FIFA approves plan to expand World Cup to 48 teams

Doc wrote:I actually like this, hopefully Concacaf gets an extra spot. Not that my country would benefit from this but who knows.

You guys were in the big show a decade ago.

Soca warriors will be back long before 2026.

Maybe England can finally do something relevant in this new format

It'll be hilarious when England loses a group to India and Panama

Awful.

Hopefully more scandals will come along, FIFA will dissolve and a new organization fixes this.

That's not going to happen though

CBarca wrote:Awful.

Hopefully more scandals will come along, FIFA will dissolve and a new organization fixes this.

That's not going to happen though

This is good for us. We will have more Concacaf bros in the world cup.

Great news!!!

Betty La Fea wrote:

CBarca wrote:Awful.

Hopefully more scandals will come along, FIFA will dissolve and a new organization fixes this.

That's not going to happen though

This is good for us. We will have more Concacaf bros in the world cup.

Care more about the overall quality than concacaf tbh.

All this talk about the WC and quality is so much cringe as if people watch it because the football is so good

If it goes as planned, with groups of 3 for the initial qualifying, we will games like the Germany-Austria game in 1982 that eliminated Algeria. (or some other Arab country) I don't remember.

zigra wrote:All this talk about the WC and quality is so much cringe as if people watch it because the football is so good

It's not, but why does that mean I shouldn't care that I'll be watching Senegal vs Armenia? Or El Salvador-Germany?

The quality will drop further and that's too bad no matter where the current quality is

Edit: and this is ignoring the other flaws that have already been pointed out.

It'll be in Holiday season/Summers during June etc I won't be surprised seeing chat open for Oman vs New Zealand. It's not like we get really choosy when there is no football available.

rincon wrote:It'll be hilarious when England loses a group to India and Panama

Would qualify from that im'biased'o

To everyone complaining about the quality of some games, here we are talking about the same number of group stage games (48) so thats ok. The added bulk of the extra games is in the extra knockout round of 32. Where yes, we'd have some bad quality games, but imo knockouts can be pretty fun and intense regardless and there is bound to be some good ones there. After that round its regular WC knockouts.

The amount of teams in this sense is ok for the tournament imo. Its the terrible matchfixing potential of the 3 team groups thats bad.

It's shit quality for ya'll top nations in football. But for people 2 levels above us ie Canada, South Korea, China, Saudi, Tunisia, Paraguay etc etc they'll get to see their club in the World cup ffs.

Win win for the world especially at a time when no football exists during the year so gtfo

Nishankly wrote:It's shit quality for ya'll top nations in football. But for people 2 levels above us ie Canada, South Korea, China, Saudi, Tunisia, Paraguay etc etc they'll get to see their club in the World cup ffs.

Win win for the world especially at a time when no football exists during the year so gtfo

I hate South Korea as much as any other person of Yamato descent, but surely they were already making the world cup regardless of this change

Doc wrote:Not sure what cBarca is harping about really. If you have no interest in those matches, don't watch it. The nation of Armenia and El Salvador would care less about this "quality" argument. Also, not like the top leagues don't serve us absolute nonsensical football.

That being said, this new expansion is ripe for some serious match fixing.

And the other one isnt?

Lets not act like places like Spain are not already poor with large amounts of the youth never going to find longterm employment. Whats to stop people from there getting in the ears of management to not match fix their games? Corruption is not exclusively a small nation problem.

Yep, i'm with Nishy and Doc. Dunno why this is so overblown, yeah FIFA is gonna make more money so what? The only thing worth noting is the qualifiers (which no one watches anyway) and the potential for collusion like BC mentioned. However, i don't think that is going to prevalent, the corruption i mean, especially in the national stage, just think of backlash if the players do that or whatever.

Anyways, stop this pretend shock please, and this habit of regurgutating opinions from twitter. Its not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Betty La Fea wrote:

Doc wrote:Not sure what cBarca is harping about really. If you have no interest in those matches, don't watch it. The nation of Armenia and El Salvador would care less about this "quality" argument. Also, not like the top leagues don't serve us absolute nonsensical football.

That being said, this new expansion is ripe for some serious match fixing.

And the other one isnt?

Lets not act like places like Spain are not already poor with large amounts of the youth never  going to find longterm employment. Whats to stop people from there getting in the ears of management to not match fix their games? Corruption is not exclusively a small nation problem.

You misunderstood him. The expansion is ripe for matchfixing not because of the nations added, but because of the format. Its the reason why we moved from the old format to the new where the last games of each group are played at the same time. With 3 team groups the last game can decide the group placement and it leads to match fixing, like it actually happened with Germany and Austria in the 80s.

@ES the corruption BC and I mentioned actually happened at the big stage though. It happened with 3 team groups, and it happened with 4 team groups. This just makes it extra easy.

Togo x Bolivia will be exciting

From the point of view that the WC historically has or should have been always for the world best teams to compete, this huge expansion has really gone away from that even more now lol.

More importantly in todays world and to FIFA is money and the from the POV of a fan watching on TV, it may not be that bad in that the WC will feature more games and more new countries to watch, which will be more interesting in that sense, but we will only see the real high quality matches in the latter stages....

ES wrote:Yep, i'm with Nishy and Doc. Dunno why this is so overblown, yeah FIFA is gonna make more money so what? The only thing worth noting is the qualifiers (which no one watches anyway) and the potential for collusion like BC mentioned. However, i don't think that is going to prevalent, the corruption i mean, especially in the national stage, just think of backlash if the players do that or whatever.

Anyways, stop this pretend shock please, and this habit of regurgutating opinions from twitter. Its not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Well as a rule the system should simply not allow for that possibility. Collusion is impossible to prove so there will be no backlash or consequences. When England is kicked out by Burkina Faso and Costa Rica because they agreed to a draw everyone will come crying but it was a prevent table situation.

The Panini sticker album for the 2026 World Cup

There has always been potential for collusion, there will always be, even in the 4 group format

Not sure what people expected tbh. Football is getting increasingly popular in big countries like China and India. Football is getting increasingly commercialised. Not just football , be it any sport for that matter.

Big European clubs come running to the Asian market, adjusting time schedules, playing lucrative friendlies just to fill their coffers and people are all fine with that but when FIFA decides to do a commercial expansion, suddenly there's all kind of whining and crying. Yes it dilutes the product, so what ? You guys are still going to tune in to watch the games. People can't beat the hype.

Without coming off as a hypocrite, I was in support of the Euro expansion last summer even if the quality of football wasn't as great. And as usual people were bitching and still regularly tuning in to the games.

Also we don't even know which region is getting how many extra spots so there's really no need for such an exaggerated reaction.

I am in support of this expansion as long as they don't increase the duration period of the tournament.

ES wrote:There has always been potential for collusion, there will always be, even in the 4 group format

yes but it's less likely to happen