Cast your minds back to the aftermath of the infamous Thierry Henry handball in 2009. In among the uproar was a daft suggestion from Football Association of Ireland (FAI) CEO John Delaney that Ireland should be allowed into the following year's world cup as team 33. Disgraced FIFA president Sepp Blatter openly mocked the claims and well Delaney was well compensated with €5 million sush money.
However this week, some seven years later, FIFA have gone and expanded the world cup. It's not thirty-three teams but forty-eight and the expansion won't come in until 2026. Now my thoughts were that the current thirty-two team format was working fine and there wasn't any pressing need to fiddle with the format. My gripe was that the allocation could be a bit more representative of a world cup. However thirty-two is a nice round figure with the group stage of four team groups.
My first thought of the forty-eight team format was this is a mess. Firstly three team groups open up a situation where two sides can play out the final group game in a draw to eliminate the third team. If the rumours of group draws being settled by penalty shootouts are true well then that adds a further mess. It will not lead to more exciting games as teams will settle for the lottery of the shootout.
It's argued that it reduces the number of dead rubbers which in some degree is true but football being football you won't have a tournament without dead rubbers. You will have boring groups and competitive groups. An expansion to sixty-four, the next round figure for the tournament was never considered which was the only expansion needed to maintain the four team group format.
The big positive to this sixteen team expansion is seeing potentially new teams qualifying. Now the allocation wasn't discussed by FIFA but I'm assuming it'll be Africa, Asia and North America who will get more qualifying berths. Perhaps Oceania might get a guaranteed berth. South America can't really expect more given they are a ten nation confederation and I'd be against Europe getting anything more than two or three places in the expansion. They have a decent amount already.
All this leads to how the qualifying stage will be redone. With more places possibly going to Africa, Asia and North America their traditional qualifying formats will need to be altered. That will probably mean the end of the hexagonal in North America and Asia's final stage of two groups of five. If Oceania is given a guaranteed spot that changes their system slightly but it is very much remain to be seen territory as the confederation has never had a guaranteed spot. Europe will be unchanged even with an extra few qualifying berths and South America assuming no places are given in the expansion keep their qualifying format, which is the most exciting in my opinion.
It's hard to escape the fact that there wasn't much wrong with the current format. A rejig in confederation allocations but nothing drastic. Despite the potential new teams on show which I stress is my only favourite part of the expansion the format is a mess. Sixty-four might have been too big a jump but it is the next number up from thirty-two that goes perfectly. The revenues which is the real reason for expansion will be significant for FIFA and so I'll end this post with a prediction, we'll have that sixty-four team format after two world cups of forty-eight.
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