Wait this is for 2026 not Russia or 2022?
Ok I can relax
Why can't Conmebol go to UEFA and say bring your best 22 teams we're going to have 32 team tournament? Or 21 with USA
Boycott the new FIFA
World Cup Expansion: 48 teams in 2026
- Thread starter Infield Infidel
- Start date
Ok I can relax
Why can't Conmebol go to UEFA and say bring your best 22 teams we're going to have 32 team tournament? Or 21 with USA
Boycott the new FIFA
Ha! I just updated the thread title. FIFA rightly doesn't think a truncated winter World Cup in Qatar is the first place to try 48 teams. FIFA wrongly gave the World Cup to Qatar in the first place.
Big countries could change this, or maybe Fox and advertisers aren't thrilled with New Zealand v Zambia in the first round. (I say this as someone with ties to a tiny African country that has benefited mightily by FIFA; I'm pretty sure more money would be made by another regime, since less would be grifted).
I could see the big countries extending olive leaves to other countries that were "outbid" for World Cups, like Egypt, Australia, and Japan.
Yeah, they would have to kill the hex. If you have 6.5 qualifying, you would need 10-12 teams in a final round to make it mean anything, and there's no way they are fitting that many extra games into the calendar, so there would probably have to be two 6-team groups, top 3 in each make it, and the 4th place teams play for the playoff spot. That likely means Mexico in one group and the US in the other, so there goes the most exciting qualifying games.
Look on the bright side. Maybe now they'll play five more Gold Cups between World Cup cycles.
I wonder if Mexico and the USA would ever consider bolting to CONMEBOL, on the assumption that they could take two (or more) of CONCACAF's qualifying spots with them. Seems to me that it would be much better for each country's football culture for them to play proper competition all the time.
And give up the much-easier (under 32-team rules) or virtually guaranteed (under 48-team rules) World Cup qualifying spots? Not a chance in hell. The US would struggle to qualify in a CONMEBOL+US/Mexico tournament competing for 8 spots.
You're probably right...but an expanded CONMEBOL with Mexico and USA added would still have only 12 countries. If you give CONMEBOL 8 or even 9 qualifying spots and reduce CONCACAF to 3-4 spots, maybe the overall benefits (e.g., getting to play Brazil and Argentina in meaningful matches all the time, having Messi/Neymar/Suarez on your radar and in your media market all the time) would outweigh that single negative. And if the USA can't beat out four other South American countries, they probably have no business playing in the World Cup anyway.
US playing in South America for a tournament is one thing, but travel for qualifiers would be a nightmare. They'd have to move camp to Houston or Miami, and those 9 hour each-way round-trip flights from Miami to Lima or Buenos Aires would be awful
The problem of these pissant little countries dictating things through their voting numbers could be alleviated if FIFA emulated international cricket and created a "West Indies" or "Carribean" team, and an "Oceania" team. The Caribbean team, at least, would be halfway decent.
It would never happen of course.
It would never happen of course.
Fox must love this, since they already got rights to 2026 without having to bid, and now have 24 more games to broadcast.
It's dumb, but it just ends up like the NCAA tournament. People still tune in to watch Duke and Kentucky and UNC slaughter some hapless 16 seed every year.
There's never been an opportunity to make a quick buck that FIFA wasn't ready to exploit. This isn't simply about owning the broadcast rights to more World Cup matches (though that certainly doesn't hurt) - this is specifically about wanting to get disgustingly rich off of the Chinese market. Per the most recent FIFA rankings, the 8th best team in AFC is Qatar, currently ranked 84th in the world. Right behind them? China, ranked 86th. The easier that it becomes for China to qualify, the more money there is for everyone. Hell, throw in India too (which has a terrible national team but now has an incentive to build a halfway decent national program) and you've just added 1/4 of the world's population as potential customers.
The real embarrassment isn't trying to get China/India on board, it's that you're adding 16 more slots but only giving 3 of them to UEFA. UEFA's 17th-best team would probably pick up 80% of points in a round-robin against the newly-qualifying entrants from everywhere else but CONMEBOL. Right now, that's Ukraine or Slovakia (by Elo), Hungary or Bosnia by FIFA rating. Go down a little farther and you've got Romania, Scotland, Russia or Greece. Those teams being excluded so you can make way for Qatar or Cote D'Ivoire is just a total mockery of the idea of competition.
I think the two are related. I'm willing to bet that FIFA started with one problem in need of a solution - how do we get China to be perennial World Cup qualifiers? So the first step is bumping up the number of AFC slots. But then you'd have to answer to Africa, whose member states make up the largest voting bloc. So give them 4 more slots. Then make sure CONCACAF gets USA, Mexico, and Canada (top 20 in world GDP) to qualify every time, so 2.5 more slots. Add a requisite bump to CONMEBOL and Oceania, and suddenly UEFA gets 3 new slots by default.
Cote D'Ivoire is a bad example. They've qualified for the last three World Cups under the current format and won the ACoN in 2015. They're one of the consistently strongest African sides over the last decade.
And it's really CONMEBOL that gets screwed the most. The 7th ranked CONMEBOL team in ELO right now, so on the outside looking in, is Ecuador, who are 19th overall. All ten CONMEBOL teams are ranked in the top 45 in ELO. And the CONMEBOL qualifying system makes it extremely difficult for the lower ranked teams to qualify. It's plausible this qualifying system could end up including Qatar and not Argentina (currently 5th in Conmebol qualifying, only 4 points above 7th, and with their best player suspended for the next 3 games), which is just bonkers.
European Club Association is completely against this, and their agreement with FIFA to release players for international competition runs through 2022. They'll have to sign off on releasing players, hopefully they'll bring FIFA back to the table and get this back down to at most 40 teams.
Maybe you qualify in two different groups. Top 24 teams get byes to the 'real' competition, next 24 play some preliminary rounds to qualify 8 into the main competition (e.g. 6 groups of 4, 3 pool games each, group winners advance, top 4 second-place finishers play off for the last 2 spots).
Wouldn't be that different from the preliminary rounds for UCL & Europa, except that preliminary-round teams are thus guaranteed 3 games.
Wouldn't be that different from the preliminary rounds for UCL & Europa, except that preliminary-round teams are thus guaranteed 3 games.
That creates an even larger burden on the players, though. From a competition standpoint, it might make it more palatable, but the players and the leagues in which they participate would suffer greatly. The players on those eight qualifiers would have to play, what, an extra 8-10 games each cycle (if not more)?
Sure, but the vast majority of European players, the vast majority of whom are drawn from top European countries, would see their games burden in a World Cup year unchanged since they'd almost certainly qualify into the top 24.
Your international-grade players from Qatar, China, Iran, Burkina Faso etc tend to almost always play domestically. They're not going to be nearly as bothered by this as the players who are making a fortune (and are worth a fortune to their clubs).
UEFA could also just not change its format much at all: they could continue having 10 games played within hexes, and just have a bigger post-hex playoff. The top teams would immediately qualify with byes, some second-place teams would qualify with byes, and the rest of the second- and third-place teams that earn qualification would probably be glad to play 3 more WCF games rather than be out entirely.
Your international-grade players from Qatar, China, Iran, Burkina Faso etc tend to almost always play domestically. They're not going to be nearly as bothered by this as the players who are making a fortune (and are worth a fortune to their clubs).
UEFA could also just not change its format much at all: they could continue having 10 games played within hexes, and just have a bigger post-hex playoff. The top teams would immediately qualify with byes, some second-place teams would qualify with byes, and the rest of the second- and third-place teams that earn qualification would probably be glad to play 3 more WCF games rather than be out entirely.
I think you may have missed the post right before yours. The European Club Association is vehemently opposed to the expansion. Not only is there a potential for more games for the usual suspects, but the additional teams would include a larger pool of players. If I'm signing the paychecks, I don't want this either.
This would be really bad for the US, I think.
1) What the Hex lacks in quality, it somewhat makes up in grit. The road games aren't pretty, but they build mental toughness. The dropoff from the top six in CONCACAF to the next six is enormous and the death of the Hex will mean a much easier qualification. Given that the US already has a fairly easy road to the WC, there's nothing to be gained by this. No more US-Mexico qualifiers is criminal.
2) The UEFA Nations League tournament slated to begin in 2018 means that we'll hardly ever get chances to schedule friendlies against top Euro teams.
3) The combined Copa America and possibly the Confederations Cup will be basically the only opportunities for the US to play against consistently good competition other than Mexico & whoever is hot hand in CONCACAF during the Gold Cup.
1) What the Hex lacks in quality, it somewhat makes up in grit. The road games aren't pretty, but they build mental toughness. The dropoff from the top six in CONCACAF to the next six is enormous and the death of the Hex will mean a much easier qualification. Given that the US already has a fairly easy road to the WC, there's nothing to be gained by this. No more US-Mexico qualifiers is criminal.
2) The UEFA Nations League tournament slated to begin in 2018 means that we'll hardly ever get chances to schedule friendlies against top Euro teams.
3) The combined Copa America and possibly the Confederations Cup will be basically the only opportunities for the US to play against consistently good competition other than Mexico & whoever is hot hand in CONCACAF during the Gold Cup.
This is just a trainwreck money grab plain and simple. Just wait till they announce groups of 3.
So frustrating, 32 is the ideal number (if you are going to increase you really have to go to 64 to avoid the group stages being a joke and 64 is too many teams).
The terrible group stages for Euro 2016 should've been a warning as to the perils of expanding, but I guess money rules all.
I guess if forced the only expansion I would support would be to go to 40 teams with 8 groups of 5 and top two qualifying. Although, there are four downsides, each team would have to play one extra match (perhaps increase squad size from 23 to 25/26), teams might play negatively in the group stages, there might be a lot of 'dead rubbers' towards the end of the group stage, and one team will finish their group fixtures before the final round of group fixtures, so there could be shenanigans.
The terrible group stages for Euro 2016 should've been a warning as to the perils of expanding, but I guess money rules all.
I guess if forced the only expansion I would support would be to go to 40 teams with 8 groups of 5 and top two qualifying. Although, there are four downsides, each team would have to play one extra match (perhaps increase squad size from 23 to 25/26), teams might play negatively in the group stages, there might be a lot of 'dead rubbers' towards the end of the group stage, and one team will finish their group fixtures before the final round of group fixtures, so there could be shenanigans.
I will say that one silver lining to this is that teams will have more opportunities to gel and by the QF, we may see some actual offensive chemistry. In the current format, you don't see teams start to hit their stride until the semis or finals. Really, the WC is such a different animal from the club game.
Why would this be true? The winners will still be playing seven games - 2 in the group stage and 5 in the knockout stage, instead of 3 group and 4 knockout currently - and if anything the possibility that a single loss might send you out will probably encourage even more negative football than we normally see in the WC.
You're right, I math'd very poorly. That round of 32 is going to be horrifying. You're going to have teams that normally would've been the drek of the group stage (e.g. in WC 14, Cameroon, Honduras, Iran, England (I kid!)) with a chance to park the bus for 120 minutes and possibly knockout the favorites. I started to write about group stage dynamics, but it hurt my head once I got to the possibility of collusion in the final group game, so I stopped.
To add, I also wonder how this will affect traveling fans. It's one thing to travel for guaranteed group game dates to see one cupcake and one mid-tier. But, it's another to travel to see your squad play Burkina Faso. Will people be able to adjust and book one group game and roll the dice on advancement and travel for the round of 32? What about people who want to travel for round of 32 and round of 16?
Hard to answer this without knowing the identity of the host, although it looks like Canada or US or Mexico based on where the previous ones are/were. (Assuming Australia doesn't have enough quality pitches/sites or doesn't want it)
I would like to see Canada and US with a combined bid, especially now with expansion.
Which really brings up:
What country can possibly host 48 WC teams and have the facilities to do so?
I believe the time will come when countries will start telling FIFA to fuck off, Heck, even many Brazilians wanted nothing to do with the WC once they saw all that was needed to host it.
well, any country whose first-division league has stadiums with sufficient seating capacity. Plus the USA. Not all 48 teams would play every day, just as not all 32 play every day in the present format.