Road to the World Cup 2026

[SuperRash]

The bumper WC featuring 48 teams begins June 11th 2026 in USA/Canada/Mexico. Teams to have already qualified are:

USA (hosts)
Canada (hosts)
Mexico (hosts)
Japan
New Zealand
Iran
Argentina

What do people make of the new format of 48 teams? Feels to me the quality will be diluted in the group stages with more ‘lesser’ teams qualifying.

It doesn’t feel like it’ll be the best of the best anymore but more teams will get the joy of playing on the biggest stage.

Also the best third placed teams to qualify for the group stages is a nonsense.

 

[jsp]

I don't think it will make it better as you are diluting the quality but I guess it makes sense for it to be more inclusive.

Makes it much harder to host the tournaments in a single country as you need more stadiums so joint bids will become the norm. There's 40 extra games as a result of the change and the tournament is now 1 week longer.

So currently we play a 3 game group stage to get down to 16 teams we now do the same to get to 32.

Extra knock out game is a bonus but with the seedings it's likely those games will be formalities.

8 of the 12 third place sides going through will remove a lot of the jeopardy from the final round of the group stage.

 

[SuperRash]

Yeah it will definitely get rid of a bit of potential drama in the last round of matches. I guess it’s good to be more inclusive and give a chance to more teams but I suppose the tournament is a chance for the elite from all continents to compete. Like you say I think the quality will be highly diluted.

Could end up that the group stage is a bit of a borefest and the knockout stages is the only time it gets interesting.

I’ve even read an article that for the 2030 WC they are thinking of making it a one off 64 team tournament to make the centenary. That would just be barmy even if it’s to mark an event.

 

[RaimondVanDeGouw]

International football is unnecessarily crap, identical to club football but I don’t care for an international side anywhere near as I do, ever did or ever will for United, so I don’t really watch it. I find it easier to ‘reject’ international football than club football because of United but it doesn’t mean club football is much better. Ultimately, it’s far too much with the only intention behind it being revenue income for your UEFA’s and FIFA’s when 16 team Euros and 32 team World Cup’s were absolutely fine as they were, in the same way group stages were fine in European club competitions but now we have extra games and a league.

That and England fans are absolute fecking knobs. It’s like the country becomes Liverpool fans for a month when tournaments come around, banging on about how good they used to be, acting like vermin and weird shouts about how passionate and great they are.

 

[jsp]

Yeah the group stage of the euro's does feel like a bit of a waste of time especially for a side like England where it's almost impossible to be knocked out as you basically need to win 1 game out of 3 and maybe get a draw to at least get one of the 3rd place spots.

I like the summer tournaments you do sadly get a few idiots who haven't got a clue about football jumping on the bandwagon and a lot of the travelling support treat it like a stag do.

The issue is with money now if you don't let more teams in then you just end up with the same teams qualifying over and over.