It appears plans to expand the World Cup to 48 teams will be confirmed tomorrow. 16 () groups of 3, with the top two qualifying for the knockout rounds. Assuming they keep the third place play-off, there will now be 80 games played, as opposed to 64 under the current format. It's nothing to do with money, though!! Does a non-profit organisation with billions in the bank really need to make more money?
FIFA never fail to amaze me... The World Cup 2022 is set to the bloodiest, with an average of a person dying each day and hundreds being admitted into hospital for severe dehydration. They keep saying "promoting football as world sport" and can understand that they want higher participation of countries, but in truth it's going to be crap viewing when a pedigree team like Germany turns up and rolls over China 14 - 0. That also means that there can be a really **** team that'll get far because a team, like Mongolia, plays North Korea, Thailand, Lichtenstein and then beat Andorra and are in the quarters. What they need to do is seriously sort out their human rights and corruption issues before working on making amends to the competition.
The reasoning for the Qatar World Cup has always made me laugh. It's akin to holding the cricket World Cup in Honduras.
Even with 48 teams in the finals, Scotland still won't qualify International football has had it. It is dead. I remember in 1990 when Gazza was strutting his stuff, the nation came to a halt. Now you get a barely stifled collective fart when England plays. I mean - Gareth Southgate
To be fair, some of the smaller nations made Euro 2016. It's obviously more of a political decision than for footballing reasons, but I'm willing to give it a chance. It means more games on TV which placates me somewhat.
Scotland aren't ranked in the top 48. Wales are the top-ranked British team. If they do expand it it will degrade the greatest competition in the World. Same as the Euro's.
The winner will still play the same number of games Mikey, it's just in the (3 team) group matches you will get more cr@p teams playing then it moves direct to knockout matches.
I'm all for it. The World Cup is always a joyful few weeks so prolonging that or adding to the buzz,never if it is a plastic buzz, works for me (just like it did at the Euros). And you never know some new participants may add to the vibrancy of it all; I'm sure before we got to the 32 team format we're all used to people would have feared change - then we might not have had Roger Milla or the Romanians for example.
Isn't the same as playing the FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley? It's losing tradition and the fact that the World Cup is supposed to represent the best of best. Not having China vs. North Korea which'll struggle to fill a 300 seater stadium.
Firmly in the 'against' camp- expanding to bring in countries that haven't a hope in qualifying normally will just dilute the quality of the competition. The 'smaller' teams that made Euro 2016, Iceland, NI etc qualified on merit, knocking out the likes of Holland along the way. If Azerbaijain qualify on merit, fair enough but not as a 4th placed team And Fifa predict that this will bring in an extra billion in revenue.. It's not a money based decision though
About time we came out of Fifa. Won't ever happen as it's just as much of a mess as FIFA, and run by non football people to boot!
Some high ranking bloke from Fifa wanted the FA, to name the FA cup, in HIS name to Improve our chances of hosting a World Cup. Simply astounding.
I was reading about this in the Spanish press this morning. The Spanish intend to try and block this, and their president was quoted as saying this move is similar to the sort of behaviour Sepp Blatter used to get up to - which is ironic given the last time Sepp stood for elections, draped in fraud accusations, the Spanish went ahead and voted for him. The format I saw was for groups of three, from which two will qualify and enter a straight knockout phase. After the boredom of the Euros (and I won't knock the Welsh or Iceland in that, who were exciting) and the make-weight draw-seekers who seemed happy enough to not concede a goal, it may actually make it more exciting to lower the number of group matches, but getting more second rate countries in, who will see the knock out stage as an oportunity to progress via penalties and 0-0 draws. The likes of Slovenia offer nothing for the neutral spectator (England may have been tactically inept, but at least they tried to win matches, and most neutrals enjoy watching them, even if a lot do it hoping they lose!!) This is a prestige tournament, and the smaller nations compete in the qualifiers. If the qualifiers only serve to eliminate the likes of Gibraltar, Lichtene¡stein and the UAE, if simply lowers the level in the finals. Genuinely, I'd like to see FIFA eliminated from football, and a new body replacing it. Any chance of a Fexit ?
