World Cup 2026 - 48 teams

Chief123 said:
Wait until they have a tie break between 8th and 9th best placed 3rd teams. It’ll be decided by which country has most stars in their flag.
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Yeah, it's silly. The archaic group stages should be gone at this point.

I think I'd like to see them adapt a knock-down into knock-out format. Goes away with both the pointless 3rd games for teams that have lost their two first as well as any games ending in draw.
 
Good thing that the FIFA executives have been closely following the tournament and finally figured out what's wrong with the WC: not enough low quality matches. I hope Zambia - El Salvador for a spot in R32 will do the trick. And if not, well, the TV agreement is negotiated by number of games played, so no real loser here, right?
 
Chief123 said:
Yeah it doesn’t seem too big an issue in terms of fatigue. It’s just the fact there’s going to be so many rubbish games where it’s just a formality.
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Final a week later so basically no pre season/rest if league seasons still starting on second weekend of August.
 
How many games a day will there be?
 
This is bullshit. There’s feck all wrong with the current format - why fix/amend something that doesn’t need fixing/amending?
 
FootballHQ said:
Final a week later so basically no pre season/rest if league seasons still starting on second weekend of August.
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I get that but it’s very unlikely any club is going to be impacted majorly. At most, some teams will have 2 maybe 3 players back late due to being in a World Cup final.
 
More games - yes please. Also enjoy watching the small nations.

Doesn't bother me.
 
Would honestly be better letting in 64 teams and having it as an open draw straight knockout torunament.

Feck the group stages.
 
FootballHQ said:
Final a week later so basically no pre season/rest if league seasons still starting on second weekend of August.
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Looks like the extra week will be by reducing the pre-world cup preparation time.

The extra week will be found by cutting the pre-tournament release period from 23 days to 16, which is slightly less than previous summer tournaments but twice as long as players were given to prepare for the World Cup in Qatar. Although the official date for the opening match has not yet been announced, FIFA is on course to maintain the tournament’s “footprint” to 56 days, 16 days before it starts and then 39 days of competition.
What this change means for the allocation of games between the three host nations remains to be seen, as the US was staging 60 games in the original format, with Canada and Mexico getting 10 each.
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Utd heap said:
More games - yes please. Also enjoy watching the small nations.

Doesn't bother me.
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I really like these new ideas about an expanded club world cup. Been wanting that for years. The world cup is perfect as it is though IMO
 
They're such money grabbing cnuts. The 3 team group they initially proposed sounded great because there would have essentially been no dead rubber games in the group stage. Now they've backtracked on this it just means a drop in the quality of group stage fixtures with no added jeopardy, along with the extra game.
 
FIFA is great at fixing what isn't broken and corruption. Doing something useful would require time taken away from ensuring China, UAE or Saudi A gets a WC.
 
Why are people first instinct about something new is always to moan? I don't see anything egregious having an extra game to win it all. Sport tournaments around the world have always evolve and change with time, they never stay constant.
 
On the one hand, at least it's better then 3 team groups... 3 team groups would have been really really shit.

On the other hand, why mess with perfection?
 
I personally think system with 16 groups of three would be better than this system they are imposing right now. I don't like the new EURO system with 4/6 third best teams qualifying out of group stage, and it's practically going to be the same now in World Cup, just at an even larger scale.

16 groups of 3 does have a possibility of teams playing out a perfect result in the last group game, but it's not like such thing isn't possible right now.

What 16 groups of 3 does also have though is that for a fact, not a single last round game is meaningless. You can theoretically advance even if you lost your first game by 5 or 6 goals, with a good last round performance.

Of course, if it's El Salvador, Ghana and Spain in group for example, and Ghana beats El Salvador 4:0 and then loses to Spain 4:0, we can't expect El Salvador to beat Spain and go through, but unlike current system where El Salvador would be playing for nothing in the last game, they would at least have a theoretical chance of stars somehow aligning for them, Spain getting two reds within 10 minutes or whatever, and going through.

That's why I don't understand such a backlash against 16 groups of 3. It surely would have more deathmatches than this abomination of system they have planned.
 
Santoryo said:
Why are people first instinct about something new is always to moan? I don't see anything egregious having an extra game to win it all. Sport tournaments around the world have always evolve and change with time, they never stay constant.
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The problem isn't that it's new or a change. The problem is that it's shit
 
BD said:
The problem isn't that it's new or a change. The problem is that it's shit
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You haven't even gotten to experience it yet you're already proclaiming it to be shit.
 
They looked at the last World Cup, and thought…”what was the most exciting aspect of this edition, so that we can remove it and make it a worse experience for players and fans?”

Ah yes, the drama of those final day group stages! Easily the best part of the last World Cup and now, with almost everyone going through, it will be absolutely shit.
 
Santoryo said:
You haven't even gotten to experience it yet you're already proclaiming it to be shit.
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Euro 2021 was a proxy tbf.

There are several things I can think of that I can proclaim to be shit without having to actually experience them.
 
They should’ve gone straight to last 16 - top of each group, then the best 4 2nd place teams.

Or a Europa style last 24 (8 best 2nd teams playoff into last 16).

Need to make groups more competitive.
 
Vanrouge said:
Or the problem is that many people think that something new is automatically going to be shit.
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Exactly. It doesn't matter what it is, the first reactions are always moans about something new being introduced. Happened with VAR, happened with 5 substitutions, etc.

People don't even wait to see how things pan out or even sit back a few seconds and weight with some thoughts of whether it's actually a good or bad idea. The immediate reaction is always "let's complain" because new things apparently equal bad and the game being destroyed. I'm not even sure if most folks realize that a lot about the game is vastly different from when it was played, said in the 1950s, whether it's the rules of the game or competitions.
 
Santoryo said:
Exactly. It doesn't matter what it is, the first reactions are always moans about something new being introduced. Happened with VAR, happened with 5 substitutions, etc.

People don't even wait to see how things pan out or even sit back a few seconds and weight with some thoughts of whether it's actually a good or bad idea. The immediate reaction is always "let's complain" because new things apparently equal bad and the game being destroyed. I'm not even sure if most folks realize that a lot about the game is vastly different from when it was played, said in the 1950s, whether it's the rules of the game or competitions.
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There are some really good reasons why people think its shit. Its not a simple case of complaining for the sake of complaining.
 
So 48 teams reduces to a round of 32, any chance of England, Italy, Frances going out in group phase are now gone if the 8 best 3rd place teams and guess what all the big boys will always be seeded. As 12 pot 1’s now.
 
P-Ro said:
They're such money grabbing cnuts. The 3 team group they initially proposed sounded great because there would have essentially been no dead rubber games in the group stage. Now they've backtracked on this it just means a drop in the quality of group stage fixtures with no added jeopardy, along with the extra game.
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They tried the 3 team group in the EURO's in 2016 (I think) and it was a disaster, 48 teams makes it more likely there will be teams there that would never otherwise get there - not sure if it 's a good thing or not but we'll never know until it's tried
 
Red in STL said:
They tried the 3 team group in the EURO's in 2016 (I think) and it was a disaster, 48 teams makes it more likely there will be teams there that would never otherwise get there - not sure if it 's a good thing or not but we'll never know until it's tried
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They did just the opposite, 4 team groups and teams in third place were allowed to go through. Like Portugal who won the whole thing.

The next "but have you even tried it?" post should be answered with the quintessential kick in the nuts counterexample :wenger:
 
The previous World Cup format was great due to 2 of the 4 teams in each group being eliminated, there is a lot riding on the majority of the games in this phase which makes it very watchable early on, it's on a knife edge. The fans watching TV and in the stadium can work out who is through and not and follow the twists and turns. How would the Japan, Spain, Germany, Costa Rica group be with 3 likely going through? Not as exciting.

How the 8 best in third place concluded is another issue. Each of these groups will end and the third place team won't know if they're through until most or all the groups are concluded spread out over many days. That kills the excitement even more, the fans and the commentators won't know and will just have reel off an endless amount of possibilities while each group finishes.

It's also a huge amount of group games just to eliminate the bottom teams and 4 others. R32 becomes the start of the World Cup now.
 
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Alright, out of curiosity I took a look at it. Here's how I'd structure a 48 team tournament (apologies for my paint skills):

wc48teams.png


Constant excitement. Big clashes throughout the entire tournament due to the winners' bracket. No pointless games. No draws. Also, no ET until Ro16, straight to pens. 2 "lives" until Ro16.

In terms of logistics there's shadow-groups of 4 (or 8) teams.
 
PSV said:
Alright, out of curiosity I took a look at it. Here's how I'd structure a 48 team tournament (apologies for my paint skills):

wc48teams.png


Constant excitement. Big clashes throughout the entire tournament due to the winners' bracket. No pointless games. No draws. Also, no ET until Ro16, straight to pens. 2 "lives" until Ro16.

In terms of logistics there's shadow-groups of 4 (or 8) teams.
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Now that is a much more interesting suggestion than FIFA's. Not sure how to do the lucky loser - goal difference isn't a bad idea.
 
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