One thing that made me chuckle is increasing the number of CONMEBOL teams to 6 and possibly 7 through playoffs. That means 60-70% of South American countries will be at the 2026 World Cup.
Colombia and Chile who didn't qualify for the world cup because they finished 6th and 7th are better than all the Asian , African and North American teams combined so it's the only logical increase in teams out of all confederations.
I am not disputing that and based on team quality it may well be warranted but it's still a bit funny to see 6/10 or 7/10 nations at the WC. Maybe the confederations need to be shuffled up a bit. Put a few Central American nations into CONMEBOL... CONCACAF currently has 34 teams and CONMEBOL has 10.
You can basically assume that 7 will qualify since the teams in the playoff will be so weak (we are talking #9 in AFC,, #7 in CONCACAF, #10 in CAF, etc.). Yeah, they will probably have to change their qualifying format. In a way its a shame because they have the best format out there atm, but it would become tedious with more than two-thirds of the teams qualifying. Two groups of 5, top 3 qualify directly from each group.
How the first two pots are shaping up for the CL group stage draw. Barca could still end up in pot 1 or pot 2. Not looking like such a big advantage being in pot 1, but still a bit better as you'd expect Chelsea and Dortmund to have weaker teams next season. Pot 1: Barca/EL winner, Bayern, PSG, Porto, City/Liverpool, Real Madrid, Inter/Napoli/Milan, Ajax Pot 2: City/Liverpool, Chelsea, Juventus, Atletico, Sevilla, Spurs/Arsenal, Leipzig, Dortmund/Barca Pot 3 notables: Inter/Napoli/Milan, Benfica, Marseille, Leverkusen Pot 4 notables: PSV, Celtic/Rangers Of course nobody has clinched anything yet so take this with a bucket of salt. But if the second place EPL team wins the CL then they would replace Ajax in pot 1 making the disparity b/w pot 1 and 2 bigger.
Update: Pot 1: Frankfurt, Bayern, PSG, Porto, Man City, Real Madrid, Milan, Ajax/Liverpool Pot 2: Ajax/Liverpool, Chelsea, Juventus, Atletico, Sevilla, Spurs, Leipzig, Barca Pot 3 notables: Inter, Napoli, Dortmund, Sporting CP, Shakhtar Donetsk, Leverkusen, [Marseille, Benfica, Rangers, Dinamo Kyiv?] Pot 4 notables: Celtic [Monaco, PSV?] Frankfurt, Porto and Ajax stand out a bit as good draws from Pot 1. Milan is not too scary. Although, when you recall that we got smoked by Frankfurt this season, one can already see that avoiding Europa League will be a challenge once again, even if we aren't unlucky in the draw. Especially when you consider the roughly 75% odds that we draw a team similar to or better than Benfica from pot 3.