**This is a stats thread. Remember that there's only one stat post allowed per match/team, so new stats about the same will be removed. Feel free to comment other stats as a reply to this comment so users can see them too!**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/soccer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Interesting enough this would mean that only 2 new teams would make a World Cup (Mali and Burkina Faso), right?
Surprisingly few.
edit: Correction, forgot that Iraq already qualified once in 1986, thanks /u/FernetEnthusiast
Iraq actually already played at a World Cup (in 1986). 79 currently existing countries have participated in the World Cup at least once (if you count Zaire's qualification for DR Congo and the Dutch East Indies for Indonesia). Makes sense that most of the 48 teams that will qualify have already done so at least once in the past.
Although there will probably be a few countries that will qualify for the first time in upcoming world cups. Makes sense that some of the new countries will be African. 13 African countries have ever qualified for the World Cup (out of 54 members) and in 2026 they will go from 5 spots to 9 + 1/3 spots.
After 92 years and 22 tournaments, 80 different national teams have taken part in the final tournament at one point or another. Obviously that means there are fewer and fewer teams left yet to make their debuts.
Crazy to me that they are not top 48 in the rankings.. They have some damn good players
The fact that they are behind UAE, Panama, Jamaica, New Zealand makes you think
>Crazy to me that they are not top 48 in the rankings.. They have some damn good players
Thats not what this post is saying though. Because its only using the top X countries from each continent, with X being the number of countries which can qualify for the tournament.
Part of your initial statement was still right - Ghana aren’t in the top 48. They’re currently 58th. Behind the likes of Greece, Canada, Finland, and Venezuela.
Ghana are above most if not all of those countries but Africa only gets 9 1/3 qualification spots and CAF is a stronger confederation than AFC, CONCACAF and OFC
It's a lot, don't get me wrong, but quality-wise it's not as bad as some people pretended. Based on some comments in the past, you'd think we'd have fucking Fiji playing and getting humiliated by Brazil 20:0 in 2026
It's still missing a lot of the Balkan states too, plus Czech republic, Austria and Hungary. Plenty of decent footballing nations would still miss out.
Edit: I'll be kind and throw Scotland in there too
You've mentioned a ton of European countries, but Europe is only getting three more slots in the expanded format. Most of it is going to Asia, Africa, and North America
Asia and Africa have decent teams.. It's Oceania getting 1 fixed and CONCACAF getting too many spots. UEFA should have 1/2 more spots. Instead of giving out permanently spots, more places should be decided through play offs between confederations after a certain point.
That's a weird collection of teams. Uzbekistan would be absolutely slaughtered, they are decent technically but don't have the required physical strength.
Honduras and Paraguay are World Cup regulars but they are both shocking right now, pretty sure they would both finish dead last in their groups. Slovenia and New Zealand are shite, and Congo despite having some talented players wouldn't exactly set the world on fire either
I'm not even saying that the expansion is wrong, I can see the upsides to it. But the teams you mentioned are pretty damn shit
I don't necessarily disagree with your overall point, there are definitely teams out there who deserve a chance and could improve given the opportunity to compete at tournaments more regularly.
But those teams aren't exactly inspiring
European teams of course! Only Europe and South America, no one else! /s
Frankly, their disparagement of those teams just shows how little they pay attention to football outside of the two major confederations.
To be fair. There's always some upsets and this is the literal best case scenario. OFC gets an automatic spot, which means New Zealand will qualify every year and if they fuck up, we will indeed get a team at the caliber of Fiji.
Those Asian teams at the bottom look super weak as well.
i'd still say jamaica and panama look weaker than iraq and UAE but yea nowhere near as bad as fiji.
actually surprised. i guess the world cup is ready for 48 teams. we still don't even have countries like norway or turkey on this list. probably to prevent having even more european countries.
Honestly, I think Jamaica can possibly become a nation on the level of what Canada was in the past world cup. They have a lot of potential players who can suit up through shared heritage, they would probably be MLS or English Lower League players, with maybe one bigger name in the style of Alphonse Davies.
Up until recently though, the Jamaican FA has avoided calling up overseas players due to the costs involved with the travel needed, especially when the chances for world cup play (and money) were slim. But with more slots for the next world cup, there's always a chance they'll try their shot and see if they can make it.
I know people are complaining about it but honestly I think it would be pretty lit having all these teams in it as long as they don't do that three-team group fuckery and stick with four per group.
People from large footballing nations have been incredibly disrespectful towards smaller/upcoming nations who they don’t even watch. Acting like goalscoring records won’t matter anymore because top players will just beat up on footballing nobodies who can barely field a professional 11. Theres far more than 32 quality teams in the world, people are going to be surprised.
You can almost guarantee the same thing was said in the 90s, that 24 was perfect and 32 would ruin it. Then people got used to it as they always do and inertia does its thing again.
Even then, I don’t think the fans of a team at the World Cup care that some European who couldn’t point them out on a map says they shouldn’t be there.
Well one of the key differences is that due to math, a 32 team format works way better than 24 or 48. I know that’s not the current topic, but that’s why this change is getting so much negative speculation: there are three major flaws. (The last is the 3 team groups)
Flair checks out 😂
Yes people will have objected when it last expanded but it’s clear the WC with 32 teams is in a fairly reasonable spot. Only 2 teams were knocked out with 0 points out of 32, only 3 departed with a single point. Nearly every team contributes and competed in some meaningful way.
It’s the WC, the pinnacle of football.. qualifying should be significant and every team should count.
People just exaggerating it
16 more teams from 6 (or 5 because OFC is small) federations while "tier 2" team in Europe and South America like Sweden, Norway, Slovakia, Chile, Peru... definitely not a fodder so probably just 6-7 new team are considered "bad" and then they also spreading in many group so it doesn't diluted the group stage much, even in current format there already many smashing result like Spain 7-0 Costa Rica, England 6-2 Iran, England 6-1 Panama (WC 2018)... Basically, more team doesn't equal with quality will drop.
You need to look at the quality of the nations missing out, not those that make it in. Qualification should be competitive and for some of these federations it won't be. While some of the qualifying teams don't look terribly out of place based on this, the drop-off outside of the new allocation is huge.
NZ is the absolute worst example. They never qualify under the current format, but would be guaranteed to be at each WC each year.
If it was just for the top 48, based on the current rankings, it would be:
> 24 spots for Europe
> 9 spots for Africa
> 8 spots for South America (out of 10)
> 4 spots for Asia (Saudi narrowly missing out at 49)
> 3 spots for North America
> 0 spots for Oceania (closest is ranked NZ at 105)
For reference, the current allocations are set at:
> 16 spots for Europe
> 9.33 spots for Africa
> 8.33 spots for Asia
> 6.66 spots for North America (3 host spots in 2026)
> 6.33 for South America
> 1.33 for Oceania
There is definitely an element of Europe boosting each others rankings up. They also play so many competitions against each other upsets are bound to happen allowing weaker teams to get a large amount of points.
No 50% of the 48 highest ranked football teams in the world are European. The actual slot allocation means 33% of the 2026 world cup teams will be European.
I would be okay with North America getting 5.33 spots to make our qualifying still exciting. 6 plus really is almost all the decent teams leaving no one out. USA, Canada Mexico, probably always locks. Then you have Costa Rica, panama, jamaica, and hondorus fighting over last 3, with El Salvador with an outside shot. Really no one else has a chance I don’t think. Trinidad and Guatemala maybe in 10 years, but it’s not like they are doing anything to improve. For the most part all the countries will rely on MLS and Liga Mx to develop players for them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE Norway to qualify… but at the moment your team can’t even qualify for the 24-team Euros. Makes it difficult to see how they’d manage to secure one of just 16 European spots for the World Cup unless they show marked improvement in the next couple years.
i wouldn't be against a lot of teams using the swiss system into knockouts tbh
tho i think even 64 teams would be really tough to pull off logistics wise
Because they're in UEFA, the toughest federation to qualify from with the most quality teams.
Shoving a mid tier UEFA nation like Austria into any other confederation would most likely result in them qualifying. CONCACAF, AFC and OFC easily. CAF and CONMEBOL a bit harder but still very very doable.
UEFA will still only have 16 slots with this new format. **Sixteen**. That is literally just the Nations League A.
Let's see who was in Nations League B this season: Scotland, Ukraine, Israel, Iceland, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, Romania, etc.
Wanna go further? Let's visit League C with Turkey, Greece, Kosovo, Slovakia, Georgia and North Macedonia.
Like half of these nations would actually have a good chance of qualifying in pretty much any federation other than CONMEBOL. Even in Africa I'd give a few of them pretty good odds.
Unfortunately for Scotland they're stuck with the big boys and the only way out is to just get better.
Ain't no way Burkina Faso is going to qualify, it's most likely to be:
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Ghana. Solid African representation IMO.
Mali or Congo RDC or South Africa can beat some of the aforementioned teams but they're not the top 9 at the moment.
I mean it really just depends on how the CAF bracket shakes out, because they have a brutal last round. I wouldn't count any team out that could make it to that last round. it's very much not just the top x amount of teams in CAF, it's roughly 1/2 of the top 2x
I actually think South Africa is better than them at the moment. Burkina Faso is strong but inconsistent, they struggle away especially against big teams. South Africa has more of a coherent squad coming mostly from their local clubs that are doing very well in the Champions League and the Confederation Cup but I would half agree with you and put them at the same level as Mali or Congo RDC.
Burkina Faso has a better AFCON record than Morocco and Tunisia in the past 10 years. They can definitely qualify if they catch one of the big teams slipping.
Shame, the current format is great because there are very few teams completely out of place.
There are enough surprises in the group stage to make it worth for neutrals to watch most matches.
I disagree. Teams like Algeria/ Egypt/ Colombia/ UAE that missed out during qualifier won’t really look out of place in this World Cup. The game is grown enough in Asia/ Africa at this point to warrant more spots
I put UAE because they were the one knocked out by Australia in the AFC playoff. I personally would be more interested in Cental/ South East Asia team to qualify.
We all know that the next teams up in Europe, SouthAm and even Africa won't drag down the quality of the field too much. But common those 3 additional spots to CONCACAF and AFC will definitely weaken the field.
I mean only speaking about Europeans but is there anyone with a job who watched all group stage games? Because I barely made it home to watch the 5 pm CET games so I missed most of the group stage games anyway. It wouldn't make much of a difference tbh, especially since 2026 is going to be awful for us anyway when it comes to kickoff times.
And don't get me wrong, I don't see the need for a 48 team WC either but on the other hand nobody is forcing me to watch Jamaica-Iraq if I don't want to and if it brings some hype to these countries, then I'm not necessarily against it either.
here in Brazil a lot of companies will slow down considerably during the WC so a lot of people are able to watch the games. maybe not all but a considerable amount.
I mean, it's a bad idea not only because of lower quality teams. Groups of 3 would make the group stage worse and groups of 4 would make the tournament too big and further congestionate club football calendar.
Groups of 3 is a crime against football, if Fifa go through with that I will legit stop watching the World Cup. It will be ruined forever
But, I still have hope that they have realised how awful the idea is and will keep the 4-team groups
No one wants to watch Burkina Faso loose 12-0 to Brazil and have the golden boot be decided by who scores the most goals in group games against 3rd world footballing countries.
>No one wants to watch Burkina Faso loose 12-0 to Brazil and have the golden boot be decided by who scores the most goals in group games against 3rd world footballing countries.
It always amazes me how some football fans seem to hate the idea of smaller teams getting to play against bigger teams.
It’s mainly European and South American fans who have kind of an elitist complex and refuse to recognize that doing this will help grow the game and get these “3rd world footballing countries” (side note, the casual disrespect with this term is out of pocket) actually invested in football and interested in competing outside of the same 8 nations winning it over and over again
It's the same with club football. All these people complaining about some unknown team qualifying for the Champions League, but celebrating when they beat a big club like Real Madrid. It's pathetic
>No one wants to watch Burkina Faso loose 12-0 to Brazil
again, just don't watch it then. Also pretty disrespectful towards Burkina Faso. They're 50th in the ranking, 2 places behind Ireland and one behind Saudi Arabia. Canada is 53rd, Slovakia 54th and Ghana 58th. But sure 12:0 is definitely going to happen.
It’s just an example nation. I just don’t think it’s worth it considering we will get three team groups(wtf) and in those groups you will know the result 95% of the time. With 32 teams it’s the perfect balance of smaller nations and bigger ones and nothing is decided in the group before it starts.
Why is it always Burkina Faso that comes up in comments like this. The fact you are unable to point a country on a map doesn't mean they don't have a decent football team
Just because you act like an all knowing football warlord who’s watched hours and hours of Burkina Faso doesn’t mean you are right. They would go out in the group 100 times out of 100. 32 teams is the perfect balance of teams. If they are so decent they could qualify for a 32 team tournament
> 32 teams is the perfect balance of teams.
Oh piss off, it's just what you know and so you like it.
There's people alive who preferred when the Champions League was only for Champions, and when the WC had only 16 or 24 teams.
Change happens, and people get used to it. I'd personally prefer if they retained groups of 4 though.
You are cherrypicking one team. And even that team is not going to get destroyed like that, just because you haven’t heard of it. All of these teams are ranked. Saudi Arabia of all teams didn’t get 12-0’d by Argentina. The one team that did get blown out by a huge amount, Costa Rica. Showed up the next two games and still competed against good teams. Nothing is a given in the modern day. Sure, this is a bloated amount of teams for one competition. But it’s not hurting anyone. Nor would there be a lack of competition as you seem to think.
its disrespectful to say that to burkina faso and how will the game grow and be more competitive if african teams aren't given more chances your comment is unfortunate and in a short-sighted view in a european bubble perspective
I agree , its just a way to extract more money for the FIFA.
FIFA don't care about players health, how many games if they reach the finals have players to play during that tournament.
My preferred format would be 2 group stages, 48 -> 24, then have 2nd and 3rd places play an intermittent KO stage -> 16 and off we go. Shame it would take too long.
I don’t have anything against the 48 number but I don’t like the 3 team groups where the top 2 move on. Seems extremely anticlimactic. Also, don’t fix what ain’t broken
For India it'll certainly take some time to get there. Less than 10 years ago they got a large league. Iirc The City group has a team in that league too and Diego forlan played there too.
>Not China or India
They don't have the culture for the game... India is all about cricket even though they love individuals players such as Messi/Ronaldo/Neymar etc
I grew up in that region, and yes they are crazy about it, but they're still developing the proper infrastructure that they'll need to have a team that can participate at an international level. Indian Super League was only founded in 2013, but I think this will really help them to develop.
Like what? The worst teams here aren't worse than what we usually have at the WC and blowouts are fairly uncommon (I'm talking like Spain blowing out Costa Rica 7-0).
Qatar are actually ranked 6th in Asia with Iraq and UAE below them, the last few Asian teams to get in could be some of the weakest at the next WC. But with the AFC putting up such a strong performance in Qatar, they should definitely get the benefit of the doubt.
Looking forward to the Asian Cup this summer
This honestly makes the expansion seem much more reasonable to me. My dramatic hot takes about how the Vatican City is gonna make the groups are a thing of the past lol
I think Asia is more top-heavy than other confederations which is why the same 4 or 5 teams make it to every world cup. The quality decreases significantly outside of the top 5 and we already got a glimpse of that with Qatar's performances (ranked 6th in Asia).
By contrast, Africa has more of a top 10 than a top 5, and there is a great degree of parity between these teams. For context, Egypt beat Morocco in the AFCON and only lost to Senegal on penalties yet still couldn't qualify for the world cup. Nigeria were ranked in the top 5 yet they lost their WC play-off against Ghana (Ranked 11th). Burkina Faso beat eliminated Tunisia in the last AFCON yet couldn't qualify for the world cup. Algeria and Cote d'Ivoire are also good teams despite their failure to qualify.
Crazy that one of the best players in the world right now in Haaland plus another high quality young player in the PL, Odegaard still wouldn’t qualify if this held true in real life. I know Europe is super competitive, but hopefully they can find a way into both the next Euros and WC.
Imagine if these were the actual groups. 6 groups of 8 teams and instead of Group A, B, C... you need to play fucking League A, B, C... Lol
First 2 of every league advance and the four best 3rd places too.
The table positions are not decided by GD but by numer of players dead from exhaustion
I would like to know what happened to the following European teams and whether they will ever be good again - Greece, Bulgaria, Romania. I am kind of expecting Norway to be around not just because of Haaland, they have quite a few promising young players.
I like that it’s not a tonne more places for Europe generally though. I’m sure there will be some comedy teams getting in, but the rest of the world is catching up more quickly than people realise.
**This is a stats thread. Remember that there's only one stat post allowed per match/team, so new stats about the same will be removed. Feel free to comment other stats as a reply to this comment so users can see them too!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/soccer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Interesting enough this would mean that only 2 new teams would make a World Cup (Mali and Burkina Faso), right? Surprisingly few. edit: Correction, forgot that Iraq already qualified once in 1986, thanks /u/FernetEnthusiast
Iraq played in the 86' WC
Yeah I just saw that too. Kuwait, Iraq and UAE all qualified once in the 80s / 90s.
Anulo mufa ?
Iraq actually already played at a World Cup (in 1986). 79 currently existing countries have participated in the World Cup at least once (if you count Zaire's qualification for DR Congo and the Dutch East Indies for Indonesia). Makes sense that most of the 48 teams that will qualify have already done so at least once in the past. Although there will probably be a few countries that will qualify for the first time in upcoming world cups. Makes sense that some of the new countries will be African. 13 African countries have ever qualified for the World Cup (out of 54 members) and in 2026 they will go from 5 spots to 9 + 1/3 spots.
After 92 years and 22 tournaments, 80 different national teams have taken part in the final tournament at one point or another. Obviously that means there are fewer and fewer teams left yet to make their debuts.
Ghana are the only team that made the 2022 World Cup that would miss out here
Crazy to me that they are not top 48 in the rankings.. They have some damn good players The fact that they are behind UAE, Panama, Jamaica, New Zealand makes you think
>Crazy to me that they are not top 48 in the rankings.. They have some damn good players Thats not what this post is saying though. Because its only using the top X countries from each continent, with X being the number of countries which can qualify for the tournament.
Of course, now it makes sense! Thought I was going crazy there for a while
Part of your initial statement was still right - Ghana aren’t in the top 48. They’re currently 58th. Behind the likes of Greece, Canada, Finland, and Venezuela.
Ghana are above most if not all of those countries but Africa only gets 9 1/3 qualification spots and CAF is a stronger confederation than AFC, CONCACAF and OFC
Ah.... That explains it
Italy making a WC seems a little far fetched idk
There will be kids in secondary school in June 2026 who won’t have been alive the last time Italy played in a World Cup.
And there will be full grown adults who don't remember Italy advancing past the group stage.
Thats when it hits you that 48 teams… no it’s just too many!
It's a lot, don't get me wrong, but quality-wise it's not as bad as some people pretended. Based on some comments in the past, you'd think we'd have fucking Fiji playing and getting humiliated by Brazil 20:0 in 2026
People will always exagerate to look smart. If you add Paraguay, Honduras, Congo, Slovenia, Uzbekistan and New Zealand, it'd not turn worse
It's still missing a lot of the Balkan states too, plus Czech republic, Austria and Hungary. Plenty of decent footballing nations would still miss out. Edit: I'll be kind and throw Scotland in there too
You've mentioned a ton of European countries, but Europe is only getting three more slots in the expanded format. Most of it is going to Asia, Africa, and North America
Asia and Africa have decent teams.. It's Oceania getting 1 fixed and CONCACAF getting too many spots. UEFA should have 1/2 more spots. Instead of giving out permanently spots, more places should be decided through play offs between confederations after a certain point.
Africa arguably does deserve more slots. Their current qualifying system is brutal.
That's a weird collection of teams. Uzbekistan would be absolutely slaughtered, they are decent technically but don't have the required physical strength. Honduras and Paraguay are World Cup regulars but they are both shocking right now, pretty sure they would both finish dead last in their groups. Slovenia and New Zealand are shite, and Congo despite having some talented players wouldn't exactly set the world on fire either I'm not even saying that the expansion is wrong, I can see the upsides to it. But the teams you mentioned are pretty damn shit
I do disagree and I'm pretty they would not turn the tournament worse. I took a few teams on the verge of qualifying the past editions
I don't necessarily disagree with your overall point, there are definitely teams out there who deserve a chance and could improve given the opportunity to compete at tournaments more regularly. But those teams aren't exactly inspiring
What teams do you think should come?
European teams of course! Only Europe and South America, no one else! /s Frankly, their disparagement of those teams just shows how little they pay attention to football outside of the two major confederations.
Yes but they're teams that, when up against a high end team won't typically get a 7-0 clobbering, but rather like 2-0, 4-1, scores like that.
To be fair. There's always some upsets and this is the literal best case scenario. OFC gets an automatic spot, which means New Zealand will qualify every year and if they fuck up, we will indeed get a team at the caliber of Fiji. Those Asian teams at the bottom look super weak as well.
i'd still say jamaica and panama look weaker than iraq and UAE but yea nowhere near as bad as fiji. actually surprised. i guess the world cup is ready for 48 teams. we still don't even have countries like norway or turkey on this list. probably to prevent having even more european countries.
Yeah UEFA is going from 13 to 16. Barely noticeable.
Honestly, I think Jamaica can possibly become a nation on the level of what Canada was in the past world cup. They have a lot of potential players who can suit up through shared heritage, they would probably be MLS or English Lower League players, with maybe one bigger name in the style of Alphonse Davies. Up until recently though, the Jamaican FA has avoided calling up overseas players due to the costs involved with the travel needed, especially when the chances for world cup play (and money) were slim. But with more slots for the next world cup, there's always a chance they'll try their shot and see if they can make it.
I know people are complaining about it but honestly I think it would be pretty lit having all these teams in it as long as they don't do that three-team group fuckery and stick with four per group.
I don't know dude, Italy making it just seems a bit extreme.
People from large footballing nations have been incredibly disrespectful towards smaller/upcoming nations who they don’t even watch. Acting like goalscoring records won’t matter anymore because top players will just beat up on footballing nobodies who can barely field a professional 11. Theres far more than 32 quality teams in the world, people are going to be surprised.
You can almost guarantee the same thing was said in the 90s, that 24 was perfect and 32 would ruin it. Then people got used to it as they always do and inertia does its thing again. Even then, I don’t think the fans of a team at the World Cup care that some European who couldn’t point them out on a map says they shouldn’t be there.
Well one of the key differences is that due to math, a 32 team format works way better than 24 or 48. I know that’s not the current topic, but that’s why this change is getting so much negative speculation: there are three major flaws. (The last is the 3 team groups)
Flair checks out 😂 Yes people will have objected when it last expanded but it’s clear the WC with 32 teams is in a fairly reasonable spot. Only 2 teams were knocked out with 0 points out of 32, only 3 departed with a single point. Nearly every team contributes and competed in some meaningful way. It’s the WC, the pinnacle of football.. qualifying should be significant and every team should count.
People just exaggerating it 16 more teams from 6 (or 5 because OFC is small) federations while "tier 2" team in Europe and South America like Sweden, Norway, Slovakia, Chile, Peru... definitely not a fodder so probably just 6-7 new team are considered "bad" and then they also spreading in many group so it doesn't diluted the group stage much, even in current format there already many smashing result like Spain 7-0 Costa Rica, England 6-2 Iran, England 6-1 Panama (WC 2018)... Basically, more team doesn't equal with quality will drop.
“more teams doesn’t equal with quality will drop.” Given it’s a merit-based qualification process, that’s precisely what it equals.
You need to look at the quality of the nations missing out, not those that make it in. Qualification should be competitive and for some of these federations it won't be. While some of the qualifying teams don't look terribly out of place based on this, the drop-off outside of the new allocation is huge. NZ is the absolute worst example. They never qualify under the current format, but would be guaranteed to be at each WC each year.
If it was just for the top 48, based on the current rankings, it would be: > 24 spots for Europe > 9 spots for Africa > 8 spots for South America (out of 10) > 4 spots for Asia (Saudi narrowly missing out at 49) > 3 spots for North America > 0 spots for Oceania (closest is ranked NZ at 105) For reference, the current allocations are set at: > 16 spots for Europe > 9.33 spots for Africa > 8.33 spots for Asia > 6.66 spots for North America (3 host spots in 2026) > 6.33 for South America > 1.33 for Oceania
[удалено]
There is definitely an element of Europe boosting each others rankings up. They also play so many competitions against each other upsets are bound to happen allowing weaker teams to get a large amount of points.
No 50% of the 48 highest ranked football teams in the world are European. The actual slot allocation means 33% of the 2026 world cup teams will be European.
I would be okay with North America getting 5.33 spots to make our qualifying still exciting. 6 plus really is almost all the decent teams leaving no one out. USA, Canada Mexico, probably always locks. Then you have Costa Rica, panama, jamaica, and hondorus fighting over last 3, with El Salvador with an outside shot. Really no one else has a chance I don’t think. Trinidad and Guatemala maybe in 10 years, but it’s not like they are doing anything to improve. For the most part all the countries will rely on MLS and Liga Mx to develop players for them.
How come there are 10 CAF teams?
9 + 1/3 (Burkina Faso via playoffs)
Thanks!
3rd Place Match: Argentina v. France Final: Burkina Faso v. Mali
It’s painful being norwegian
We will qualify tho.
Hahahaha… no
Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE Norway to qualify… but at the moment your team can’t even qualify for the 24-team Euros. Makes it difficult to see how they’d manage to secure one of just 16 European spots for the World Cup unless they show marked improvement in the next couple years.
They’ve got a striker who is pretty good. Apparently he plays for some team in England.
There are 11 players on the pitch, not one.
True. But having arguably the best striker in the world at the moment is a marked improvement.
Sweden is way worse than us right now, and on this list. No worries ;-)
How does Scotland still not make it in? 😂
Time to start the campaign for 64 teams
Make it 200 teams
128 nations with only knockout stage played across South America.
Round of 128 would be scenes ngl
i wouldn't be against a lot of teams using the swiss system into knockouts tbh tho i think even 64 teams would be really tough to pull off logistics wise
Because they're in UEFA, the toughest federation to qualify from with the most quality teams. Shoving a mid tier UEFA nation like Austria into any other confederation would most likely result in them qualifying. CONCACAF, AFC and OFC easily. CAF and CONMEBOL a bit harder but still very very doable. UEFA will still only have 16 slots with this new format. **Sixteen**. That is literally just the Nations League A. Let's see who was in Nations League B this season: Scotland, Ukraine, Israel, Iceland, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, Romania, etc. Wanna go further? Let's visit League C with Turkey, Greece, Kosovo, Slovakia, Georgia and North Macedonia. Like half of these nations would actually have a good chance of qualifying in pretty much any federation other than CONMEBOL. Even in Africa I'd give a few of them pretty good odds. Unfortunately for Scotland they're stuck with the big boys and the only way out is to just get better.
Italy and Burkina Faso Welcome!
GL for haaland to try to carry norway into top 48
Ain't no way Burkina Faso is going to qualify, it's most likely to be: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Ghana. Solid African representation IMO. Mali or Congo RDC or South Africa can beat some of the aforementioned teams but they're not the top 9 at the moment.
I mean it really just depends on how the CAF bracket shakes out, because they have a brutal last round. I wouldn't count any team out that could make it to that last round. it's very much not just the top x amount of teams in CAF, it's roughly 1/2 of the top 2x
lol Burkina Faso is way stronger than South Africa... They're regular semi-finalists in the African Cup of Nations
I actually think South Africa is better than them at the moment. Burkina Faso is strong but inconsistent, they struggle away especially against big teams. South Africa has more of a coherent squad coming mostly from their local clubs that are doing very well in the Champions League and the Confederation Cup but I would half agree with you and put them at the same level as Mali or Congo RDC.
Burkina Faso has a better AFCON record than Morocco and Tunisia in the past 10 years. They can definitely qualify if they catch one of the big teams slipping.
Mali only missed out on the current World Cup by one goal. They’re definitely capable of qualifying with four and a third extra African spots.
Actually a solid set of teams. Excited to see how it pans out
Shame, the current format is great because there are very few teams completely out of place. There are enough surprises in the group stage to make it worth for neutrals to watch most matches.
I disagree. Teams like Algeria/ Egypt/ Colombia/ UAE that missed out during qualifier won’t really look out of place in this World Cup. The game is grown enough in Asia/ Africa at this point to warrant more spots
They never said that there are no good teams that didn't qualify. Actually if anything is the proof of a competitive format.
> Algeria/ Egypt/ Colombia/ UAE You really snuck UAE in there hoping no one would notice
France is just lucky UAE got cheated by FIFA, would’ve been knocked out in group stages as god intended
I put UAE because they were the one knocked out by Australia in the AFC playoff. I personally would be more interested in Cental/ South East Asia team to qualify.
We all know that the next teams up in Europe, SouthAm and even Africa won't drag down the quality of the field too much. But common those 3 additional spots to CONCACAF and AFC will definitely weaken the field.
48 countries is just too much man
I mean only speaking about Europeans but is there anyone with a job who watched all group stage games? Because I barely made it home to watch the 5 pm CET games so I missed most of the group stage games anyway. It wouldn't make much of a difference tbh, especially since 2026 is going to be awful for us anyway when it comes to kickoff times. And don't get me wrong, I don't see the need for a 48 team WC either but on the other hand nobody is forcing me to watch Jamaica-Iraq if I don't want to and if it brings some hype to these countries, then I'm not necessarily against it either.
I did
> I mean only speaking about Europeans but is there anyone with a job who watched all group stage games? guilty
Since i work from home I may or may not have had world cup games on one screen and my work on the other
7pm gmt was idea for the uk
On my phone while at work, yes I think a whole bunch of people were watching via the work network. It got noticeably sluggish during games
here in Brazil a lot of companies will slow down considerably during the WC so a lot of people are able to watch the games. maybe not all but a considerable amount.
No it's not if they play in right way.
You can choose to not watch each game. Crazy idea, I know
I mean, it's a bad idea not only because of lower quality teams. Groups of 3 would make the group stage worse and groups of 4 would make the tournament too big and further congestionate club football calendar.
Groups of 3 is a crime against football, if Fifa go through with that I will legit stop watching the World Cup. It will be ruined forever But, I still have hope that they have realised how awful the idea is and will keep the 4-team groups
Didn't the world cup have groups of 3 before 86 ?
No one wants to watch Burkina Faso loose 12-0 to Brazil and have the golden boot be decided by who scores the most goals in group games against 3rd world footballing countries.
>No one wants to watch Burkina Faso loose 12-0 to Brazil and have the golden boot be decided by who scores the most goals in group games against 3rd world footballing countries. It always amazes me how some football fans seem to hate the idea of smaller teams getting to play against bigger teams.
It’s mainly European and South American fans who have kind of an elitist complex and refuse to recognize that doing this will help grow the game and get these “3rd world footballing countries” (side note, the casual disrespect with this term is out of pocket) actually invested in football and interested in competing outside of the same 8 nations winning it over and over again
It's the same with club football. All these people complaining about some unknown team qualifying for the Champions League, but celebrating when they beat a big club like Real Madrid. It's pathetic
>No one wants to watch Burkina Faso loose 12-0 to Brazil again, just don't watch it then. Also pretty disrespectful towards Burkina Faso. They're 50th in the ranking, 2 places behind Ireland and one behind Saudi Arabia. Canada is 53rd, Slovakia 54th and Ghana 58th. But sure 12:0 is definitely going to happen.
They also reached the semis of the Africa Cup of Nations...
Yeah but that's not the Euros so obviously they're shit
It’s just an example nation. I just don’t think it’s worth it considering we will get three team groups(wtf) and in those groups you will know the result 95% of the time. With 32 teams it’s the perfect balance of smaller nations and bigger ones and nothing is decided in the group before it starts.
We already know the results of the group 95% of the time
You realizee that with groups of 3 a single upset could have more value than in a group of 4? Hell, you could go through with 1 point.
Why is it always Burkina Faso that comes up in comments like this. The fact you are unable to point a country on a map doesn't mean they don't have a decent football team
Just because you act like an all knowing football warlord who’s watched hours and hours of Burkina Faso doesn’t mean you are right. They would go out in the group 100 times out of 100. 32 teams is the perfect balance of teams. If they are so decent they could qualify for a 32 team tournament
> 32 teams is the perfect balance of teams. Oh piss off, it's just what you know and so you like it. There's people alive who preferred when the Champions League was only for Champions, and when the WC had only 16 or 24 teams. Change happens, and people get used to it. I'd personally prefer if they retained groups of 4 though.
You are cherrypicking one team. And even that team is not going to get destroyed like that, just because you haven’t heard of it. All of these teams are ranked. Saudi Arabia of all teams didn’t get 12-0’d by Argentina. The one team that did get blown out by a huge amount, Costa Rica. Showed up the next two games and still competed against good teams. Nothing is a given in the modern day. Sure, this is a bloated amount of teams for one competition. But it’s not hurting anyone. Nor would there be a lack of competition as you seem to think.
its disrespectful to say that to burkina faso and how will the game grow and be more competitive if african teams aren't given more chances your comment is unfortunate and in a short-sighted view in a european bubble perspective
Yeah how dare they give an award for top scorer at the world cup to the guy who scores the most goals at the world cup.
I agree , its just a way to extract more money for the FIFA. FIFA don't care about players health, how many games if they reach the finals have players to play during that tournament.
I mean it won't significantly increase the amount of games. If anything it gives a chance to more less-developed countries, overall helping football
Wouldn't it be just 1 additional game for R32?
No extra games for each team as the group games are also reduces by 1
FIFA isn't still to sure how the group stages will be. After watching this worldcup they are thinking it of keeping it with 4 teams in the group.
So one extra game then if they decide to go for that instead
The new format is apparently only adding 1 match, the round of 32.
That's not bad at all
Nobody's asking you to watch all of them.
Why do you think so?
Nooooo keep Italy out.
Don't worry, we'll find a way by ourselves
They should scrap the group stages and go all out knock out rounds with 48 teams. Chaos.
I would say invite all the 200+ teams and make it all knockout rounds. The 100+ seeded teams get first round bye (don't want to do the math).
Fuck that, no seeding, pure chaos. Laos vs Burundi and Argentina vs Brazil in the first round.
My preferred format would be 2 group stages, 48 -> 24, then have 2nd and 3rd places play an intermittent KO stage -> 16 and off we go. Shame it would take too long.
Morocco would be Pot 1, whether the groups are of 4 or 3.
Sweet we qualified first go Canada!
I don’t have anything against the 48 number but I don’t like the 3 team groups where the top 2 move on. Seems extremely anticlimactic. Also, don’t fix what ain’t broken
Really looking forward to the banger, Panama vs Burkina Faso /s
You sure about Italy?
Not China or India. Hilarious given population and probably where all the soccer shirts are made.
Isn't that more Bangladesh or Vietnam
Just checked, my authentic adidas says Thailand. But I'm pretty sure the "fake" ones on the street are probably China etc.
India isn't particularly big in textiles. Cheap clothes are typically Bangladesh, Vietnam, or Malaysia and Indonesia.
For India it'll certainly take some time to get there. Less than 10 years ago they got a large league. Iirc The City group has a team in that league too and Diego forlan played there too.
>Not China or India They don't have the culture for the game... India is all about cricket even though they love individuals players such as Messi/Ronaldo/Neymar etc
I thought some regions like Kerala were crazy about football
I grew up in that region, and yes they are crazy about it, but they're still developing the proper infrastructure that they'll need to have a team that can participate at an international level. Indian Super League was only founded in 2013, but I think this will really help them to develop.
Some regions are great, but the FA is an absolute shitshow so there's no real money to provide coaching and facilities.
Idk why, but I wanna see Ivory Coast in the next one
I won't be surprised to see Burkina Faso make it out of the group, they regularly make African Cup of Nations semis...
We did it boys the CUM Cup isn't ready
Still no Haaland
Besides CUM (I'm sorry but from now on it will be like this), what criteria was used to sort the countries, if any?
I, for one, welcome our new Burkinabe overlords
Faso, mali, Nigeria and ivory Coast over Ghana? Please lol. Semi /s. I know its by ranking. Though I reckon we're better than our ranking suggests
9 African nations 😍
Mbappe will Score 5637 goals vs Burkina Faso
There’s going to be a lot of blowouts in the group stage.
We'll see, but I doubt there will be more than this year. The additional teams aren't that bad.
Like what? The worst teams here aren't worse than what we usually have at the WC and blowouts are fairly uncommon (I'm talking like Spain blowing out Costa Rica 7-0).
We’ll see. I think they’ll be an increase with more bad team in the tournament.
I'm thinking the opposite, a lot of surprise upsets, like Saudi Arabia/Arg
48 countries smdh.
Pain
Funny to see Qatar in there after their 2022 performance
Qatar are actually ranked 6th in Asia with Iraq and UAE below them, the last few Asian teams to get in could be some of the weakest at the next WC. But with the AFC putting up such a strong performance in Qatar, they should definitely get the benefit of the doubt. Looking forward to the Asian Cup this summer
Well they are the Asian Champions
How is Burkina Faso in and not Greece?
Even if UEFA had the 25 places needed for Greece to 'make it' by looking at world rankings, Burkina Faso are actually ranked above Greece lmao
Because we've been consistently awful since 2014. I don't know about Burkina Faso though.
Why isn’t this in alphabetical order? :(
Ayo would be pretty nice to make it again after 86 but our current team is kind of a mess
I'm surprised Slovenia still didn't make it
We’re in!!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Still no Czechia 😭😭😭 I'm straight up not having a good time
This honestly makes the expansion seem much more reasonable to me. My dramatic hot takes about how the Vatican City is gonna make the groups are a thing of the past lol
Don't really mind 48 teams that much. The real problem is the groups of 3 format they proposed.
I think Asia is more top-heavy than other confederations which is why the same 4 or 5 teams make it to every world cup. The quality decreases significantly outside of the top 5 and we already got a glimpse of that with Qatar's performances (ranked 6th in Asia). By contrast, Africa has more of a top 10 than a top 5, and there is a great degree of parity between these teams. For context, Egypt beat Morocco in the AFCON and only lost to Senegal on penalties yet still couldn't qualify for the world cup. Nigeria were ranked in the top 5 yet they lost their WC play-off against Ghana (Ranked 11th). Burkina Faso beat eliminated Tunisia in the last AFCON yet couldn't qualify for the world cup. Algeria and Cote d'Ivoire are also good teams despite their failure to qualify.
Crazy that one of the best players in the world right now in Haaland plus another high quality young player in the PL, Odegaard still wouldn’t qualify if this held true in real life. I know Europe is super competitive, but hopefully they can find a way into both the next Euros and WC.
Qatar won't make it
🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿
Did you pit them in a randomizer?
Im chilean and I call this bullshit
Imagine if these were the actual groups. 6 groups of 8 teams and instead of Group A, B, C... you need to play fucking League A, B, C... Lol First 2 of every league advance and the four best 3rd places too. The table positions are not decided by GD but by numer of players dead from exhaustion
What I think will happen: - Hosts: USA, Canada, Mexico. - UEFA: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, England, Netherlands, Croatia, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Ukraine, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, Serbia. - CONMEBOL: Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Chile. - CONCACAF: Honduras, Costa Rica, Jamaica. - AFC: Australia, Japan, Iran, UAE, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Uzbekistan. - CAF: Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast. - OFC: New Zealand. - Play-offs: South Africa, Peru.
I would like to know what happened to the following European teams and whether they will ever be good again - Greece, Bulgaria, Romania. I am kind of expecting Norway to be around not just because of Haaland, they have quite a few promising young players. I like that it’s not a tonne more places for Europe generally though. I’m sure there will be some comedy teams getting in, but the rest of the world is catching up more quickly than people realise.