bocadillo
Water Gypsy
FIFA have ratified their decision to increase the number of teams in the World Cup Finals to 48 from 2026. I think people will be worried about this and decry the decision but I wonder if it will not actually improve the spectacle.
Gone are the endless group games where teams have not necessarily had to go all out for a win and where in the last game of the groups two teams have been happy to settle for a draw, knowing that a single point would be enough to take them both through. The sixteen 3-country groups will need only three games to complete and then we will be straight into a knock-out competition where nobody will be able to afford to sit back (except those few countries who think they can win every game on penalties )
OK. It's a far cry from the 1966 World Cup, which is the first one I really took much notice of, with its 16 teams and four groups of 4. But it's infinitely better than the system that was used from '74 to '82 which included a double dose of group games and it seemed that they wanted to eliminate nobody from the competition any sooner than they had to. There'll just be three games in each group before they start sending people home with abandon.
I think it might work.
Gone are the endless group games where teams have not necessarily had to go all out for a win and where in the last game of the groups two teams have been happy to settle for a draw, knowing that a single point would be enough to take them both through. The sixteen 3-country groups will need only three games to complete and then we will be straight into a knock-out competition where nobody will be able to afford to sit back (except those few countries who think they can win every game on penalties )
OK. It's a far cry from the 1966 World Cup, which is the first one I really took much notice of, with its 16 teams and four groups of 4. But it's infinitely better than the system that was used from '74 to '82 which included a double dose of group games and it seemed that they wanted to eliminate nobody from the competition any sooner than they had to. There'll just be three games in each group before they start sending people home with abandon.
I think it might work.