I also think you risk arriving at the final weekend with overly fatigued players if you force them to play 8 games.
- 12 groups - 4 team groups - top 2 advance Playoff matches until there are 3 teams left. The three final teams meet each other and after that we have a winner. Minus - 9 matches for the final teams - No real final. - Plus some other problems with a three-team final
I approach this question from the beginning. The decision to expand was taken in 2017 for three principal sporting reasons: - to diversify the final competition field more; - to widen the opportunity to qualify to more teams; - make qualifying games more meaningful by giving more teams a more realistic opportunity to qualify. The obvious disadvantage is that we know there is a significant risk of a reduction in terms of the quality of games with a 50% increase in the final competition field. If you maintain the KO stage as it is now and expand the group stage by increasing the 8 groups from 4 to 6 teams with each team playing 3 games against 3 of the other 5 teams in their group (Swiss model) and with the top 2 teams qualifying for the KO stage, you achieve all of the objectives by: - not undermining the integrity of the competition because the MD3 games can all be played at the same time; ,- allowing every team to play at least 3 games; - maintaining a maximum of 7 games for the semifinalists; - encouraging attacking soccer because at least 2 wins would likely be required to qualify.
Yep.....the reality is that the additional teams from CONCACAF and Asia are going to be really crappy. There is nobody really worthy of a world cup spot in CONCACAF once you get past Canada/Costa Rica, and they both were horrible this time around. Same thing with Asia.....the next highest finishers in qualifying were UAE, Iraq, and Oman. FIFA is just hoping that China is good enough to qualify, but they may not be even with the expanded field. Whereas Europe, Africa, and South America all have enough top-end depth to fill their additional spots with competitive teams. They should really have allocated 20 spots to UEFA, 10 spots to Africa, 8 spots to South America, 5 spots to Asia, 4 spots for CONCACAF, and the last spot for the intercontinental playoff.
your first argument, that watering of the quality by extending to 48 teams seems a bit odd in a world cup where Tunisia beats France, Cameroon beats Brazil, Saudi Arabia beats Argentina, Japan beats both Germany and Spain and Morocco beasts Belgium. and for your format... it is the best....and yet fair....based on the seedings all 6 teams will face opposition with a pot strength that is fair for the pot which they come from themeelves. e. g. a pot 1 team plays pot 4, 5 and 6 a pot 6 team plays pot 1, 2 and 3.
CONCACAF will represent well in 2026 though assuming Honduras, El Salvador or maybe Guatemala sneaks in. The support for those teams would be amazing in any US stadium assuming they get drawn into that Country. Any team playing one of those teams in the US or even Canada will feel like they are playing in Central America.
If "home advantage"couldn't help Tunisia, Qatar, Iran ? I doubt it would help the likes of Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala, who won't even be seeded, and would pretty much all be bottom seeds. Keep in mind the US is a unique place that has populations of many ethnicities who can show up in large numbers for many teams. I wouldn't expect a decent showing from concacaf beyond US, Mexico, and Canada.
I understand the concern, but I think 12 groups of 4 with a playoff round before the Round of 16 would be okay.
It is certainly better than a truncated group stage. The group stage is the best part of the WC, everyone who has qualified is involved and dreaming of great things to come, however improbable. To truncate that is the equivalent of vandalism.
So Qatar and Costa Rica did not belong in the world cup. It is ok for there to be 1-2 whipping boys, it makes things interesting. But with 48 team format there will be like 5-10 of them.
I checked, how a wild card stage might be introduced without exceeding the tournament phase and the break for the teams advancing to the round of 16 directly. with this schedule, the shortest break between back to back matches is 2 days while the longest break is 6 days (Group C, 5th and sixth match to the round of 16 match 3 and 4 for the best winners of the group cluster ABC. it will be quite tough for the teams of the Yekini Cluster. Ah and yes, maybe you wonder about the cluster names. I wanted to have honorable names for former world cup stars as a memory to them. Those clusters would be then renamed for the world cups after 2026 again.
I see it as a reward that with all the discussions raised like people like us, the 16x3 is more or less dead. But I assume also, that FIFA recognized, that parallel last group matches is something that provides drama and shall be kept. Despite i am more in favor of twin pool 48, i think that FIFA won't risk a having a format that is a bit more complex and difficult to understand for the typical fan. however, a 8 match wild card stage with the 12x4 format is also providing lots of drama. I also do not see an issue for some teams having potentially 8 matches then until being crowned as world champs. With every increase it is normal that more matches might have to be played.
12 groups of 4, top 2 advance. Give the 8 best finishers a bye. Then if a team wins their first two matches and has already qualified (like Brazil and France this year), they still have motivation to try in their third match, which also makes it more fair to the other teams in the group.
Yes, the potential for causing confusion among many fans is of course a reason not to use the Swiss model, although by 2026 we would have had 2 full seasons using it in the UEFA club competitions. Nevertheless, we all know that many people who watch the WC do not necessarily follow club soccer that much, leaving the possibility of them being perplexed by a format which does not involve a round-robin.
and with the swiss format even on the best match allocation, one team might be eliminated as 3rd placed team of a group of six... despite winning 2 matches and having 1 draw (7 points) just because of a worse goal dif. that is really tough and if such things occur, people moght criticize the format.
What about a different version using the Swiss model which would make it more comprehensible and familiar: simply replicate the UEFA club competitions format at the WC? 48 teams all ranged together in a single table (league stage), each team plays 3 different opponents (3 games per team), and at the conclusion of the league stage the highest 16 ranked teams qualify for the KO stage, while the bottom 32 are eliminated. The KO stage would not change with the exception that the team ranked 1st in the league stage plays the team ranked 16th in the Round of 16, the team ranked 2nd plays the team ranked 15th, etc, giving an incentive to teams to finish as high as possible in the league stage table.
The draw could could be made by dividing the 48 teams into 4 pots of 12 teams each based on the FIFA ranking, with each team playing its 3 matches against one team from each of the other 3 pots. For example a team from pot A would play one team each from pots B, C and D, a team from pot B would play one team each from pots A, C and D, etc.
while i agree with the general approach, this can't be realized IMHO because of scheduling. It works with the UCL, because all the 16 matches in a 32 team UCL league are played in parallel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. With 16 groups at a world cup, you will have 3 or 4 calerndar days over which the final matches span. then you want also to span the 8 round of 16 over another 3 to 4 days. How you like to avoid that for example the schedule defines the 8th ranked plays the 9th ranked on Day 1 of the Round of 16, but by "bad luck" the 8th had its final group match 4 days ago while the 9th had it just yesterday? I guess a rest of 2 days between matches is an absolute minimum for a team. Other issues I have is that - if you spread the last group matchdays over multiple calendar days - teams of later groups (like JKL) already exactly know what to play for in order to reach the knock out stage, while those who had already finished the group stage are sitting and watching. or you have all last group matches in parallel which would be not favored, considering we then will not notice all the dramas we attended over the last week at WC 2022. Forming clusters ABC to JKL in my proposal for Triple Group Wild Card 48 had the only goal to slice the cake to make it more manageable tournament schedule wise.
Only way to do 16 groups of 3 1st places goes into 32 team knockout. 2nd and 3rd place play another 3rdgroup stage game to determine the other 16 teams going to 32 team knockout This creates need to top group and makes every game meaningful even point differential, so teams can't really play for draw or park bus.
But that could enable a team which lost both its GS games to qualify for the Round of 32 by winning a playoff. I think that situation would be viewed very unfavourably.