Not in the way I was talking about. If anything, soccer is more vulnerable to teams sitting back and playing for a draw due to its low-scoring nature..
Can you expand on what you mean? I am totally against 2/3 advancing to a 32 team phase and favor 1/3 advancing to R16. I wouldn't mind, however, placement matches for 16-32 among the group runner ups.
For me, just 1 team advancing would make some groups very uninteresting. E.g, if you are Panama grouped with Brazil what chance do you have really? At least with 2/3 advancing, Panamanians can dream for 6 more months (after the draw is made), even if they get grouped with a powerhouse. But I find this discussion interesting. We are all racking our brains trying to make groups of 3 work. Maybe groups of 4 are simply way better?
During the knock-out stages, there are days without any matches and I wouldn't mind filling those with 16-32 placement playoffs for the group runner up teams.
And that's another thing we should be sorting out! In a properly organised tournament the quarter-finals should take place over 4 days, and then you need two or three blank days before and after the semis. Every other day between the opening game and the final should have at least one match.
I guess not many here seem interested in placement playoffs to fill up the days without matches, but I think that would be very good for teams that face an early exit and give fans something to watch and judge teams from different groups who don't advance against such teams in other groups. The results could also give a slightly better gauge for deciding WC allocations and help with ranking teams from different confederations.
You're right, and my mistake - I thought this particular discussion was on the currently anticipated, play-opponents-in-your-own-group fixture
Here’s an idea that came to mind that might make placement matches more appealing: With the expansion of the WC to 48 teams and the possibility of a biennial schedule in the near future, an extensive qualification campaign may be redundant and cumbersome. I propose automatically qualifying the top 24 teams at the WC for the next edition, conditional on the following confederation limits so as to be fair to teams not participating in the WC: Up to 8 from UEFA Up to 4 each from CONMEBOL, CAF, and AFC Up to 3 from CONCACAF OFC is ineligible because only 1 team qualifies automatically from OFC, so it would be unfair to not give other confed members a chance for a full spot If eg 8 teams have already qualified from UEFA, that spot goes to the next eligible team in the overall WC standings. Having done the math that actually only adds up to 23, but whatever.
geez people... what's next? silver cups, bronze cups and the like? give it up... nobody remembers second place, let alone ninth, tenth, etc
For better or worse, I would think many of those 'placement' matches would include players that had not seen any action during the group phase.
Like the third place match, but even more pointless. Imagine a player picks up a 4 month injury in such a game.
If Fifa decides to go ahead with the format 16 groups of 3 with 2 advancing to the knock out stage the World Cup would be a big failure in the future. I will mention 4 things. - The match schedule is hard to make. - The fans will be not knowing what to accept. - Matchfixing like 1982 will be serious an option - A team can go home with only playing 2 matches. Give teams and fans around the world the possibility to get at least 3 matches. I am more of 8 groups of 6. Every team is playing 3 matches by draw or based on the fifa ranking. The only challenge will be the amount of matches. With the 16×3 format you have 48 group matches. The one I mentioned above 72. 32 countries was perfect for most of us. From 1998 we had very good world cups and knock out matches.
I don't know if you watch basketball but they play classification matches at the basketball World Cup and they're pretty soul destroying experiences for the most part. The only incentive is the 24 top placed teams (out of 32) get a place in the Olympic Games qualifiers, where most of them will go on to be eliminated again. I do agree that the three team per group format gives fans following their country the risk of flying halfway across the World for just two matches, but at least they''ll be two meaningful matches. Let's not put fans and players through the humiliation of pretending to be interested in a classification game for 27th and 28th place. Someone further down the thread made the suggestion of the top X ranked teams qualifying for the next World Cup. An interesting idea but the downside is it would devalue the rest of the qualifying process. In a World where television revenue is ever important, I can't see European World Cup qualifying rights selling for as much as they'd need to if France, Germany, England, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium aren't playing.
It also creates a different problem. Say top 1-8 auto qualify from Europe. Now team 9 becomes a big favorite and can win a bunch of qualifying games against mostly weaker teams and gain a bunch of fifa ranking points. Now teams 6, 7, 8 get jumped for the next cycle because they didn't get to play those same weaker teams.
Yeah, that's a good point. But also, knockout tournaments do an awful job of ranking teams. It's purpose is only to find out who the #1 team is quickly. After that, its a mess. For e.g., the quarterfinal draw can simply put the 4 best teams all in the same half of the bracket by chance. That would mean one the lower 4 teams are guaranteed to be ranked #2 at the end of the tournament. Or you could have the bad luck of playing the #1 team in the world in the round of 32, and if you lose you will only be #17 even if you destroy everyone in the classification rounds. IOW, you can win 6 games and lose 1 (maybe even on penalties) and still be ranked #17.
While I have changed my mind regarding the expansion to 48 teams and now welcome it because of the increased participation of non-UEFA teams and I am prepared to accept the 16 groups of 3 teams format, I said a while ago here that the Swiss model which UEFA will use for its men's club competitions (UCC) from 2024/25 is probably a better solution or at least worth exploring. This appears to be what you are suggesting: 8 groups of 6 teams with each team playing 3 matches determined by a draw, as will apply in the UCCs in 2 years' time. For the WC, the top 2 teams in each group would then qualify for the round of 16 where the competition would proceed as it does now giving a total of 88 matches, only 8 more than with the 16 groups of 3 format, and having the following advantages: - every team plays at least 3 matches; - no team has to play more than 7 matches in total; - Every Game Counts (to borrow UEFA's phrase promoting the new UCC fromat from 2024/25) because it is unlikely any team is more likely to be eliminated before their final group match than in the current - and optimal - groups of 4 teams format.
My proposal is that each team's rivals aren't random (which would cause inequalities). My proposal is called cross-pool, where each group has six teams split in two pools, where teams in one pool play teams in the other pool.
FIFA is meeting in Qatar end of March, Diverse Meetings, Final Draw etc … maybe also decission about the host cities, even though I think that has been done already behind their walls and only waiting for good point to be announced. Most interesting decission will be if they put the Final into the roofless stadium, somehow hard to believe in that.
First time that I took the courage to read this thread and it hurts me to read all these formats to fit the 48 teams expansion. They ********ing ruined the WC.
they are doing their best to screw up the whole football. money makes the world go round, sad but true!
So few people realize yet how bad that 16 groups of 3 is going to be or that it's going to be a thing. I think it will be a major story as we approach 2026.
Meanwhile, the players themselves probably won't chime in until the 2026 tournament actually kicks off. But I expect a lot of comments from them when it does, and they won't be positive. As I said before, I expect (and hope) the 3-team groups idea will be buried for good prior to 2030.
The question was always, when were we going to see the 16x3 format in action. FIFA wanted to do it with the youth tournaments, but that idea was shot down... so the first time we'll actually see it play out will likely be next year, with the Leagues Cup in North America expanding to include all MLS and Liga MX teams - 47 in total. We'll see what happens if a group has 1 Mexican side and 2 MLS teams, the latter play each other on the last matchday, and they conveniently land on a scoreline that screws the Liga MX team over