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

wow yes... i forgot about that... but like boca said... there is no chance to make it better with that format.

 

They should do geographic divisions. One thing to keep in mind is that not all regions will have the same amount of stadiums and the stadiums host 2, 3, or 4 Group Stage games. If you want a group to play entirely within a region, you need to put southern California and/or Texas with Mexico. Furthermore, if teams have to play far apart they should give that travel to teams who have the middle matchday off. That schedule makes the second place team from Group A play in the Round of 32 in Mexico on 3 days rest after playing Canada unless the second place team had the last matchday off.

The Group Stage normally lasts 15 days, so 13 days would be a decrease.

 

OK you.ve covered most already but just for clarity I thought I'd add a little. The bold part is where you went wrong as it would be Netherlands that played Colombia while Russia got Trinidad. That would lessen the perceived unfairness quite a bit.

The basic mechanic of that kind of seed/draw means that the teams is divided after strength into 3 pots and teams then gets to play an opponent from each pot in the group-stage. So even with teams playing different opponents (which I'm not a big fan of) it is still a pretty fair draw.

Yea the 48 teams/16 groups abomination we seem to be getting is just a car crash of an idea. But that's what you get when political power plays takes precedence in the decision making process.

 

Not sure I see much of your issue tbh. Croatia, Spain and Switzerland had performed pretty much the same in the last few years of WC and Euros (if anything Spain had done the worst) and while Peru hadn't been to a WC recently they had done well in the Copa instead. They probably should have been in a lower pot but most people expected a lot better performance from them so it wasn't totally unreasonable.

Serbia and Panama being in the same pot isn't much to say about, the quality of the teams in the worst pot will always vary wildly simply because they can't go any lower and the drop off in quality at the bottom can be quite steep. You could possibly argue that Serbia should have been one pot higher but they hadn't performed that well in the last few WC/Euros so not a big issue IMO.

Poland being the obvious outlier of course as they where way to highly ranked after having gamed the ranking-system for a few years. Of course them (and Wales and some more) doing that played a big part in forcing FIFA to change the ranking-system.

Somewhat of an issue but not that big IMO. You have to make the draw at some point and the longer you wait the bigger issues you get in other areas (travel, fans and so on). And it's not like the teams play that many competitive games after the draw is made anyway so there would be little difference with using a later ranking.

 

Its seems like sort of a big issue to me if Team A gets to play Panama while Team B has to play Serbia, while Team B must fight to finish above Team A as they are in the same group. I mean, even if they do their job and beat Serbia, they are still at risk of missing out of advancing due to inferior goal difference because they didn't get to play Panama while others in their group did.

 

While the error with the switching is true, that's pretty much irrelevant. The point is that in this schema, Team A plays Team B and Team C while Team B plays Team A and Team C (that's the first two game bit). We can easily imagine that Team A and Team B draw and get exactly the result against Team C.

Currently (if a group of 4), Teams A and B also play team D - and will be ranked according to their result against them (and them maybe something else if necessary).

However, you are suggesting that Team A plays Team D and Team B plays Team E and they will effectively be ranked (and quite possibly who advances and who goes home will be decided) by those results against different teams.

Now, I'm sure you have done your best to ensure that Team D is like Team E, but - no matter how good you are at that - eventually someone will get a good Team D and someone will get a sucky Team E (and, lets be clear, it actually doesn't matter if Team D is good and Team E is sucky, what matters is that people feel that Team D is great and Team E isn't).

My question is - How do you justify that difference to the fans of teams and to the media who will be aggrieved by the difference. And how do you argue it's better than a group of 3 system where this problem doesn't occur.

And, remember, you have to make this argument even before the matches occur, and even if you personally think that the other person's view of Teams D and E is insane.

J

 

I prefer groups of 3 to having some third place teams advance. Last year the BBC was wrong about a tiebreaker. They showed a Japan fan's phone and said his phone was biased when his phone was right and the BBC was wrong. If you try doing scenarios with 12 groups of 4 and 8 of 12 third place teams advancing, there will be enough confusion and mistakes about tiebreakers that millions of people somewhere could be misled, not to mention the players and coaches. Furthermore, it's simple and fair to have every Round of 32 game between a first place team and a second place team. If the Round of 32 had 12 first place teams, 12 second place teams, and 8 third place teams; 8 of 12 first place teams would get to face third place teams while 4 would face second place teams; and 8 of 12 second place teams would face other second place teams while 4 would face first place teams. It would be annoying for teams and fans if they played their last Group Stage game and didn't know if they would advance or know that they advanced but had no idea where their next game would be. Especially in 2016 in North America, the sites will be spread out so it would be a bad idea for a team to end the Group Stage not knowing where they would play next. It would also be harder to keep teams from the same group apart in the Round of 32 and Round of 16 if groups could have 3 teams advance, and it would be harder to make a knockout round bracket giving every team sufficient rest after their last Group Stage game without making the World Cup last too long.

 

I updated the Twin Pool System and tried to apply it to a 28 day time frame and it worked well.

Is it possible to have a 48 team World Cup already at #Qatar2022 within 28 days from 21st of November until 18th of December?

Yes it is! Each team will have at least 2 rest days between back-to-back-matches. More on the "Twin-Pool-System", which is the base for this coming soon! pic.twitter.com/hybdN9bfBn

— laenderspiel.tv (@laenderspiel_tv) January 23, 2019

every team has minimum of 2 rest days between back to back matches and the maximum is 6 throughout the group phase.

the only unpleasant thing is, that 8 stadia are not sufficient to cope with a 48 team world cup, but ok, that is another topic, the inclusion of u.a.e. if the number of stadia are updated to 12, there is always at least 1 'rest day' for the pitches.

 

here is the schedule

 

Plus the quality within the groups, on average, would be pretty low making it even more ridiculous to have some third-place teams advance.

That's why the least-awful format for a 48-team tournament for me is to have 24 teams advance from 12 groups of 4. 8-best group winners get a bye to round of 16.

 

then you have 8 matches for those teams playing a round of 32 match and it might be a far too long gap between the end of the group phase and the round of 16 for those 8 teams, somewhere between 10-12 days... so finishing in this top 8 might more or less be a disadvantage.

the quality within these groups of 4 is also questionable.

But if you really want 12 groups of 4 teams, let's have only 16 teams advancing to the round of 16. this is more competitiv and would mean, that you are propably out with 1 win, 1 loss and 1 draw and not propably in the knock outs with 1w, 1loss, 1 draw.

 

what also can be done - but this is really revolutionary - would be to have the 1st and 2nd of 12 groups advancing. the 24 teams are divided into 8 groups of 3. those 3 have a 135 minute three halfs match where each team is playing each other for 45 minutes only.

the winner of this triple halfs match is advancing to the quarter finals.

this would lower the rest day risk and when the loser if the 1st triple half is playing the 3rd team in the 2nd half, you can raise the suspense and meaningworthiness of the 3rd half to the maximum.

but ok, we know this is too futuristic, but what PSO after group matches then, which are planned in the fifa chosen group phase.

however the amount of matches is acceptable 72 + 4 + 2 + 2 = 80 plus 8 triple halfs matches.

btw, the amount of matches for the system with a round of 16 after 12 groups of 4 is not handable as this would result in a total of 104 matches.

 

I would say somewhere between 8-10 days. But you have that anyway in the 16 groups of 3 format. At least the break comes at a good time - midway through the tournament. You won't have teams play 1 measly match and then have a 9 day break.

Definitely not a disadvantage to get the bye.

yeah, my issue with that is if you get a France or Brazil in your group you basically have no chance to advance. They could get in as one of the best second-place teams, but being one of the best 4 out of 12 would be difficult - might not even make it with 6 points. I rather see teams advance with 1w,1l,1d than see teams get eliminated with 2 wins and 1 loss to France.

With 12 groups, not every group will have a top team in it so its just completely unfair to teams that draw France, Germany, Brazil, etc.

 

You are confusing the issues which makes for poor comparisons.

Firstly, to get team A and B in the same group then you'd have to be using the system @Gibraldo suggested and that would mean you use the old system of seeding on a new system of draw. And the mixing of two systems makes for a poor comparison.

Secondly you have gotten stuck on Panama. The lowest pot will always have the biggest difference in quality and thus someone will always get the luck of the draw from that pot, nothing to do about that (unless you make a rule that teams at Panamas level and lower aren't allowed at the WC).

If you want to make a point about the injustice of Serbia being in Pot 4 then you need to compare them to the teams ranked slightly ahead that ended up in Pot 3, teams like Iran and Senegal. And going on performance over the last few years (and the WC) it is no big injustice that Serbia was ranked the lowest of those 3 teams.

 

Firstly, no need to be so heavy with the "you", I didn't suggest that system (that was @Gibraldo ) nor am I in any way associated with those behind that twitter account. I'm simply commenting on their suggestion the same as anyone else.

Yep, that's the basic premise of their proposed system, not all teams in a group will face each other or even the same teams. Which I said above I'm not a big fan of.

No, actually not. Team D and Team E will NOT be of equal quality, that's one of the key features of the system suggested by @Gibraldo .

Team D is meant to be of equal quality of Team A and Team E should be equal to Team B. But Team A and B will not be of the same quality just as Team D and E will not.

If fans/media will accept it or not I can't say, usually they are too stuck in their own bias to allow for facts or actual fairness get in the way of a good moan. But the basic principle is fairly easy to explain.

Under the proposed system Team A will be a top ranked team, Team B will be a middle ranked team and Team C will be a bottom ranked team. They would then be joined by Teams D (top ranked), E (middle ranked) and G, which you didn't mention, (bottom ranked).

Team A's matches would be against a top team (D), a middle team (B) and a bottom team (C).
Team B's matches would be against a top team (A), a middle team (E) and a bottom team (C).

So while they wouldn't play exactly the same opponents they do play against equal quality opponents.If that's not enough for them then I'm not going to feel sorry for them.

 

also as mentioned before ... this is nothing new in other sports. in american football the 32 teams aren't playing each other every regular season which covers 16 match days. the teams play every team in their division and the other opponents are assigned by an logical formula which focusses on the equality of opponents' strength. the proposed twin pool system is quite similar.

 

A bye in the Round of 32 is better than a bye during the Group Stage. Your idea would make it complicated to make a bracket and have teams and fans know in advance where their Round of 24 and 16 games could be, and I can't decide how complicated it would be without a sample bracket that works with all 495 combinations of 8 of 12 group winners getting byes. Furthermore, by ranking the winners to decide who gets byes, teams could play their last Group Stage game knowing they advanced but have to wait 3 more days to know if they got a bye. Managers would have to prepare for their Round of 24 and 16 opponents on short notice. To conclude, I prefer the Round of 32 that will happen over the alternatives in this topic, and I prefer your proposal over having 12 groups of 4 with 8 third place teams advancing.

Only 2 of the 16 games are based on the previous season's standings.

 

Not really following the Asian Cup, but both the UAE and Qatar won today, over Australia and South Korea, respectively. Hopefully this portends better things to come for Asia's lesser sides. We need these teams to improve if we want to maintain some semblance of quality at a 48-team tournament.

 

i dont see any reason why a 48 team tournament should be less competitive than the strength up to 2018.

if you just look who just did not male the cut in 2018, sides like the US, italy, the netherlands, wales, algeria, chile or scotland then i really dont panic about that.

 

we will see. every world cup had its humiliations but those weren't only teams from those confeds.

1986 hungary or uruguay
1994 greece (0-12 goals)
1998 bulgaria
2006 serbia-montenegro

as panama is often mentioned here...there performances vs. tunisia and belgium were really ok.

 

If we are to have 48 teams at the World Cup, I prefer 8 groups still but with 6 teams in each group. The top 2 to the R-16 and no 3rd place teams advancing. I know that makes the group stage a bit longer and more like a qualifying campaign, but that is fine in my book. I am, in fact, in favor of having intercontinental qualifiers and greater opportunities for teams from different confederations playing one another. But if you really wanted to avoid having too many group games, you could still accomplish that by making the first group matches a knock out round between the the 4 lowest ranked sides in each group (3rd seed v 6th seed; 4th seed v 5th seed). The winner of these 'wild card' group games would then join the two top seeds and play one another for points in a typical group format.

 

Even among the “Big 5” that usually qualify for WC through AFC, at least 2 are usually awful when they get to the WC Finals. So doesn’t say much, imo, that the Asia Cup semis involve teams outside the Big 5. Especially factoring in that UAE is host.

Also, The Asian cup historically produces more unpredictable results, and then when AFC WC qualifying roles around its the usual suspects at the top.

 

Serbia doesn’t belong on that list. In a group of death they lost two games narrowly, including in somewhat dodgy fashion to the best team in CAF.

Come to think of it, neither does Bulgaria. We are talking about uncompetitive teams not all teams that finish in last place.