64-Team World Cup Tournament is a Good Idea

Way ahead of you brother.

Look at last year's 48-team u17 WC: MAR clapped NCL's cheeks 16-0 just so MAR could progress as third-best in its group. That's the "high quality" matches we will get at the Senior level with post-expansion mediocre teams joining a *global party*.

I truly believe that 48/64/128-team WC expansions are fueled by ROW fans' need for UEFA validation. They won't invest in grassroots football at all. They would rather pack their squads full of ex-UEFA players, just for a chance of being spanked at the world stage by a UEFA squad.

The undeserved entitlement for a WC slot is what Infantino has managed to exploit so well: yeah fellas, everybody is welcome for a proper UEFA spanking. Make sure to re-elect me next March 2027.

 

Yet, URU women's team remains 8th of 9 in round-robin qualifiers for 2027 WWC. Not a dig against URU, but another reason why Conmebol won't benefit from merging with Concacaf.

Conmebol's true strength remains, in men's football, its youth development. Its double round-robin qualifiers provides WC strength only when ~50% advance. Once you have +65% advance, its competition dynamics changes : just beat BOL+VEN to earn a WC slot.

Conmebol's 2026 qualifiers became the worst in total goals scored, ever. Not surprising, when you know you just gotta show up to 18 matches and avoid placing 8th of 10.

 

Just making sure that I’ve understood: you meant that subpar nations will simply try to bring ex-UEFA players in their starting 11 instead of working on themselves to improve? I’ve heard that the Emirates did something similar.

If that’s correct then I don’t like it but I think you may be right about some, but even if some countries did so, and brought UEFA players just to get spanked by UEFA teams, their population would still be my main focus, they would support their countries during the competition and it would go nuts!!

The one thing I fear is FIFA making it harder and harder to actually attend the matches for most people, we’ve seen the insane 2026 prices, if tht trend goes on, then we will lose most of the atmosphere around the matches as only rich people could get their tickets…

 

No way the combined AFC/OFC deserves three more spots than UEFA at the World Cup.

 

Well if we go by who deserves, then UEFA would have like more than half the spots, I’d rather give every world area its own share, I mean, Asia is huge already, add Oceania to it and yes the level is quite low compared to many other continents, but there are many people xD

If we really wanted the best 48, 64 or whatever number of nations in the WC, making worldwide qualifiers would be best
But travel time, big oof haha

 

48 is number-wise a perfect fit concerning the quality but even. nowawaday we have 2 or 3 small teams like we had in every world cup so far.

with 64 we will have much more teams like the quality of Suriname or New Caledonia also included.

I understand the cons mentioned with 3rd placed teams but the format, I once proposed is a much better fit for 48 teams. I call it the "triple group wild card 48" format

1) still 12 groups with 4 teams
2) 4 divisions of 3 groups (ABC, DEF, GHI, JKL), the triple groups are defined and name the divisions after late football stars like Pele Maradona etc, changing every 4 in the next edition.
3) Only winners and runners-up in the groups advance to knock outs (24 teams)
4) There is a half round of 32 (wild card round) with 16 teams playing out 8 winners that join the 8 bye teams from the group stage in the round of 16.
5) 3 simple, easy to comprehend allocation rules for a division (3 group winners and 3 runners-up) are:

• top 2 group winners get a bye to the round of 16
• worst group winner faces runner-up of best group winners group, in divisional wild card match 1
• other 2 runners-up meet in divisional wild card match 2

some noteworthy side effects:

1) 8 matches less at the knock out stage (96 in total)
2) 6 parallel matches in each division on the last matchdays of the group stage produce a lot of drama as every goal count for the "placement" in the knock out stage
3) so from 3 groups from a division, 2 will deliver a round-of-32 match and the winner face a team of the 3rd group in the round-of-16 match - and this will happen in parallel on the other side of the bracket.

This has the effect, that two teams of a group stage will not meet again until the world cup final.

sounds smart. well right. has a bit of UCL flaw when it comes to the knock out phase, doesn't it. however, my design is around 5 years old already, so it was there before Zlatan and Ceferin "invented" the new UCL format.

 

I really do not get the people complaining about minnows and lopsided matches.

Just don't watch those games. Problem solved.

 

I like the idea of minnow playing big teams and doing a david v goliath, but there are too many david vs david matches then.

plus, 64 teams = 24 more group matches = 128 matches in total!

the problem is also that you cannot have more than 4 matches per day if you do not want to have two matches at the same time without any need. so with 16 groups, each matchday across all groups will durate 8 days, so it is a 8 day break for each team until they play their 2nd group match. this break is much to long to get into a tournament flow. tournament structure is not so easy with 16 groups.

maybe a solution might be, to have the UCL group stage format implemented here.

8 leagues of 8 teams. Each team has 3 matches in its league and top 4 qualify but this is still a bit awe when a team with 6 points in league A does not progress as 5th placed and another in league B does progress with 4 points at 4th placed.

 

Yeah, pretty much. I personally don't like the "wild-card" or playoff round as it just creates a lull in the middle of the tournament. We see that with the UEFA Champions League.

But there are several simple formats that can be used with 48 teams that avoids the problem we have with the pre-historic format that FIFA currently uses. Some even enable more clashes between 2 top teams earlier in the tournament, which could help with engaging more casual followers of futbol from start to finish.

 

Maybe I want to watch Spain v Japan/Germany/Costa Rica way more than not watching Spain v New Caledonia/Jordan/etc. Its not that complicated to get this side of the argument.

 

17 or 18 teams from 54 UEFA members would be too much, but 19 teams from 57 AFC/OFC members (who are much worse on average than UEFA teams) makes sense somehow? Unless you're just trying to somehow increase the probability of getting China/Indonesia/India in, I don't get the logic here.

Are you just going by population numbers?

 

Then do not watch those games.
It is not complicated to get that either.

 

I guess the additional knockout round compensates for it to some degree, but to be clear it's not just that there are some additional crap group stage games, it's also that there are necessarily fewer group stage games between quality teams in order to make more room for said crap games.

 

Then start watching in a Round of 32 like the previous 32 team World Cups.

 

My logic is as simple as it can get, I want a World Cup to feel like a World Cup, and not UEFA/CONMEBOL Cup.
I want to see the magic of countries from everywhere in the world going against each other, even if some are way better than others!

If your numbers are correct, Asia has more nations, then be it! Have more play in the biggest stage, no matter their level.

It’s all fine, in the latter stages the best will remain anyway.

I think you guys don’t like the idea of a group stage where the matches feel less competitive, with seeded big nations trashing small ones, right? I understand that, but that’s not how I see things myself, I’m there for the party xD On top of that there are always upsets of some kind, it was true in a 32 nations WC, it will be true in a 48 and beyond. You may not see as often football giants fall apart in the group stage already, but some will once in a while, some will fall in early knockout stages, etc.

That’s my logic, I want to see many different countries, upsets, and the big latter stages matches, there’s a bit of everything, it’s awesome!

Once again, if I want to see pure, top football nonstop, I watch UEFA Champion’s League. Club football is where it’s at for performance, International football to me is something else, so my expectations are different.

 

I had done a schedule as well and the break between MD3 and the Rof16 for the bye-passing 8 teams is not longer than between MD1 and MD2 or MD2 and M3 (around 5-6 days and still a minimum of 3 days break between back to back matches for those involved in the wild card matches)

 

I'm not saying it is complicated. I totally get that to some people the more the merrier.

But there's another side of the argument that pretty easy to understand also.

 

True. But I never understood that side of the argument because that side seems to be always wrong.
People were probably saying that 24 teams was too much back in the day. Same for 32. Expansion does bring us some ugly matches but it also brings us more good matches between teams with different styles and strategies.

 

The World Cup is not based on population numbers lol.

 

Yeah, I dunno. For some reason having a long break b/w game is easier to digest earlier in the tournament. Its hard to explain. I wasn't against the playoff round in the CL until I watched it being implemented. Now that I see it, I find it a bit uninteresting.

 

side fact:

I was checking the outcome of 1st v 3rd between 1986 and 1994 at world cup Rof16 matches:

1986: Belgium (3rd) won against USSR (1st) = 33%
1990: Argentina (3rd) won against Brazil (1st) = 33%
1994: no 3rd place winner.

so the chances were 2 from 12. thought it was closer

 

City vs Real and the winner to face Bayern is a bit uninteresting? ;-)

 

The difference between us is that I respect your opinion but you don’t respect mine and try to sum it up using shortcuts I don’t use. I don’t care about population numbers, I care about the different countries, with their own supporters and culture.

But that’s fine, I knew I would get such replies when I first wrote my opinion

EDIT: Forgot to quote, whoops.

 

You forgot Italy v Nigeria, 1994.

 

What other justification is there for giving Asia so many spots? Such a choice would not be justified by footballing quality or even based on the size of the confederation in terms of FIFA members. You complain that UEFA has too many spots, but have ironically overcorrected massively in your own proposal to the point that you have a third of Asia and Oceania qualifying.