FIFA President Infantino just proposed a new WC format. 48 teams, with 16 guaranteed to groups and the remaining 32 in a single game elimination. Winners move to the traditional group stage and losers go home.

That's nuts. The minute a team gets up in a game like that they would park the bus like you have never seen.

He should stick to pulling the folded pieces of paper out of the plastic bowls on the tournament draw shows, and go nowhere near planning those tournaments.

Yikes, definitely Apples to Oranges, but expanding the field totally ruined the allure of March Madness in College Hoops for me. In other words, hate it when people take a **** on a good thing. I love how the World Cup is in its current form. Outside of awarding the tourney to desert countries of course.

this would undoubtedly result in less asian/african/concacaf teams in the group stage

terrible idea...not to mention...where do you play the games? is it at the world cup site? so now all of these countries will have to fly their teams there for a potential one and done situation?


WC is perfect as it is

Yeah this is just another dumbass idea in a long line of dumbass ideas.

The Euros have been absolutely ruined with a move to 24

This would accomplish the exact same thing for the WC

jeffk said:

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More teams, more opportunities for bribes.

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Really? Because there was a lot of great soccer played.

If they're going to 48, why waste the obvious money grab? Might as well open proceedings with 12 groups of 4, then a second group stage with 6 groups of 4. Then put the winners, runners-up, and top third place teams into a 16 team knockout round. Stretch the damn tournament to two solid months.

Or better yet, go straight to 64. Then you just take the winners and runners up from the second group phase.

Or even better yet, why not expand all the way to 128. FIFA top 100 auto-qualify. Then you can have three group phases and everyone (even the crappy loser countries that would never sniff a World Cup) gets a participation trophy.

Might as well go 195 to get them all. Can't wait to see that Nauru team.

CDub06 said:

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Might as well go 195 to get them all. Can't wait to see that Nauru team.

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Actually, they should go straight to 256. Give the top 61 federations a slot for a 'B' team. Then you can have four rounds of group stages followed by a 16 team knockout phase. All of the piddly loser countries get a World Cup participation trophy and all of the powerhouses (down through countries that can field a decent squad comprised of mostly professionals) get an additional 23 caps to hand out. I'll be excited to see a Germany v. Germany round of 16 match up.