Do we really want 48 teams at the World Cup Finals? Money speaks again and will probably make it a boring, drawn out affair which might become interesting in the last week of a 2 year competition. FIFA, not for the first time, have lost the plot. The ability for the lower ranked countries to claim prestige has been lost as it no longer will be an achievement to reach the Finals when only 3 countries and a dog will fail to qualify. The Finals will be a non stop succession of walk over games with saturation and overkill being the key words to describe the tournament. But don't worry all the 'big boys' will be able to claim success in reaching the Finals as they proceed undefeated through qualifying games against St Bernadette's Old Girls, Accrington Stanley reserves and the NOT606 Forum Under 40's XI.
It's to enable even MORE countries to give bungs to FIFA officials. Mind you I think you are underestimating the chances of the NOT606 Forum Under 40's XI. Obviously not as good as the OVER 40's though.
Apparently groups of 3 have been suggested with the top 2 of each group going to the first knockout round (of 2) before the QF/SF/F set up. Leaving one team being knocked out of each group. Could be interesting but you run the risk of the "big" teams having a slow start and being out of the competition after 2 games, unless they are planning on doing a "home and away leg" to make it 4 group games? Who knows but this is spot on...
Yep, 16 groups of 3, top two through, knockout from there. You only have to look at the system. There's 209 affiliated nations (http://www.fifa.com/associations/), at least 50 of which I'm not even sure are real countries. Not hard to see how increasing the chance for Chinese Taipei, Turks and Caicos Islands or Eirtrea to get to a World Cup will get votes, whilst Germany, England and Spain's "are you fcking kidding me" is of no consequence.
Just have a straight knock out competition involving every single team on the planet. Run it like the FA Cup. Minnows against each other, introduce the stronger nations then the big boys. Makes it more interesting and there is always the potential for a shock.
By my calculations it would mean there would be 16 more games than the current format. It's not really a big deal to me to be honest. I think the problem is there are plenty of countries where football is the big sport and they aren't getting to the world cup finals so they are trying to include more countries which is understandable. Hell, Scotland might even qualify once in a while under this system!
If there's only 3 teams in each group it could at least mean teams won't be playing for draws like in Euro 2016.
