The randomish pairings that we will get for the round of 32 will no doubt pit some top teams against each other. However, I'm not sure if 4 days of excitement offsets the 12-14 days when games will not have nearly as much importance associated with them (relative to 32-team group stage with only half advancing). That said, I do expect the 48-team group stage to weed out a lot of the weaker sides. I think the round of 32 will feature something close to the best 32 teams in the world (probably closer than the 32 teams we started with in the 32-team WC era). We have also learned from the expanded Euros that the random assignments in the first KO round leads to some meh matchups in the quarters (For e.g. ENG-GER winner meets UKR-SWE winner ==> a bit anticlimactic) . The brackets lose a bit of balance when you have an odd ball number of teams in a tournament (like 24 and 48). So pros and cons.
Kroenke’s LA Rams stadium pitch too narrow for FIFA matches - will need to remove seats and damages hopes of hosting 2026 World Cup final. (The Times)
We don't know anything about the seeding and KO brackets yet. Those match-ups at the Euro happened because UEFA had a terrible seeding criteria for the draw that placed Germany, France and Portugal all in one group.
The "randomness" in the 32 round knockout won't pit top teams together any more than they do in the 32 team format. In fact it would be less. The problem is more so the poor FIFA rankings than the format. Unequal groups would be more responsible for big teams meeting early on than the format.
Historically, the knockout matchups have been determined by where you finish in the group. A1 plays B2, and so on. So it’s quite possible to end up with two high-powered teams meeting in the round of 32. Say, if Argentina finishes 3rd in their group, they will be matched with a group winner, maybe France? A replay of the final in R32. Also, whole chunks of the bracket can be over- or under-powered. That’s the breaks
But it was just as possible if not MORE possible for that scenario to take place in the round of 16 under the last format. I dont really see the problem. Like I said the bigger problem is the FIFA rankings and the drawing of groups to make them as even as possible.
If a "high powered" team like Argentina finishes 3rd in their group in this expanded world cup then they aren't realistically a great chance of beating a major power in that cycle if they get drawn against one. Finishing 3rd is almost like finishing last in a 32 team cup groups. I would be surprised if more than 1 or 2 of them make the round of 16.
Guadalajara zo Vancouver is kind of a leap... i tbink around 2000 miles am I right. it is almoste like flying from eastcoast to west coast.
sorry, I don,'t get the pussyness that football enacts around matches in heaat at daytime. kids in school have their sports competition in summerheat at daytime. if they can, why not highly paid professionals? also, i nowadays never see any players falling to the pitch outpowered after a match. those, referring to heart attacks shall check those cases. Foe collapsed in the heat of Lyon at daytime but many other cases lime Erikse or puerta had nothing to do with summerheat at daytime. there are also 3xperts mentioning that playing on a hot summer evening after a hot summer day might even be more dangerous as the body already endured a full day of heat, while this is not the case playing every afternoon. Mexico 1986 had calm climates of 23 to 26 degrees in June at around 1 pm. Rhat was not the issue there. The issue was the altitude of mexican cities. with more than 1500m above sea level. That robbed many players the stamina.
Oh great, so now it's 72 games of bloat, just to get rid of 12 rubbish teams. I can't wait. Do people still think all the games will sell out?
I am with you. To me it does not matter. Unfortunately the world has changed and perception wise it may be more wise for FIFA to just lean toward "safety" even if it is just fluff and optics rather than real science. Or the Opening match could be at night so it won't matter much locally, just to the European markets who may not want to stay up late to watch an opening match.
Of course every game will sell out. You know how much of a melting pot and how many people live in the United States? If you are a WC veteran you will know that tickets will be the only thing that matter this time around. Even Burkina Faso vs UAE will sell out.
Yeah, there's enough covered and cool climate stadiums this go round that mid-day outdoor stadiums can be largely avoided. If the Northeast USA experiences a mild June that year there won't be one peep about the temperatures.
One difference is that in the 48-team format you have some group winners meeting other group winners in the R16, while the luckier ones can't play a group winner until the QF. IOW, even if the 2 best teams in the world are appropriately ranked #1 and #2, they could still meet each other in the R16 even if they win all their games up to that point (for example). so, its not all about the quality of the seeding/FIFA rankings. It's unbalanced from the start because 48 is not a power of 2.
They can be avoided, but past practice tells us heat and weather won't be considered when venues and kick off times are decided. Its not just about heart attacks its that you are likely to get a dud of a match if its played in 90-degree heat (as we saw in Brazil when fans couldn't even sit in their seat for some games).
Because we want to see them compete under the best conditions? I mean, just watch any random weekend of Liga MX and you'll see the difference: early Sunday afternoon games being played in slow motion vs. Saturday and Sunday night games.
You could always rig the draw, especially since dividing the knockout bracket into two halves will probably make scheduling easier anyway.
not sure if this was the best decission, but any decission is better than that ridiculous idea with groups of three!! this could also mean more games for mexico (and canada but let’s be honest, noone really cares about games in canada), might even bring a couple of additional stadiums into the play
It's easy to say this when your country makes it to every tournament. Your team is always there, no matter what, so you can sit back and relax and calmly enjoy the experience of supporting your side at the highest level and look dispassionately at all the fun stories you deem interesting whenever the Three Lions aren't playing. Do you think that Panamanians and Trinidadians feel better about qualifying for the world cup once in a century? Do you think they enjoy being relegated to the role of "interesting curiosity" for folks to read about once every few generations? You think that their managing to qualify more than once in a lifetime makes the tournament and their team's accomplishment "less special" to them? I understand it seems less special and interesting to you but do you honestly believe that this is the view held by the actual supporters of those countries, such that they would actually prefer the status quo? As a Jamaican who has seen his senior side qualify once in his just over three decades on Earth, I'm going to answer this one for you (because I know the perspective of these fans well enough to confidently speak to their mindset): no. The status quo is, frankly, trash, and not special at all. More frequent qualification is not only not going to be less special for us (the celebrations and vibes will be excellent every time), but it'll be FAR better for the development of our football as well. If the biggest loss of this tournament is for fans of regular qualifiers to feel less "special" about our sides because they show up more than once in a lifetime? So be it. I wouldn't even count that as a loss (because, let's be honest, these folks could care less about our nations' football anyway beyond as interesting curiosities). And as others already noted, we gain FAR more from expansion. This will raise the floor for football for the vast majority of the world - it is good for the game. As for the quality argument, others have already explained why this is rubbish. Honestly, I'd consider it more valid if we were going to 64 teams. But 48? The vast majority of the additional 16 teams will be at or above the median level of quality - indeed, as @vancity eagle already noted, the added UEFA, CONMEBOL, and CAF teams, combined, could even arguably raise the median quality of the rank and file teams at the tournament. And as for the 4 or 5 teams who are added from CONCACAF and Asia and Oceania that nobody rates or expects anything from? The worst of them will be no worse than Qatar was this time around, and one of them will probably over-perform and become a fun story.
I feel that the expanded World Cup will really benefit CONCACAF. Jamaica, Haiti and Curacao could become standard qualifiers with a competent federation at recruiting dual nationals. A player like Demarai Gray is 26 and never played for England. But in 3 years if that holds true he may as well line up for Jamaica. The odds of him qualifying for a World Cup are pretty high. You can probably make an entire Jamaica starting 11 with just Premier and Championship players who would switch to Jamaica if the task was getting out of a group with El Salvador, Antigua and Cuba.
It's more like 7 extra teams from those 3 regions. Here are the current FIFA rankings of the extra teams that would qualify beyond those that usually do from AFC, C'CAF and OFC. AFC: #60, 68, 70 C'CAF: #61, 64, 74 NZ: #105 And that's if the favorites qualify... Since the expansion is heavily weighted towards these confederations that have less depth than the others, a minimum of 10 UEFA & CONMEBOL teams with a ranking in the top 48 won't qualify. Replaced of course by ~10 teams outside the top 48. Realistically, accounting for upsets in qualifying, every group in the World Cup will have a team outside the top 48 (with only 1 team being eliminated in most groups ). So, you say this argument would be valid if we were going to 64 teams, but we kind of are (at least from a competiveness standpoint).
We have hypotheticals already for a 2026 World Cup, so let's look at them. Start with this one below: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/pots-for-the-2026-world-cup.2124023/ 12-teams pots Pot 1: USA (H) Canada (H) Mexico (H) Brazil Argentina France Belgium England Netherlands Croatia Italy Portugal Pot 2: Spain Morocco Switzerland Germany Uruguay Colombia Denmark Senegal Japan Peru Poland Sweden Pot 3: Iran South Korea Ukraine Australia Wales Tunisia Serbia Chile Costa Rica Cameroon Algeria Nigeria Pot 4: Egypt Ecuador Mali Ivory Coast Saudi Arabia Ghana Qatar Panama Jamaica Iraq United Arab Emirates New Zealand I bolded the 5 AFC, OFC or CONCACAF teams that would have made it to Qatar 2022 had it been a 48 team tournament. You can go ahead and add Qatar as host. So that's a total of 6 teams that, looking at them on paper, we probably would have zero expectations for. A realistic outcome: 2 or 3 will show Qatar 2022 level incompetence, and lose every game by fairly significant margins. 2 or 3 more will show more competence, and probably also walk away without a win but exit with respectable defeats that they were competitive in (and that we didn't hate watching) and maybe a point or two from hard won draws. And one will upset a team or two and overperform and become a nice underdog story for people to talk about in the knockout rounds. That's not a crisis of competitiveness, so I still maintain that the argument is invalid at 48. The vast majority of teams will be capable of competing at a serious level. We'll have 2, maybe 3 brick teams. At 64 teams, we have to add at least another 6 teams from AFC and CONCACAF. 1 or 2 of these will be competent, but at that point, you have the risk of 5 or 6 teams showing Qatar level incompetence, which is when I'd start to buy the argument a bit more.
I don't think Gray is ever going to play for us but it's definitely accurate to note that the prospect of representing Jamaica will become more appealing for top English-Jamaican players when the path to the World Cup gets smoother with expansion. Same goes for Curacao and Haiti, and some of the African countries with large diasporas in Europe. It will make for a much more interesting situation with top dual-nationals - dismissing these countries in your prime is easier when you know they can't offer you regular World Cup berths, but when World Cup appearances are legitimately on the table it's a different story.
I don't think the drop off is going to be as much as some think. Africa is the big winner here. They simply have more than five nations deserving and the expansion will not water down who comes from CAF. Obviously UEFA and CONMEBOL will send teams who won't embarrass themselves. You're left with CONCACAF and AFC. I don't think most of the extra sides will advance, but I don't really think you'll see a lot where you say why is this team even here.