48 Teams in the World Cup From 2026

ArmaniJeanss

Zero chance of a 'British' bid, the 4 countries have always gone out of their way to make sure they are treated as entirely separate entities.
The last thing they want is more attention drawn to their rather unique position and other countries asking about how they get 4 football teams entries despite being just one country (under the accepted definition of a country).
They needed to be dragged kicking and screaming to something as simple as having a British team in the Olympics.

citytillidie

inforfun wrote: »

Not necessarily. They will just use those days for meaningless friendlies
Look at the last international break.
Most countries had only 1 qualifier to play and just played a friendly on top of it.

Fifa announces several international breaks for each year. Might not be as many qualifiers in Europe but that doesnt mean the amount of breaks will be reduced. The other confederations might still need all of them for qualifiers.

and people are forgetting UEFA Nations League format starting up soon

Below is the proposed schedule of the 2018–19 UEFA Nations League and UEFA Euro 2020.

2018
September 2018–19 UEFA Nations League Group stage (Double matchday)
October 2018–19 UEFA Nations League Group stage (Double matchday)
November 2018–19 UEFA Nations League Group stage (Double matchday)

2019
March UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying stage (Double matchday)
June 2018–19 UEFA Nations League Group stage "Final four competition"(Semi-finals, third place and final) & UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying stage Qualifying stage (Double matchday)
September UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying stage Qualifying stage (Double matchday)
October UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying stage Qualifying stage (Double matchday)
November UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying stage Qualifying stage (Double matchday)

2020
March 2018–19 UEFA Nations League & UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying play-offs (Semi-finals and finals)
June–July UEFA Euro 2020 Finals tournament

ebbsy

SEANoftheDEAD wrote: »

And just to add to that, the strong England bid you mentioned only got 2 votes out of a possible 22.

The envelopes were not 3 fingers thick.

Beefy78

Come on now, most bids are contingent on building stadia. That's why they are decided so far in advance. Qatar obviously didn't have their stadia built and I doubt Russia had all of them. Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, all of these had grounds built because of tournaments that had been granted.

Germany building everything first isn't the model that prudent nations should be encouraged to copy.

I'd expect the requirements to soften with the increase in teams but the fact is that England can host a tournament like this and have a huge head-start on most because of the grounds that they already have. They won't host it and I doubt they will even bid but hosting this number of teams in one country is possible.

elefant

GavRedKing wrote: »

Possibily, although we only have the Aviva to call on at the moment.

Thommond would need to be expanded and unless the GAA can be swayed with Croker, we dopnt really have availability to host a round of group games and its unfair to make fans jump on ferries or planes to come to Dublin for a game and then back to the UK so we'd need a 2nd stadium to host one of the groups, which would hold Ireland hopefully which leads me to my next point below.

FIFA may baulk at the idea of giving out 4 free places at the WC and no doubt Northern Ireland would kick up a fuss too, if 4 of the 5 home nations get automatic entry so it would be a mine field in that regard.

All the fans would need visas to travel in and out of the EU too :P

Hulk Hands

Bidding process for 2026 postponed until 2020. Given that only a couple of countries have the infrastructure to hold 48 teams on 5 years notice, and Uefa having held one of the previous two, can probably be taken as a given that the US get 2026. Would be willing to wager itll be China in 2030

inforfun

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Where are you getting the 1 per city requirement ?

I know that for these events organisers prefer to spread out tournaments but I doubt there is a 1 per city hard rule.

By the way if there was then how come Qatar got the WC, oh wait...

Beefy78

US would make sense. I was too young to go there for 1994 but would like to think a 2026 US World Cup would be a great trip as a fan.

I know it won't happen and I doubt they ever bid again but Australia could host a great World Cup, IMO.

ronjo

Have they mentioned the split between confederations

Something like

Europe 20
Asia 8
Africa 8
South America 6
North and Central America 4
Oceania 1

The last being at the discretion of the FIFA board members retirement fund.

inforfun

USA 94 had the same issues as Brasil 2014.
Difference in climate. Teams playing in Orlando were ****ed

loyatemu

ronjo wrote: »

Have they mentioned the split between confederations

Something like

Europe 20
Asia 8
Africa 8
South America 6
North and Central America 4
Oceania 1

The last being at the discretion of the FIFA board members retirement fund.

it's further up the page, but not confirmed yet. Europe only getting 16.

Muahahaha

SEANoftheDEAD wrote: »

And just to add to that, the strong England bid you mentioned only got 2 votes out of a possible 22.

I think that was because Putin bought the other votes

Red Kev

FIFA need to drop a lot of the bull criteria they have for hosting world cups and it might work.

I lived in Germany in the 90s and still work there a lot. I know someone who worked on project management for the 2006 WC and a lot of the extras were for FIFA heads and sponsors, this is where alot of the extra costs came in. Germany, England, Italy, Spain all have the ability to hold 10top league matches simultaneously in 10 different stadia, they can move over a million people around in a few hours to these matches and they do this on a regular basis.

FIFA seems to be of the opinion that they can't do that and introduce minimum standards for transport and hotels that go way over the top.

This could mean that the hosting is limited in future to a couple of countries which would suit some of them down to the ground.

It's nonsense either way. 32 is a bit OTT as it is, they should leave it at that.

Scorpion Sting

This is getting ridiculous. I'd hazard a guess that the standard of quality will be vastly diluted as a result of teams like Uzbekistan and Panama squaring off. To think before the 1982 World Cup, 16 teams competed for the trophy. Soon we'll have triple that number.

kfallon

Scorpion Sting wrote: »

This is getting ridiculous. I'd hazard a guess that the standard of quality will be vastly diluted as a result of teams like Uzbekistan and Panama squaring off. To think before the 1982 World Cup, 16 teams competed for the trophy. Soon we'll have triple that number.

Remember the 8 team Euros?

Scorpion Sting

kfallon wrote: »

Remember the 8 team Euros?

Well no I was too young but same thing, dilution of quality as was slightly evident in last year's Euros.

Omackeral

GavRedKing wrote: »

FIFA may baulk at the idea of giving out 4 free places at the WC and no doubt Northern Ireland would kick up a fuss too, if 4 of the 5 home nations get automatic entry so it would be a mine field in that regard.

Some may baulk at the idea of there being 5 Home Nations!

kfallon

Scorpion Sting wrote: »

Well no I was too young but same thing, dilution of quality as was slightly evident in last year's Euros.

I hate ye young whippersnappers :P

Yeah the more you dilute, the worse it gets. 16 team Euros was fine, 24 was too much. I wonder in 50 years time how many teams will be in the World Cup (not that it'll matter to me), will there ever be a cut off point!

Hulk Hands

Id rather they went the whole haul and had 64 teams. One extra round of games in the tournament from what it is now. These 3 team groups sound farcical

Leroy42

kfallon wrote: »

I hate ye young whippersnappers :P

Yeah the more you dilute, the worse it gets. 16 team Euros was fine, 24 was too much. I wonder in 50 years time how many teams will be in the World Cup (not that it'll matter to me), will there ever be a cut off point!

Didn't Sepp say that one day we could play a WC on Mars?

Arghus

Scorpion Sting wrote: »

This is getting ridiculous. I'd hazard a guess that the standard of quality will be vastly diluted as a result of teams like Uzbekistan and Panama squaring off. To think before the 1982 World Cup, 16 teams competed for the trophy. Soon we'll have triple that number.

To be fair there were a lot less separate footballing associations back then - in Europe alone look at how many have come out the collapse of The USSR and Yugoslavia. Qualifying for Euro 1980 and 1984 involved just over thirty countries. Nowadays it's fifty plus.

The ever growing number of independent associations playing international football is a basic fact that's often overlooked in debates about the seemingly unstoppable growth in numbers of participating countries in International Tournaments. Don't get me wrong, I think FIFA and UEFA before them are basically chasing the cash here and dressing it up in terms that make it appear like they have the games best interests at heart, but I can understand, to an extent, why the political will exists for expansion. More countries are at the table and want a piece of the pie.

Beefy78

The problem with the Euros wasn't the 24 teams it was the format whereby three teams got out of half of the groups. It massively reduced the value of the early games. Three team groups makes that less of an issue and throws you early into knock-out football.

SEANoftheDEAD

Beefy78 wrote: »

The problem with the Euros wasn't the 24 teams it was the format whereby three teams got out of half of the groups. It massively reduced the value of the early games. Three team groups makes that less of an issue and throws you early into knock-out football.

Aye, 6 group winners and 2 best runners-up going into the quarter-finals would be interesting...

France
Wales
Germany
Croatia
Italy
Hungary
Poland
Spain

titan18

3 team groups is actually a joke. First you've got pots of 16 so there's no shot at a good team playing another good team. It's going to be a good team vs average team vs no hopers. Potentially could get average team vs no hopers vs no hopers e.g. could have a group a few years ago of Switzerland, Iran and China.

Then, you've got a completely unfair schedule. Like in the above group Switzerland play Iran on the 1st day, Iran play China on the 5th day and China play Switzerland on the 9th day. Switzerland have a giant gap between their games whilst the other two have a much shorter turnaround.

Stupid FIFA being stupid again, they'll probably host it in some backwater sh1thole in 2026 again just to make it worse

Skylinehead

titan18 wrote: »

Then, you've got a completely unfair schedule. Like in the above group Switzerland play Iran on the 1st day, Iran play China on the 5th day and China play Switzerland on the 9th day. Switzerland have a giant gap between their games whilst the other two have a much shorter turnaround.

More than that, it vastly increases the chances of impromptu matchfixing in the last group game.

Beefy78

Not really because there will be no more draws. So the only way to fix a match is to agree to lose.

Ferris_Bueller

Not too sure how I feel about it. The quality of games in the first round (group stage) may be of a lower quality, but surely straight knockout from the last 32 would be very entertaining and increase chances of upsets? The first round could end up being a bit pointless if it ends up being all of the minnows getting eliminated, but at the same time I'm sure those countries would rather be there than watching on the telly.

From FIFAs point of view I think it makes sense, more countries will be following it closer and there won't be many countries who have absolutely no hope of getting to the world cup now (the bottom European sides will probably have the worst chance of making it). From a neutrals point of view the euros was disappointing but are the neutrals really the people we should be catering for? I don't think so, if you ask fans from Wales, Portugal, Ireland, the North, Hungary etc I'm sure most of them have nothing but fond memories of the euros.

From an Irish perspective it has to be a good thing, it won't dramatically increase our chances of qualifying as europe will only get 3 extra places but if we did qualify you would probably fancy us to get past the group stage and more chance of memorable moments happening such as Bradys goal vs Italy. Overall you would think a lot of countries will get to taste a bit more "success" at a bigger world cup and there should be more cause for celebration as 32 teams will advance past the group stages rather than 16.

I'm not against it but there will be a lot of issues to iron out such as hosting such a big tournament, scheduling matches and preventing situations of 3 draws in a group.

Collie D

With 48 teams they could at least do away with the proposed intercontinental playoff and give the holder back the automatic spot that was taken after 2006.

Regarding the hosting I doubt too many countries would have the appetite for such a large tournament. One place is set aside for hosts. I assume there'll be a lot of joint bids so the extra place will likely come from the co-hosts' conference which is reasonable. However, what if Australia and NZ put in a joint bid with Aus being the "lead" host. Would NZ automatically get the Oceania slot therefore leaving no available spot for qualifying from Oceania?

I'm not entirely against this but I can either see them reverting back to 32 teams after 2030 or permanently rotating between the US and China to host.

Interested to see how this plays out at the next Congress in May.

NIMAN

We do realise that if FIFA cut back on the number of teams to qualify for the WC, in order to raise the quality in some peoples eyes, that Ireland would likely never qualify again.

Collie D

NIMAN wrote: »

We do realise that if FIFA cut back on the number of teams to qualify for the WC, in order to raise the quality in some peoples eyes, that Ireland would likely never qualify again.

If FIFA did it...possibly. If UEFA and CONMEBOL did it themselves though...

elefant

NIMAN wrote: »

We do realise that if FIFA cut back on the number of teams to qualify for the WC, in order to raise the quality in some peoples eyes, that Ireland would likely never qualify again.

I don't think you can say that that's 'likely'. We're on course to win our qualifying group for the very next world cup.

inforfun

NIMAN wrote: »

We do realise that if FIFA cut back on the number of teams to qualify for the WC, in order to raise the quality in some peoples eyes, that Ireland would likely never qualify again.

Why not?
You qualified for end tournaments in the past that were harder to get into than a 32 team WC.

It is a tournament where the, at that moment, best teams in the world should be. This will result in a 5 or maybe 6 week tournament where maybe the last 2,5 weeks are of interest.
I am really not waiting for Gabon - UAE brought live to me from Guangzhou. Dont think many people are.

Beefy78

You're into the knock out rounds after two games and those will always be interesting. If games are not of interest then obviously you don't need to watch them all but the elimination of draws has the potential to make the group stage far more interesting than they usually are.

Dirty Dingus McGee

Beefy78 wrote: »

You're into the knock out rounds after two games and those will always be interesting. If games are not of interest then obviously you don't need to watch them all but the elimination of draws has the potential to make the group stage far more interesting than they usually are.

Or it could potentially encourage teams to play for a draw as they know they can pick up extra points by simply drawing a game and taking a chance of a win on penalties rather than risking going to win the game from the start.

Alf Veedersane

Initially I was very sceptical about there being any positive based on the assumption that the additional minnows would be knocked out after the group stage and then the usual padding would go in the round of 32 with very few interesting games in that round.

But looking back on the last 2 WCs, there's only been two groups where a team lost all games in the last 2 and plenty of games where the supposedly weaker teams took points off the big teams and not just in the dead rubbers.

So yeah, while it just seems bloated, I don;t think it will be as disastrous as it first sounded.

The big problem, as has been said, will be some teams potentially having an unfair advantage with respect to having a much longer rest than their opponent especially in the last 32.

inforfun

Beefy78 wrote: »

You're into the knock out rounds after two games and those will always be interesting. If games are not of interest then obviously you don't need to watch them all but the elimination of draws has the potential to make the group stage far more interesting than they usually are.

I know i dont need to watch it all. But i used to. Because the matches were interesting from the start. There were hardly any **** teams in wc 2006/10/14.

Holland's groups in those 3 tournaments:
2006: Ivory Coast, Serbia, Argentina
2010: Denmark, Japan, Cameroon
2014: Spain, Chile, Australia

As things stand now and you would take the top teams of every confederation according to the amount of places they are getting, we will have Curacao at the WC.

You really want to see Holland - Curacao played on a WC end tournament?

It is the final rounds/tournament. Only the best should be there. WC qualifying is already participating in the WC.
It is not the Olympics where there is only a "final" tournament every 4 years.

Alf Veedersane

Wearing my optimist's hat, there were plenty of dead rubbers in the group stages oft he last few WCs. There won't be any additional uninteresting matches.

If you take the example of Holland's groups in the last 3 WCs, the groups were decided after the second round of games.

inforfun

inforfun wrote: »

It is the final rounds/tournament. Only the best should be there. WC qualifying is already participating in the WC.
It is not the Olympics where there is only a "final" tournament every 4 years.

This is doing my head in.

People regurgitating the tripe of 'it's only fair to give everyone a chance'.

It's called qualification.

inforfun

And we all know who that "everyone" is.
Do you really think they give a **** about whether or not Curacao will ever play at a WC at FIFA?
I bet you though they do give a **** about Qatar and UAE and some others getting there.

Which, in fairness, could be fun when sheiks get involved, as the ones old enough might remember from Spain '82.

inforfun

Oh... 1 other thing.
The live draw on tv for the end tournament will now take 3 weeks when they need to draw 16 groups.

https://twitter.com/Ladbrokes/status/818890470629736448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Beefy78

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

Or it could potentially encourage teams to play for a draw as they know they can pick up extra points by simply drawing a game and taking a chance of a win on penalties rather than risking going to win the game from the start.

Yes that will happen. But poor teams play for a draw every single week in every single league in the World.

Have they said how many points a win on pens will earn a team? Two would make sense to me.

citytillidie

Beefy78 wrote: »

Yes that will happen. But poor teams play for a draw every single week in every single league in the World.

Have they said how many points a win on pens will earn a team? Two would make sense to me.

In this years Scottish League Cup and the Football League Checkatrade Trophy they had early group stages and if a game ended in a draw a shout out happened with the winners getting an extra point.

Shanotheslayer

citytillidie wrote: »

In this years Scottish League Cup and the Football League Checkatrade Trophy they had early group stages and if a game ended in a draw a shout out happened with the winners getting an extra point.

Whoever got the shout out louder won? Sounds a bit unfair :pac:

R00ster

My feeling is that Infantino brought this about so as to give the impression that he is changing things at FIFA. Will the next man in want to increase it to 64 teams?

It is certainly diluting the quality of the tournament. Surely the purpose of the World Cup is for the best teams to be competing. There will be some cricket scores run up in the group stages.

I can see a few potential problems with the format.
If an unseeded team such as Ireland were drawn in a group with a good top seed such as Germany or Brazil, and another average unseeded team such as Haiti or Burkina Faso. If the top seed play first and win, and are due to play the second game, the team they are playing could field a weakened team, as they would only need to win the final game to go through. I know this is unlikely, as you would not want to introduce players into the tournament in a do or die game. It would potentially make the second game meaningless.

There may not be much reward for avoiding second. You could come second and draw the top seed, or the weakest top seed, eg Switzerland or Wales.

The likelihood of dead heats increases. With only three games in a group, it is not unlikely that there could be three identical draws. The penalty shootout at the end of a game would solve this (unless a scenario of A beats B, B beats C, C beats A on penalties occurs), but would remove any the integrity of the competition. Play for a draw and you could nick it on penalties.

NIMAN

I think this format would work really well for the CL, get into knockouts asap, the early groups are killing the competition.

citytillidie

R00ster wrote: »

My feeling is that Infantino brought this about so as to give the impression that he is changing things at FIFA. Will the next man in want to increase it to 64 teams?

It is certainly diluting the quality of the tournament. Surely the purpose of the World Cup is for the best teams to be competing. There will be some cricket scores run up in the group stages.

I can see a few potential problems with the format.
If an unseeded team such as Ireland were drawn in a group with a good top seed such as Germany or Brazil, and another average unseeded team such as Haiti or Burkina Faso. If the top seed play first and win, and are due to play the second game, the team they are playing could field a weakened team, as they would only need to win the final game to go through. I know this is unlikely, as you would not want to introduce players into the tournament in a do or die game. It would potentially make the second game meaningless.

There may not be much reward for avoiding second. You could come second and draw the top seed, or the weakest top seed, eg Switzerland or Wales.

The likelihood of dead heats increases. With only three games in a group, it is not unlikely that there could be three identical draws. The penalty shootout at the end of a game would solve this (unless a scenario of A beats B, B beats C, C beats A on penalties occurs), but would remove any the integrity of the competition. Play for a draw and you could nick it on penalties.

Well 16 groups and 16 European teams would mean i guess 1 European team to each group

R00ster

citytillidie wrote: »

Well 16 groups and 16 European teams would mean i guess 1 European team to each group

That's not really the point I'm trying to make. If you have one strong top seed and two weak unseeded teams (regardless of their continent), the weaker teams will know that in all likelihood, they will only have to win one game. For example:

Spain | New Zealand | Peru
Brazil | UAE | Curacao

citytillidie

R00ster wrote: »

That's not really the point I'm trying to make. If you have one strong top seed and two weak unseeded teams (regardless of their continent), the weaker teams will know that in all likelihood, they will only have to win one game. For example:

Spain | New Zealand | Peru
Brazil | UAE | Curacao

Well you know that is how the groups will line up.

I can see the draw starting with the European teams.

Just start 1 to 16, those European teams will have a ranking that put them in either pot 1, 2 or 3.

So say if Group A the European team is from pot 2 then FIFA will draw a team from Pot 1 and Pot 3 to join them making sure they are not from the same confederations

Bridge93

SEANoftheDEAD wrote: »

In order for Britain to host it...

Four teams are granted automatic qualification. England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland.

Stadiums eligible. Remember FIFA only allow 1 per city and 2 in the capital city.

London
Wembley.
Emirates Stadium or Olympic Park

Manchester
Old Trafford

Newcastle
St. James Park

Glasgow
Celtic Park or Hampden Park

Cardiff
Millennium Stadium

So that's the big ones an only half of what is required.
We need 6 more stadiums in separate cities with a capacity of over 40k and a UEFA 4 star rating minimum.

12 stadiums needed for a 32 team tournament and unknown as of now what the 48 team one will need. Qatar are actually trying to get FIFA to agree to only 8 or 9 grounds being needed. Of the 12 planned 4 are in Doha so this 1 per city and two in the capital rule is obviously flexible

London - Wembley, Olympic Park
Manchester - Old Trafford
Newcastle - St James' Park
Liverpool - Anfield
Sunderland - Stadium of Light
Middlesbrough - Riverside
Birmingham - Villa Park
Sheffield - Hillsbrough
Leeds - Elland Road
Derby - Pride Park
Southampton - St Marys
Leicester - King Power
Coventry - Ricoh Arena
Wolverhampton - Molineux
Blackburn - Ewood Park
Brighton - Amex
Nottingham - City Ground
Milton Keynes - Stadium MK

All these are above 30,000 currently at least so would require a lot less than the vast majority of countries to get the required number of fit grounds with the required capacity. Englands bid may have failed but infrastructure would not be the reason when you see Russia and Qatar getting it. Bar maybe 3/4/5 countries England would have the best raw materials to start from.

If this 1 per city and 2 per capital rule is true, it is likely to be changed, along with the 40,000 capacity and strict criteria for grounds unless FIFA wants only 2/3 countries to ever host it and in light of recent choices we know this isn't the case. If it's opened up then London has loads more grounds.
As far as I'm concerned with a bit of work on some grounds England is well capable of hosting the tournament without any help. Definitely at 32 teams anyway. If Qatar can host it and spread it around it's pretty clear England could.

dfx-

inforfun wrote: »

Why not?
You qualified for end tournaments in the past that were harder to get into than a 32 team WC.

It is a tournament where the, at that moment, best teams in the world should be. This will result in a 5 or maybe 6 week tournament where maybe the last 2,5 weeks are of interest.
I am really not waiting for Gabon - UAE brought live to me from Guangzhou. Dont think many people are.

What impact does qualifying have on entertainment in the tournament?

There have been hundreds of dreadful games between big name teams no matter what the size of the tournament.

Brazil were abysmal in 1974 and 1990 (arguably 2006 and 2010 too). Argentina were dreadful in 2002 despite being swashbuckling in qualification. Germany were awful in 2002 and made it all the way to the final. So have the Netherlands, France, Portugal, England and Spain in recent tournaments.

Did the size of the tournament have any impact on improving the Ireland v Egypt game in 1990?

Who knows, Gabon v UAE might be the game of the tournament.