I had originally planned on talking about Michel Platini's proposal to expand the World Cup from its current 32-nation set-up to a 40-nation set-up, but something else piqued my interest Monday morning, and I got sidetracked. Things like this happen.
No. Let's not even entertain the notion of it. A 40-nation World Cup, at first glance, sounds ridiculous. Platini's plan would add two teams from Africa, two from Asia, two from the Americas, one from Oceania, and one from Europe. Sure, it gets more national teams into our festival of football. Everyone wants to be a part of it. But there are so many questions to be answered that it just makes me wonder if exploring it is a huge waste of time.
How would qualifying work? How much drama of the playoffs--especially in Europe--is taken away, or how much is added? And, most importantly in my eyes, how would the group stages and subsequent knock-out rounds work?
There are two ways for the group stages to work. Eight groups of five would turn the World Cup into a glorified UEFA Group I, where one team has a bye through each go around. If FIFA wants to go with this, it would have to consider expanding play during the group stages from two games to three per day to get all of the group stage matches in during the normal group time. An 8x5 setup would keep the knockouts the same, with each group winner and runner-up moving on.
A 10x4 would keep things the way they are in the group stages save giving each national team an extra two days of rest between matches. But where it would give the mathematical headaches--yet may create more drama--is next on the docket: Surely the group stage winners, all 10, would move on... but how many second-place nations move on? Do the six best second-place nations move on, and how will everything be seeded from that point?
As for qualifying, would the second through ninth second-place teams in UEFA take part in the playoffs, with the top second-place team automatically advancing to the World Cup (which would account for Platini's extra European nation)? Do we even have interconfederation playoffs? Are we saying, "Top Four of CONCACAF, book your tickets. Top Five of CONMEBOL, book yours. Oceania, have at it. No Asian playoffs, just the two third-place teams advance." And for Africa, are we adding two additional home-and-away ties... but how? Do you have the second-place teams during the group stages all go into a pot and have playoffs that way?
If FIFA wants to do something like this for the 2018 World Cup, it would have to be a hurried format change: qualification essentially begins some 20 months away from now with the qualifying draw. This isn't something that should take 20 months to decide on: it needs rational thought and input from more than just Michel Platini. If anything, make your change for 2022 after it's been thought about for more than just a few minutes.
I mean, why fix something that is clearly not broken?
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