I have decided to focus today not on the much talked about last Sunday’s rollercoaster final between defending champions France and eventual World Cup winners Argentina – described by many as the most exciting final ever – but rather on the recent decision by world football governing body, FIFA, to increase the number of World Cup participating teams from 32 to 48 with effect from the next edition which holds in 2026 in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Without doubt, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is the best in terms of competitiveness, goals, drama, upsets and beautiful stadiums. It has also seen the highest number of goals (172) ever scored in a World Cup, surpassing the 171 goals record set in 1998 and 2014 editions.
In the last four weeks we have watched 64 matches – exhilarating, hard-fought competition with no chances of outlandish, blow-out scorelines or one-sided games.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino hailed the Qatar World Cup as the “best ever”, saying the number of upsets and geographic breadth of the teams which progressed from the group stages indicated that football has become a global sport.
Brilliant tournament. But now FIFA has changed the World Cup 32-team format by enlarging the quadrennial competition – wbich raised fears of diluting the World Cup’s allure and competitive fervour. It means that more of football’s so-called “minnows” who didn’t make it to Qatar will be given a chance of a lifetime when the championship is hosted in the Western Hemisphere in four years time.
According to FIFA, the next World Cup in 2026 will be the biggest ever with a 48-team field instead of the usual 32. Is bigger better? There’s a popular saying that the more the merrier. Does it apply in this context?
The tournament in 2026 will consist of 16-groups, 3-teams in each group of which 2 teams will qualify for the Round of 32 which, for me, seems outlandish. For seven decades, ever since FIFA concorted 16-team participation in the world’s biggest single-sport tournament, it has always been with groups of four.
Scrapping the 32-team format which provides 8 groups of four teams with the current plan of 16 groups and three teams each would see the end of simultaneous games, and the likely end of football giants staring down early elimination. It would encourage fishiness and defensive soccer. It would be an unmitigated abomination, a needless detonation of two of the most thrilling weeks in all of sport.
On the other hand, it would provide more fixtures, enhanced television audiences, viewing figures, lucrative sponsporships and, clearly, more heavyweight clashes in the knock-out rounds.
Invariably, with this change, the 2026 World Cup would have a total of 104 matches, 40 more than those scheduled for Qatar 2022, including group stage and qualifiers. In case of a tie in the group stage, the matches will be defined in a penalty shootout to determine a winner. In case of a win, the winner would get 3 points . The winner in penalties (after a draw in regular time) would get 2 points, while the loser of the shootout would get a point. Convulated, eh? Wait till you hear this: Teams that finish top of the group get to skip the first knockout round. And all twelve teams that finish top of their groups could go into the second knockout round, and the eight second-place teams with the best results could compete in the first knockout round.
After just witnessing the success in Qatar with a 32-team format, is FIFA now throwing the baby out with the bathwater and tinkering, fine-tuning and meddling at the most inopportune moment?
Many Africans have welcomed this development gleefully with the expectation that the continent will receive 11 slots for the next World Cup by virtue of Morocco’s exploits in Qatar. Well, that’s far from the truth. The allocation of the 48 places in the 2026 World Cup shows that Europe will have 16 direct slots, Africa will get 9 direct slots, Asia will have 8, North & Central America will get 6 direct slots, South America will receive have 6 direct slots and Oceania will have 1 direct slot. This means there shall be 46 direct slots in total.
As concerns the remaining two slots, FIFA shall organise an international playoff in the host nation(s) involving a total of 6 teams as follows: Africa shall provide 1 team, North & Central America shall provide 2, South America shall provide 1, Asia shall provide 1 and Oceania shall provide 1.
Among the 6 playoff teams, the top two according to FIFA ranking shall be seeded. The other 4 shall be paired and the 2 winners shall face the two seeded teams. The two winners of the two ties shall then be given the last two tickets to the World Cup to complete the list of 48 participants.
Africa has 9 guaranteed places and we can have 10 African teams in the 2026 edition if the African playoff representative emerges victorious.
Letting in the so-called backwater teams, minnows and “also-rans” will water down the tournament, reduce the quality and cheapen the product. The 32-team tournaments just work. I strongly feel that the smaller teams will just devalue the competition.
Long gone were the complicated best-third-placed teams equations in Qatar which was an unfair criteria of tournaments past. In the 2022 World Cup, it was a case of: “Finish in the top 2 spots, you progress.” As a result we have seen one of the most memorable group stages in Mundial history. The 32-team format this year has gripped the world and fans tuned in to every game truly pondering who might come out on top.
Adding another 16 teams, some probably playing in their first World Cup, has the danger of making the tournament too long, too protracted and too complicated.
FIFA’s quest to democratize and spread the game as wide as possible, giving nations a chance of playing on the world stage is a less commendable one.
The Zurich-based world football body has a tough task of making the World Cup as egalitarian as possible, while maintaining the captivating, high-drama competition that has already marked out Qatar 2022 for high praise.
Perhaps, rather than throwing more teams into the mix, an overhaul of the whole qualification procedure would work. Or, maybe, addressing the obvious imbalance in favor of UEFA’s European monopoly of qualification berths for each tournament might help – as another popular saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
