you can't overcome lack of suspense in a 48 teams world cup, 48 teams automatically means watering! that simple!
A 32-team knockout sounds good though. Just ignore the groups. Unfortunately it will be compressed into a short time period.
nah, #TwinPool48 is the best option for a 48 team world cup. it is a 8x6(2 pools of 3 teams bound like twins) format with 6 teams in a group, but them are not having 5 matches (round-robin) but only 3 matches defined by a smart logic of pot strength. so, the team of pot 1 faces opponents from pot 4, 5 and 6. the team from pot 2 faces opponents from pot 3, 5 and 6. ... the team from pot 6 faces opponents from pot 1, 2 and 3. first 2 teams from 8 groups advance to the round of 16. total of 88 matches. could be done easily in 31 calendar days. there would be final matchdays in all 8 groups with 3 matches starting in parallel and there is only a chance of lower than 2 percent that there is an "it is all decided" dead rubber scenario that we know similiarly from the old format when 2 teams in a group of 4 had won both their first and second group match against the other 2 teams. such a waiving of the round-robin paradigm is quite common in other sports like NFL or Rugby and even Champions League from 2024 on will also move towards this setup. more to find on twitter under the hashtag #TwinPool48.
Its a shame to have to "ignore the groups" because that is the best part of the current World Cup, imo. That's when you see the most entertaining matches. Tactics of most teams change once you enter the KO stages and the games tend to be quite cagey. Not all of them of course, but in general. And if you are attending the WC in-person, the group stage is when fans from everywhere are present and the vibe across the host country is amazing. Of course that will still be the case in the 48-team group stage (even more colours and flags will be seen) but it will be combined with watching a low standard of football.
and i don't like that another knock out stage increases the chances in a lucly team progressing instead of the better. happens so often in knock out phases. and now, they even do pen shoot out at group stage. maybe they shall introduce a special award for the best pemalty taker of the tournament. "the golden spot"
In my opinion, the best format for a 48-team World Cup is having 8 groups of 6 teams with a 3-vs-3 format.
so you mean the #TwinPool48 format? to go into details. it literally means the 6 teams in a group forming 2 "subgroups" or better "pools". Pool "A+" consists of three teams from pots 1, 4 and 5 Pool "A-" consists of three teams from pots 2, 3 and 6 Within the pool, teams play a round-robin (= 2 group matches). The 3rd match is a "cross-pool" match, precisely 1v6, 2v5, 3v4. With a bit of shuffling it is possible, to have distinct match days, so on the 3rd matchday, all 3 matches can start simultaneously. as the allocation of pots to pool seems random at the first sight, it isn't. This table shows the average "strengths" of opponents, that a team from a specific pot has to face in its 3 group matches. A sample group scenario after 2 matchdays might look like this.... Just imaging, quite dramatic with all the last matches starting at the same time. and as I already addressed the dead-rubber-on-last-matchday scenario: with the old & classic "4-teams-round-robin", it is 2,47%. with "TwinPool48" there is a chance of exactly 1,23%. you can also lopside it and say, that there is a chance of 98,76% (100 ,00 - 1,23) that at least 1 match will be a decider for who will advance to the next stage. And the chance of having at least two "decider" matches is stunningly 83,26%. This means, that TwinPool48 by propability is creating more suspence than the established format. Whoever likes more inside, please contact me.
well, they argued the same with the expansion 1982 from 16 to 24 teams and 1998 with the expansion from 24 to 32 teams. I tend to disagree. In fact, I think, the distance in quality between position 10 and 20 in the rankings is much higher than between 30 and 40. Also there are some great players, which never had a world cup in the last century. (Best, Giggs, Weah) and without the expansions that already took place, we would propably have Bale, Sane and Salah extending that list. 48 teams is okay. The 3 extra teams from Europe will not water the quality, neither the 6 teams from Conmebol. Same with Africa, if I see that teams like Ivory Coast, Algeria, Egypt or Nigeria didn't make it to Qatar. That leave it to Concacaf and Asia, where I need to admit, that quality drops significantly after the top 3-4 teams. But that is something the World Cup could live with. One extra-topic is OFC, where I would not have given them a fix starting berth, as the competition is simply not there and it will be New Zealand for the next couple of world cups.
That is definitely true, but that fact leads me to the opposite conclusion. What that essentially means is that teams outside the top 20 aren't very competitive. And now instead of having only a few of them in the WC, we will have almost 30 such teams. Also, keep in mind that while we roughly see the best 32 teams in the current WC we won't have the top 48 in 2026 because the expansion is heavily weighted to the weaker regions. So it's not a question of the drop in quality from 30 to 40, but more like 30 to 70ish.
What upsets have happened in the knock-out stages of a world cup? The only ones I can think of are South Korea against Italy and Spain in 2002, Russia against Spain in 2018, besides that I don't think we have had that many upsets in knock-out stages. Any other upset that I can think of, was in the group stage.
i dont care about upsets but undeserved advancing. costa rica v greece 2014 round-of-16 had 5 to 23 chances. pretty sure that in 40% of the PSOs at world cups, the team with less attempts wins.
Imo there's no such thing as undeserved advancing. Being defensive is also a strategy to win, if the other team couldn't put the ball in the net more times than other, that's on them.
Argentina 90 is another good example. scored 2 goals in 460 of playtime in 4 knock out matches. were the worse team against yugoslavia and argentina and won both thanks to a goalie who was a penalty killer.
What was really crazy was that he wasn't even the first choice goalkeeper in that tournament. Only started as Pumpido broke his leag in the 2nd game vs USSR.... talk about a lucky break....
Probably the most difficult 4 knockout matches any team has ever faced in a World Cup. 2014 was worse - again 2 goals in 450 minutes, but against weaker opposition.
That's not my proposal. Each group would be split in odd teams (T1, T3, T5) and even teams (T2, T4, T6), where the odd teams play against the even teams.
I understand. That was also evaluated by me, but it has one flaw that is to avoid. so imagine, that all the odd trams win their matches against all even teams. then in the final table of 6, you would end up with T1, T3 and T5 all finishing with 9 points while the rest have 0 points. As only 2 teams advance to the round of 16, the 3rd placed team might be out of the world cup despite winning all 3 group matches, only by a worse goal difference. I don't think anyone, neither teams, nor fans, nor FIFA would emotionally agree with such brutal knockout possibilities. With twin pool 48, the worst case scenario is a 9-7-7 points finish of the top 3. still not that great, when the 3rd placed needs to go home with 2 wins and 1 draw, but you could at least say the 3rd placed team would had had it at least in their own hands - by winning the 1 match which they had drawn. In theory, I also evaluated to further avoid the 9-7-7 scenario, with quadruple pools. Just imagine that not 6 teams form 2 pools of 3 - but 12 teams form 4 pools of 3 with the top 4 advancing after. 3.matchdays. take this setup x 4 and you end up again with 48 teams. however, that format has the negative side effect, that not in seldom but many cases, you are almost out if you have lost 1 group match. another problem is arranging 6 instead of 3 parallel final matchday matches for fairness reasons, what entails scheduling issues.
I'm still on board with the 12x4 groups where the top two in each group advance, and the top 8 group winners get a Round of 32 (24) bye right into the Round of 16. A previous poster brought it up - there's a very unlikely chance a team will play 8 games, and really you could even eliminate the 3rd place game.
until a week ago I would have said no way, FIFA is going to stick to their awful 18x3 proposal, but then they moved opening game of doha world cup and proved they fell lower than ever before. just when you think their actions can‘t surprise you anymore they manage to beat that! so anything is possible in 2026 and whatever they do, expect the worst!
maybe amount of followers on instagram and twitter of all squad members as a tie-breaker after goal difference before goals scored. you never now.
bye for the top 8 for a NFL-like wild-card-round-of-32 is an issue as it interrupts the schedule for these top teams. You need to have a couple of days + days before and after reserved for that wild-card-round. let us assume group L (12th group) winner is not top 8 and needs to go to the wild card round and group A (1st group) winner is top 8. There are already at least 4 days between both group final matchdays. Let us say you reserve really only 2 days for the wild card matches, you need to have at least 2 days break before this wild card round and 2 days after before commencing with the round of 16. So the round-of-16 can only start for group A winner +4+2+2+2 = 8 rest days after the last group match. It is like playing on a monday and then the thursday 1 week later. -> that gap is too long. What might be an option to avoid this is to build conferences of always 3 groups determining the standings. So ABC - DEF - EFG - HJK form 4 conferences. The standings are made for 12 teams within a conference. Top 2 teams are directly advancing to the round of 16 on a bypass. Rank 3-6 are doing the wild card round among each other within accros 2 conferences as they have similar match days, so the schedule conflicts are further reduced. Special rule: group winners of a group are always guaranteed to be among the rank 1-6 and advance to the wild cards at minimum, even if they have less points. Example: A = Brazil 9p, Denmark 3p, Tunisia 3p, Costa Rica 3p B = Germany 7p, Italy 6p, USA 2p, Cameroon 1p C = Uruguay 5p, Belgium 5p, Morocco 4p, Korea Rep. 1p D = Netherlands 9p, Colombia 4p, Panama 2p, New Zealand 1p E = Spain 5p, Ghana 5p, Croatia 4 p, Egypt 1p F = Nigeria 7p, Sweden 4p, Ecuador 3p, Jamaica 2p ABC Full Table: (* = group winner) 1. *Brazil 9 2. *Germany 7 3. Italy 6 4. *Uruguay 5 (better goal difference than Belgium) 5. Belgium 5 6. Morocco 4 DEF Full Table: (* = group winner) 1. *Netherlands 9 2. *Nigeria 7 3. *Spain 5 (better goal difference than Ghana) 4. Ghana 5 5. Colombia 4 (better goal difference than Sweden and Croatia) 6. Sweden 4 (better goal difference than Croatia) For fairness reason, all last matches of a conference need to start then at the same time. Wild Card Matches: Italy v Sweden Uruguay v Colombia Ghana v Belgium Spain v Morocco Round of 16: Brazil v 1 wild card winner GHI/JKL Germany v 1 wild card winner GHI/JKL Netherlands v 1 wild card winner JKL/GHI Nigeria v 1 wild card winner JKL/GHI Italy v Sweden v 2nd GHI Uruguay v Colombia v 1st GHI Ghana v Belgium v 1st of JKL Spain v Morocco v 2nd of JKL
coming back to my wild card format, maybe it could be described much simplier. Still 3 groups form a cluster. (let take ABC as an example) Within a cluster the top 2 group winners advance to the round-of-16. (Brazil and Germany) The 3rd group winner (Uruguay) goes to the wild card play offs and faces the weaker of the runner-up of the other 2 groups (Denmark). then playing one winner of GHI in a round-of-16 match The remaining runners-up form the other wild card match of this conference (Italy v Belgium), then playing one winner of GHI in a round-of-16 match as for DEF in my example it would be: Netherlands & Nigeria advance to the round-of-16 with a bye wild card match 1: Spain v Sweden, then playing one winner of JKL in a round-of-16 match wild card match 2: Ghana v Colombia, then playing one winner of JKL in a round-of-16 match
Any format that goes from 48 teams down to 16 on the basis of just 3 group games is a non-starter, imo. Five KO rounds is the way to go...