News: FIFA to expand World Cup to 48 teams in 2026, impact upon the USA

I doubt that is going to be structure.

With no Hex needed, they have 30 games in the cycle that have freed up. I think the groupings are going to be much bigger than just 4 teams else many countries will have very few games to play in each cycle.

 

If CONCACAF gets 6-6.5 spots, then a double Hexagonal final round could replace the current semifinal round. Instead of 3 groups of 4, we could have 2 groups of six. Top 3 in each group qualify, and the 4th place teams could be involved in some playoff if necessary.

We could have automatic qualifiers for the final round. Alternatively, we could have a semifinal round with 6 groups of 4 similar to the current structure. The top two teams qualify. A series of playoffs prior to the semifinal round could whittle the pool down to 24.

We'd essentially have the same format right now, just watered down from a competitive standpoint. The final round would be UEFA qualifier-like in competitive distribution.

 

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Do the countries that play in the opening round want to play more games?

Do the countries that enter in the next rounds want to play less games?

How much money does CONCACAF want to make will most likely be the determining factor on how the qualifying goes.

 

It's impressive that FIFA perpetually chooses the absolute dumbest option whenever faced with a decision. Positively impressive.

 

Going by Elo ratings, the best 48 teams currently are in the following confederations:

26 UEFA
10 (sic) COMNEBOL
5 CAF
4 AFC
3 CONCACAF
0 OFC​

The ninth best CAF team is South Africa (61 overall), eighth best AFC is UAE (70), 6th best in CONCACAF is Canada (77). New Zealand is ranked 62

 

Focusing on the bolded... The CONCACAF president announced a few months back that this is what he wanted to do. I'll see if I can find it... Here it is.

It states he wants to overhaul the system...

""Something needs to change because you can't have 85% of your members who are on the outside looking in two years before the World Cup," Montagliani told The Associated Press. "It doesn't make sense.""

Now, the question is does he wait to change it for 2026... and keep the HEX for 2022? or does it change twice?

The other question is if CONCACAF hosts with 3 hosts then the HEX can stay in 2026. 3 spots could go to 3 hosts and the remaining 3 spots could be battled over in the HEX.

My guess is he makes the change for the 2022 cycle, and makes adjustments, if needed, for the 2026 cycle.

I proposed this a while back...

(Top 3 teams get a bye)
Round 1. Bottom 32 teams play 8 Groups of 4. Top 1 team advances.
Round 2. 8 teams from R1 plus reaming 3 teams. 11 Team CONMEBOL style playoff. (not ideal, because 1 team needs to sit in every round)

This will be a total of 26 games for the 8 Round 1 teams that make the 2nd round. Bye teams will play 20 games.
All teams get at least 6 WCQ games per cycle. Hopefully in this format Mexico, US and CR still play each other in the final round.

or maybe something like this (more like Euro style WCQ)...
(Top 2 teams get a bye)
Round 1. Bottom 33 teams play 11 Groups of 3. Top 2 teams advance. eliminates the weakest 11.
Round 2. (2 seeded teams plus the 22 winners) 4 groups of 6. Top 4 teams makes the WC (4 second place teams go to round 3)
Round 3. 1 group of 4. Top 2 advance, and 3rd place team goes to the WC playoff.

Round 1. Would be 4 games
Round 2 . Would be 10 games
Round 3. Would be 6 games

The most a team can play is 20 to qualify the least is 10. One team could play 20 and not make the playoff.
This format will give the 11 weakest teams 4 games every cycle instead of just 1 or 2. The Hex will stay, but their will be 4 Hexes.
The down side is Mexico, CR and US might not play each other in WCQ.

Our 35 team Confed makes it difficult.

 

I don't like having one round last too long, and your first idea would make it last over two years. USA could also have two easy games (a group of 11 would be easier than the Hexagonal) or an easy game and an off matchday in March and leave fans without anything exciting between November and the following June.

With your second idea I don't like having a round requiring 6 games after some teams have finished. If you make the interconfederational playoff dates in November available and play those 6 Round 3 games in September, October, and November, some teams would finish in June about a year before the World Cup. If you use the current FIFA Rankings, with USA in third in CONCACAF, and therefore in the Bottom 33, would you want six matchdays (four games and two matchdays off) for the USA to play two much weaker teams and only need to finish ahead of one of them to advance?

I agree that it's hard to make a qualifying format that gives the bottom teams more than two games, doesn't make some teams play too many games, and avoids games that are very unbalanced like when Mexico beat Dominica 10-0 and 8-0 in qualifying for World Cup 2006.

 

Maybe something like 5 Hexes and one group of 5 with the best 2nd place team going to the playoff. This way the bottom tier get 8 or 10 games instead of 2 or 4. It would cut down on the number of qualifiers for the top and middle teams. Maybe they could then play more friendlies against teams from other confeds.

UEFA has 9 hexes and one group of 5 with the winners qualifying and the top 4 second teams qualifying. In 2026 it will probably be the top 7 2nd places teams qualifying.

 

Maybe this instead to match what UEFA is doing...

(Top 2 teams get a bye)
Round 1. Bottom 33 teams play 11 Groups of 3. Top 2 teams advance. eliminates the weakest 11.
Round 2. (2 seeded teams plus the 22 winners) 4 groups of 6. Top 4 teams makes the WC (4 second place teams go to round 3)
Round 3. 4 teams play a home/away playoff. The losers play in a home/away playoff to determine the WC playoff team

Round 1. Would be 4 games
Round 2 . Would be 10 games
Round 3. Would be 2 games (4 games for the losers)

The first round with groups of 3 are not ideal, but the benefit would be that it gets our region used to playing in this format. On the 2 off days teams can play friendlies.

This still allows the 11 weakest teams to play at least 4 games per cycle. The most a team will need to play to qualify for the WC playoff is 18. 2 teams could qualify with just 10 games. 1 team, the losing Round 3 team, will play 18 games and not make qualify.

 

It's too late for me to edit my previous post, so I'll continue here. If every team gets to play in a group stage, you have one of these things I don't like:

1. Teams having to win a group of four before the top teams enter. That's what CONCACAF did in World Cup 2014 qualifying. An example would be 4 teams starting in the Round of 12, with the other 31 playing in 7 groups of 4 and 1 group of 3. I don't think the fifth best team should have to play six more games (with some of them very easy) than the fourth place team has. There would also be teams that knew they wouldn't advance a round of they were grouped with Honduras or Trinidad and Tobago, making the luck of the draw a big deal.

2. Two group stages before the top teams enter. An example would be having 31 teams playing in 7 groups of 4 and 1 group of 3, with 2 teams each advancing to 4 groups of 4, with 2 teams each joining the Top 4. This would give more teams a chance to advance a round, but the top teams would have a long time between a World Cup and the start of qualifying for the next one if there had to be 12 matchdays before the top teams entered.

3. Too many weak teams in a group stage. There could be a first group stage with some teams with byes and about half the teams in it advancing to a second group stage with 20 or 24 teams, but the top teams would have some games be too easy.

 

This is an option, but it obviously makes it so US, Mexico and CR never play in WCQ. Also there are some really weak teams and most of the games will be meaningless. Here is a hypothetical group....
USA rank 30
Guat rank 79
Nicaragua rank 118
Puerto Rico rank 145
Barbados rank 154
Cayman Islands rank 201
It could come down to teams like US and Guatemala seeing how many goals they can score versus teams like Cayman Islands, Barbados & Puerto Rico. Assuming US and Guat destroy the rest of these teams. It will almost become a home and away playoff between the top 2 teams, in this scenario US and Guat.

 

The bottom teams may want more games, but would they want 10 games? Could they afford to travel to 5 away games? I don't like having every team start in the same round. Some people complained about the field quality at Estadio Rommel Fernandez, and there would be a lot more of that if the top teams had to go to more countries without many people. UEFA has all teams start in the same round because they have Euro qualifying, making them have much fewer matchdays for WCQs than CONCACAF has. CONCACAF had 10 WCQ matchdays for 2018 before Euro 2016. With the additions of Gibraltar and Kosovo to make 55 teams, UEFA now has all hexes. For World Cup 2022 they will have Russia in qualifying, so they will need to add 4 matchdays to make one group have 7 teams (which I don't think they will do) or go up to 10 or more groups. 11 groups of 5 would have all the groups have the same amount of teams, but would 4 out of 11 second place teams go to playoffs, or would there be two playoff rounds? Having 4 out of 11 second place teams go to playoffs would make it a lot more complicated to do qualification and elimination scenarios.

The amount of games is reasonable. In terms of how many teams are in the last group stage, I would prefer no more than 20, but there are problems with that. If the top teams started in a Round of 20, they would have to play 6 games in groups of 4, 8 games in groups of 5, or 18 games in groups of 10. The ideal amount of games is between 8 and 18. 3 groups of 6 might provide a reasonable amount of games, but how would it get down to 18 teams? Having 1 team get a bye and 34 teams compete for 17 spots would be strange, and a group stage wouldn't work well to go from 34 teams to 17 teams. If you have two group stages requiring 6 games each and the last group stage requiring 10 games, teams could play 22 games, which I think is too many.

In terms of how many teams get byes, I wonder what the fewest teams any confederation has given byes to is. One possibility is OFC. Other than that, AFC has given 5 teams byes, and the fewest I can think of is when 4 teams started in the Semifinals of World Cup 2002 qualifying (which was complicated with separate paths at the beginning for UNCAF and CFU).

If there was a great way of structuring qualifying, maybe CONCACAF wouldn't have had the last five World Cups (including 2018) use four formats for the rounds before the Semifinals. I'm not trying to be mean. I don't know if there is a format I would like.

 

It will be interesting to see what CONCACAF comes up with after consulting with all the federations.

 

2 Hexes. Top three qualify from each.

 

How do you narrow 35 teams down to 12?

Keeping in mind the confed president wants more games for the weaker teams.

 

Head to head matchups with some byes to get it to 24. 6 groups of 4. Top 2 advance.

 

Doesn't fulfill the more matches for weaker teams with head to head matchups.

 

The whole thing is ridiculous. C-BOL is going to be sending over half of its teams already, and the 7th is going to play a mini-tournament with the likes of Tahiti, Jordan, Zambia & Nicaragua.

What sort of incentive are teams going to have in South America to play with their stars, if basically 70% of them will make it? By rights the whole confederation should be in the WC, but that's not the point.

 

If CONMEBOL had 6 automatic spots and played on the same months as they do now, it might be possible to clinch qualification in November over a year and a half before the World Cup. Other than CONMEBOL magically adding more countries, it's something we have to deal with. I disagree with your last sentence. I don't think Bolivia and Venezuela deserve to qualify. The CONCACAF playoff team would be seventh, so it would be better than Nicaragua, who hasn't been making the Semifinals of WCQ. Two of the playoff teams would be eliminated before the top two teams enter, so Tahiti would probably be eliminated before they could face a CONMEBOL team if that team had a better FIFA Ranking than teams from worse confederations.

 

Yea. It does. 12 more teams in a group of 4 and 6 more teams in a hex. Maybe I'm missing something here. Do you think Curaçao being in a hex doesn't qualify as a weaker team getting more meaningful matches?

 

Bolivia and Venezuela are both in the Top 48 for a reason. They look weak in the region, but when they play outside it, they look quite decent. In a 48-team World Cup, you're going to see several teams weaker than those two.

 

2018 WCQ the top 6 teams made it through to the Hex and will play 16 matches.
The weaker teams went as follows:
13 teams played 2 matches
7 played 4
5 played 6
4 played 8.

 

I took it with more matches for all of the weaker teams not some.

 

This is for CONCACAF

 

Ok you can have groups of 4 or 3 to get to 24.