Advice for FIIFA

The current proposed format for the men’s FIFA World Cup in 2026 has 48 teams, 16 pools of 3 with 2 from each group going to a final knockout stage of 32.

That makes it like a tennis tournament with no chance of groups to develop, and also opens up massive opportunities for a Disgrace of Gijon scenario in the initial rounds.  You would be kidding yourselves if you think that won’t happen, and it will cloud what will follow.

The current format of 32 teams is good.  It’s simple and it has the right mix of upset knockouts (Germany) and the best teams usually going through.  But we all understand that FIFA want to bloat it, explore more markets, grow the game.

So how about taking a leaf out of the T20 format and have 48 teams qualify with half going through to the main draw, and the other half going into a (week long max) preliminary round.  Keep it at 8 groups with 3 in each group going into the main draw with the final place to be filled by the winner of the preliminary groups.

Having only 1 qualify from the prelim groups removes the dodgy stuff but 48 teams still get to go to the Big Dance

It means 16 teams go home after playing just the 2 games but that’s exactly the same as the proposed format.

And pre-allocate the pools (Preliminary pool B goes into the main draw pool B) so if, say Italy, ends up in a preliminary pool they can play warm-up matches against similar teams in the main pool.

It would elongate the tournament by a week and impose some inconvenience on domestic competitions, but nothing will compare to what we’ve seen this year.

That suggestion is worth a paper bag or two.