January 12, 2017
The world’s biggest sport is expanding its biggest event. In 2026, the http://www.espnfc.com/fifa-world-cup/story/3035778/fifa-council-unanimously-approves-world-cup-expansion-to-48-teams">World Cup will move from 32 teams to 48. While some might cry that expansion will ruin the tournament, it could, in reality, be a great move.
Here are how the current http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/y=2015/m=5/news=current-allocation-of-fifa-world-cuptm-confederation-slots-maintained-2610611.html">32 teams are chosen: Europe gets 13, Africa gets five, South America and Asia get 4.5, North and Central America, and the Caribbean gets 3.5, the host gets an automatic bid, and Oceania gets a .5 bid.
Playoffs between other conferences decide those half bids.That means South America could get five teams instead of four if it wins a playoff for an extra team.
More bids means more teams from other places besides just Europe. Africa is a huge continent but only gets five teams into the World Cup. The African nations deserve more bids, and so do the Asian countries, North and Central America, and the Caribbean.
Europe is where some of the best national soccer teams in the world are located, but so is South America. Adding a team or two from South America could enhance the tournament.
It seems stupid to slam the idea of expansion until seeing how the 16 added teams are distributed across the confederations. If Africa gets four or five, Oceania gets one, North and Central America get two or three, South America gets three or four, Asia gets two or three, and Europe gets four to one, that would be a nice mix.
The main thing is not to give Europe a bunch more teams. The other confederations should get the bulk of the new bids, and Europe gets the leftovers, if there are any.
There are other details to be worked out since the group stage would go from four to three teams per group. The top two from each would advance to the knockout stage of 32.
One major problem would be stopping teams from colluding with each other to fix the outcomes of which ones advance. There are a couple of ways to fix this problem.
FIFA floated the idea of having penalty shootouts for group games that end in a draw. Personally, I think this is a great idea.
The NHL does something similar in the regular season when games are tied at regulation and have played a five-minute overtime. If a https://www.nhl.com/news/board-of-governors-approves-2015-16-rules-changes/c-771976">NHL game is tied after regulation, the game goes to a shootout. The team that wins the shootout gets two points, and the losing team gets one point.
Teams that win the shootout could earn three points, and reaching it would earn a team one point. Teams that lose in regulation would get no points, of course.
Adding a shootout is good because overtime in group-stage games could add too much extra wear on players’ legs. Going straight to a shootout saves players if they are level after 90 minutes of play.
A shootout would change the whole dynamic of group games. Would a team risk a shootout instead of going for a win in regulation? The same thing could be said about playing for a field goal in football.
Teams might have more urgency to get a winning goal instead of putting outcome on penalties. That could lead to more exciting finishes, as both teams would be playing for a win instead of a draw.
Increasing the number of teams could also lead to multiple countries hosting the World Cup. That is a good thing for all the nations that, right now, would never get the chance to host the tournament.
Two or three countries hosting sets the possibilities for smaller countries to host and minimizes the financial risk for those nations. Opening up the hosting process is a good thing. That way, the World Cup doesn’t become the Olympics, where no nation wants to host the event.
Since both Russia and Qatar are the next World Cups, there is plenty of time to workout the details. In 2016, the UEFA Euros expanded from 16 teams to 24 teams, and that tournament gave us Iceland.
The little country that could was the story of the tournament, and if the World Cup can copy that, expansion is a great idea.
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