Cut the fat out of the World Cup

I think the point of the World Cup is to mix the best teams with the lesser teams. You tend to get better and more shocking upsets that way. Besides the fat adds flavour.

Posted from  United States

Let me disagree with both of you. 16 is too little and 32 is too much. Let’s get back to the old 24 team World Cup. This way everybody has a chance and at the same time we are not obligated to watch Tunisia x Saudi Arabia

LOL! This compromise works for me

Posted from  United States

24 eh? Not convinced, but it’s better than 16!

Posted from  United Kingdom

What confederations would you cut places from then in order to get it down to 24?

Posted from  United States

3 Asia
3 North & Central Americas
3 Africa
6 South America
8 Europe

1 Playoff between the best of the first three Confederations and Oceania. The best is chosen based on previous World Cup. You do better you get rewarded with 1/2 spot concept.

That for a total of 24.

Posted from  United States

3 to North & Central America is too much. 6 to South too. My suggestion would be

2 and 1/2 Asia
1/2 Oceania
4 Africa
5 South America
2 Nort & Central America
10 Europe

Too many for Africa. Make it

2 and 1/2 Asia
1/2 Oceania
3 Africa
5 South America
3 Nort & Central America
10 Europe

and we have a deal

Posted from  United States

[...] As I pondered how best to riposte to a couple of my fellow bloggers over whether the World Cup should have 32, 16 or 24 teams, I found myself humming that Warrior Nation anthem - Maximus Dan’s Fighter. [...]

Posted from  United States

Forget contraction. We need expansion! I say we go for 64 teams this way:

8 Africa
8 CONCACAF
16 Europe
8 South America
8 Oceana
8 Asia
8 Planets other than Earth

Posted from  United States

Is it just me or is everybody here overrating South American teams? At the moment they have 4.5 spots in a 32 team tournament, and most people are giving them more than that in a 24 team tournament. Maybe you’re trying to say that there isn’t enough at the moment? There are 10 countries in CONMEBOL, somehow I feel giving them 6 spots in a 24 team tournament is a bit too much.

Yeah, Colombia and Uruguay are good teams, but if they can’t beat Paraguay or Ecuador’s record, they certainly don’t deserve to be among the best in the region.

Another idea would be to give a combined number of spots for both CONCACAF & CONMEBOL, and they should qualify together. Maybe have something like in Europe with groups, but combining the two confederations. That way CONMEBOL teams would stop complaining about how easy the strong CONCACAF teams have it in qualifying.

Posted from  Australia

Reducing the number of teams in the WC is not a good ideia. It will mean that good players might miss the WC if their team have a few bad games. It will also be boring to know that there wont be any more surprises like the Senegal v France in 2002.

Posted from  United Kingdom

There was a lot of surprises in the others WC. What about Cameroon v Argentina in 90? And Nigeria, Sweden and Bulgaria in 94? Morrocos in 86…

I believe Africa should get 4 teams. Central America does not have 3 teams good enough to be playing a World Cup

I can only talk about Eurocups and Worldcups. I say if the nr of teams in a WC is reduced, what you’ll see is an even bigger domination of european teams, Brazil + Argentina, and countries where most of the players play in european championships.

Doesn’t do much for variety… I actually think it goes against the spirit of the WC: To be GLOBAL!

BUT PLEASE, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE USUALLY TERRIBLE LEVEL OF THE REFEREES AND THEIR TEAMS.

Europe has a lot of countries in the WC because it’s a tiny continent with a huge nr of countries, older than everybody else’s gandmother - apart from Asia. America, like Africa, is huge and with small nr of countries.

To make it fair, we should build a “championship / league model”. But the heart of the even is in it’s tournament model (knockout).

Maybe it’ll bring more confusion, but why not make a GLOBAL qualification system? And NOT divide it in continents/areas?

As we’ve seen here, FIFA doesn’t lack the $. It could pay the extra travelling costs. Make some 10 huge qualification groups, with some 20 teams, world wide, and function with games (home/away) per team of each group. Than, the last 24 would move on - same rules for all groups. We’d have more fairness in qualification, we’d see our teams more often - more matches - the WHOLE EVENT would truelly be global. Teams like Brazil would probably be seen in the other side of the world much more frequently, and the rest of the world (US) would see the teams nobody knows exist.

Too unreal…? Club interests too big (And $ involved)…?

Posted from  Netherlands

That idea sounds cool Pedro.

Posted from  United Kingdom

[...] If we are talking about global representation, and being one big happy family, well … I have my own thoughts on that! [...]

Posted from  United States