2026 FIFA World Cup

[GalagaGuy]

[DTroppens]

What does everyone think about the expanded format? I have one thing to say. If the US can't advance to the with most of the field advancing they have no one to blame but themselves. The expanded field also means it's going to be a lot tougher to fill your World Cup sticker book. I still have about 12 stickers to go from the last cycle.

[GalagaGuy]

39 minutes ago, DTroppens said:

What does everyone think about the expanded format? I have one thing to say. If the US can't advance to the with most of the field advancing they have no one to blame but themselves. The expanded field also means it's going to be a lot tougher to fill your World Cup sticker book. I still have about 12 stickers to go from the last cycle.

I actually think it should expand to 64 teams.  Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and if you're going to host a tournament every 4 years to crown the best, might as well let as many teams participate as possible.  Even with the expanded format, you have teams like Italy, Denmark, Poland and Nigeria who didn't qualify.   

[DTroppens]

I am basically 50% Polish and German so I really wanted Poland to qualify. After the US, my No. 2 team is Poland (it's too easy to root for Germany), so that would be great. However, I think qualifying should matter. It shouldn't be a piece of cake. I think this is Italy's third straight World Cup vacation. That's not a mistake any more. Be better. When the US didn't qualify, I was harping two cycles prior that the US was going to struggle with the cycle eight years later. I honestly think they may have struggled this cycle if not given an auto bid.

I enjoy the qualifiers and don't want to see them not matter. I went to plenty of US CONCACAF qualifiers because they mattered. I was earning my fan caps for US-Mexico games in Columbus for quite a few cycles. Six CONCACAF teams automatically in 2030, and a seventh competing in a play-in home-and-home series. Ehhh, even I think the US can blindly just walk through and qualify in that scenario. 

It probably will go to 64 teams one day. I think there is a little talk about it for 2030,but that probably be more likely a 2034? Maybe I'm off on that and 2030 is more on the table than I think. It's more money, more fringe teams making the cup and if half the field increasing the interest in the event world-wide, so they probably will.  That probably would mean another week to the tourney as well. 

[GalagaGuy]

Who knows why Italy struggles when it comes to qualifying for the World Cup but they are currently the 12th ranked team in the world so not having them there just feels wrong.   I agree that the qualifiers would lose a bit of their luster if the field was expanded to 64, but group play would essentially become an extension of it.  Since the World Cup started, something like 80 teams have qualified so even with a field of 64, it's not like you're letting anyone and everyone with a team in.  

Edited Thursday at 09:01 PM by GalagaGuy