Egypt. These things never go away in the ELO system.

Most ELO points for each game for the US are below 20. But in 2009 the US recieved 65 against Spain, 40 for Egypt, and 58 against Mexico in 2002 WC. Ghana received 38 in 2010 from the US. And in 2014 US received 18 from Ghana. US also get decent points when beating Costa Rica and Mexico in WCQ and the Gold Cup. Now they haven’t done well this cycle and they don’t have recent results against these 2 teams, but ELO does not wipe clean previous results. US elo ranking started back in 1916... the US still has 60 points from beating Paraguay back in 1930.

 

Well I see that as a major flaw as I dont see why results from 1930 or whenever should have any say in a current rank. It now becomes clear why certain countries do not do well in Elo.

Also both Elo and FIFA count non FIFA window friendlies and sub regional tournaments which can totally wreck a teams rankings, and here CAF suffers again as Elo and FIFA counts the various homebased tournaments like the CHAN, where teams use entirely homebased squads, and top teams often do not do that well in these tournaments. These tournaments should be listed as official "B matches" and not count at all.

This is another major flaw which scews the rankings off balance.

 

That is a stunningly misleading assertion

J

 

When it comes to ELO points, the correct way to put it is that you win and lose points as you play. None of the prior points disappear as such, but overtime, you are winning and losing points which make the old points basically irrelevant. They haven't been erased but if say 15,000 points are earned and 14,200 points are lost in the interim over the years, its hard to say any points from any particular old match remain.

 

You have answered beside North Korea you couldnt find any.
Indonesia 1938? South Korea 1954? Israel 1970? Australia 1974? Iran 1978? Kuwait 1982? New Zealand 1982? Iraq 1986? South Korea 1986? UAE 1990? South Korea 1990?... then just jump straight into recently?

As you stated Africa began impressive already when it did begin to be represented at the World Cup before that as well as you made it clear CAF wasn't really competing at the World Cup.
Many in which did not participate or boycotted during the 50s & 60s. Ghana as the best of that early 60s team. Egypt for example beat South Korea 10-0 in a competitive match around that period.
Egypt were single representative from Africa the early international era, put up some a decent challenge against the second tier teams from Europe and South America by beating Yugoslavia 4-2, Portugal 2-1, Chile 5-4 including arguably the first shock result in football history by beating first-class team Hungary 3-0, they reached the semi-finals in the Olympic competition before Argentina won by trashing them 6-0. Well, that's was against a truly legendary team, two years later they played the 1930 WC final.

US the best representative out of CONCACAF in the first half of the 20th century. In their first competitive tournament, Uruguay won against them comfortably 3-0. Well, again it was against a truly legendary team, later they have won the 1924 Olympics title, they beat Mexico easily 4-2 in the 1934 World Cup qualifying. At the 1930 World Cup USA impressively won 3-0 over Belgium & Paraguay respectively then reached the semi-finals.
Chile won against them convincingly 5-2 at the 1950 World Cup, yet they're actually a very respectable side by beating England 1-0, an incredible result.

US was replaced by Mexico from CONCACAF since the 1950s and onwards. Mexico slowly improved over the years and started to catch up in South American play before they become about the same level as CONMEBOL 2nd tier teams around the 1960s, they beat Paraguay at the playoff in the 1962 World Cup Qualifying.

You also missed/ignored some valid reasons that I mentioned above.
AFC historically simply haven't had the same challenge as CAF & Mexico versus the top teams (apart from North Korea 1966), otherwise try to prove your case, despite there being far more evidence against it, give us examples?
While I do agree you don't get extra points for pretty football.

And why would the rankings play a major role on this? It may be the wrong direction, you can see a good team or not by watching.

 

I believe if you read my post carefully, it lays out my thoughts and how I see things. People can't always agree (and often disagree) on how to ranks teams they just recently watched in say Wc2018, never mind from a bygone era! Which I suppose makes appealing to rankings a bit more sensible. For what it is worth, I believe that in the 1970s, when I began watching football, the top team from outside of UEFA/Conmebol was actually Iran. If you want, I can explain that further for you, but its not really that significant. I agreed that in the 1980s and until Wc94 at least, the pendulum had clearly swung in CAF's favor and there were no side from the AFC as impressive as the likes of Cameroon or Morocco and others from CAF. But when talking in broad terms, and considering the head-to-head record between CAF and AFC in major competitions, I still believe how I summed it up was accurate enough. That the main distinction between CAF and the AFC isn't the record of their top sides but the number of competitive teams that CAF can boast within its ranks. Put simply, all the evidence to me clearly shows CAF having a lot of depth. The evidence that CAF's top teams are world beaters hasn't yet emerged, even though I am one of those who is holding out hope that one day we will indeed see such evidence emerge clearly. Everyone can see that talent is often there, so its the other things that much be lacking.

 

Wow! Maybe the FIFA rankings aren't so bad...

 

Concacaf has a B tourney as well. It’s common for Mecico and the US to send it’s b players to the B Hild Cup.

Fifas new ranking system attempts to address this ussue. Here is the new weighting for each match...

I: importance of match
I= 05 Friendly matches played outside of International Match Calendar windows

I= 10 Friendly matches played during International Match Calendar windows

I= 15 Group phase matches of Nations League competitions

I= 25 Play-off and final matches of Nations League competitions

I= 25 Qualification matches for Confederations final competitions and for FIFA World Cup final competitions

I= 35 Confederation final competition matches up until the QF stage

I= 40 Confederation final competition matches from the QF stage onwards; all FIFA Confederations Cup matches

I= 50 FIFA World Cup final competition matches up until QF stage

I= 60 FIFA World Cup final competition matches from QF stage onwards

 

i am unsure what you mean by this.

 

So with 48 teams and we have 3 teams in each group.
If Sweden, Iran and Nigeria are in the same group.
Iran beat Sweden with 1-0 and Nigeria beat Iran with 1-0. So the last match is Sweden - Nigeria and lets say Sweden score 2-1 and its 30 min left of the match.
Both Sweden and Nigeria advance and they can play on that result.
Is that a scenarium we can see 2026 ?

 

Why not just have 1 team advance from each group straight to the R16?

 

Yepp i agree or otherwise we are going to see Germany - Austria all over again 2026.
With 48 teams maybe 12 groups with 4 teams in each group and the 4 best runners up advance to the R16.

 

I dont like either we have 24 teams in Euro, better with 32 teams.