FIFA Meltdown - All Whites for WC 2026

THink the World cup expansion vote is tonight.

Does NZF get a vote?

Looks like 16 groups of 3 is the strong favourite. Estimated to bring in a billion more revenue.

I lied. it's tonight

Given previous Fifa back tracks and broken promises, are we certain that Oceania will get a guaranteed spot if expanded?

If the amount of teams for a world cup is expanded Oceania will get at least one guaranteed spot as we are the only confederation not to have one.

This seems to be the likely outcome. Decision in May.

The FIFA Council unanimously decided on a 48-team #WorldCup as of 2026:
16 groups of 3 teams. Details to follow after the meeting.

— FIFA Media (@fifamedia) January 10, 2017

wow at 4 more places for Asia

What a horrendous idea.

Ok, this might go against the tide, but I like this expansion.

In general I am always against world tournament expansions, and on the face of it I thought it was stupid. I love my competitions to be simple and compact, otherwise you tend to get a lot of fixtures that fail to excite. 

However there are some key things in this expansion which do make me think it will be awesome;

- Changes to number of games are minimal, but where they have changed, they offer benefits. A team making the top four will still play 7 games, like before. The worst teams at the tournament will now only play 2 games, rather than 3, so the overall quality of fixtures in general will be higher than if they had gone with a 4 or 5 team group format, without changing the knockout stages. 

- The tournament will be the same length of time, 32 days. This is crucial. Lengthening would have been disastrous in my opinion. 

- A key improvement on previous formats is the shortening of the initial group stage. This was the only time my excitement would wane, it always seemed a few days too long before we got into knock-outs for me, even if the final group games are exciting. It's that middle game that pads it out. 

- If any team sport can support a tournament of this size, it is football. The broad competitiveness of world football is basically unmatched by any other team sport. Looking at the current rankings, places 40 - 48 are: Paraguay, Sweden, Greece, Czech Republic, Serbia, Japan, Denmark, Australia, Congo. Granted that Congo are hardly a force, but the other teams there are good teams with big players and big followings. Nearly all of those teams would reasonably expect to make the knock-out stages, despite being ranked as the worst of the current top 48!

This is all about financial greed. The weaker a tournament is, the more football suffers. A healthy game requires strong competition and this is not going to happen.

Simon Hampton's opinion on Newshub;

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/sport/2017/01/opinio...

Don't really understand that viewpoint to be honest. 

Yes Bahrain was great, a highlight of my life, no doubt, but our grandkids will probably now get to see us play in the actual finals every four years. At some point we'll win a game and get out of our group, and that game will easily trump any qualifiers, or our 2010 finals performances, in terms of euphoria. Without this new format we probably wouldn't even get the chance. Lets not forget that Bahrain was very very lucky. We almost certainly won't get an opponent as easy as that again. Mexico last time, probably someone better this time, that is the norm. We basically need miracles to qualify as it stands. 

The actual stories I envision telling my grandkids won't be about Bahrain, they will be about how no one used to show up to AW games except for the last qualifier, the AWs would go years without playing a home game, and when they did, it would be against uninspiring opposition, and a lot of our best players wouldn't even bother coming over for it. 

They will be gobsmacked, because in their world, football will be massive here. AWs games will get crowds, all the time. There will be massive competition for places in the team because of our access to the world cup every four years. Good teams will actually want to come here to play us. We will probably play in a world cup in Australia, perhaps even getting our own group to host here and play in. I feel that all these things will be made possible, even probable, if we were to get to the finals regularly. 

Guess the difference is you won't see those events in NZ. The the experence isn't quite there.

Granted, but I believe that regular appearances in the world cup finals will lead to increased interest, attendance and excitement at the OFC qualifiers, and any other AW's home games, eventually. 

And I also believe that if the format were to stay the same, that would not mean that we'll get to experience something like Bahrain ever again - it is one for the grandkids anyway, regardless of what happens in the future.

If any of us were offered the choice of formats, surely we wouldn't keep it the same because of the small chance that we might get a repeat of that magical night.

Bahrain was a perfect storm. So many things need to fall into place to get a night like that. The format of the current qualifying system was just one contributor. As well as that, we had to draw comparatively weak opposition, we needed to be given the 2nd leg at home, and we needed to get a lucky result in the away leg to make it possible. Everything just fell together nicely, and then the boys delivered. Even then it was pretty bloody lucky, the penalty save was very fortunate.

The Mexico tie is far more representative of what we can expect until this new format comes into play.

I'm looking forward to bigger and better things now with this announcement, and I'll just remember the amazing Bahrain night for what it was - a total one-off. 

Of course we'll probably go and beat Argentina or someone now and go to Russia, and it will be the greatest moment of all time, and I will retract all of this!

There will be plenty of lobbying over this before May comes around. There is no way Europe will settle for only 3 more places if Asia and Africa get 4 each. Plus South America getting only another 1.5...what a joke.

There are some very powerful lobby groups in Europe and South America. These two Federations have the best teams and the best players globally. I would not be surprised to see Europe get at least 4 more places and South America 3.5. 

Asia are weak but FIFA desperately wants China at the WC for $$$ reasons. They also want the rich Arab nation like Saudi Arabia in as well. Africa and North America could draw the short straw.

I'd like each confederation to get a half spot so there's a 6 way play off to get to the finals.    

If you give South America 3.5 more places that would give them 8 spots, given there are only 9 teams in their confederation why not go the whole hog and just let all 9 in?

The S.America thing seems odd but they do only have 10 nations. I was thinking they'd get 2.5 more, but even then that would mean 7 out of 10 qualifying.

Considering the 7th ranked team in comnebol (Ecuador) is ranked 20 in the world this is probably fair. The problem is that qualification could be pretty dull. I think the way to make it more interesting is for 2 teams from each confederation to go into a two legged payoff for the last six spots. It gives each confederation more potential spots, but the teams will have to earn it. 

Good points.

You'd have to think a total overhaul of the confederations and qualifying paths is now due, given the significance of the change. 

There are more than 10 nation in South America.

Only 10 that are part of CONMEBOL and that enter into qualification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup_...

:) ;)   Cheers. I did know this, was just responding to  "only 10 nations in SA"

Oh got ya, yeah I gave them benefit of the doubt in meaning only 10 that take part in the qualifying 

World Cup 2026: Fifa reveals allocation for 48-team tournament - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39448474

So with the expanding World Cup, Oceania will be looking at a direct entry providing it is rectified by Fifa Council on 9 May

The recommended places for each confederation are:

• Africa - 9 (up from 5)
• Asia - 8 (up from 4 or 5)
• Europe - 16 (up from 13)
• North, Central America and Caribbean - 6 (up from 3 or 4)
• Oceania - 1 (from 0 or 1)
• South America - 6 (up from 4 or 5)

Also should the proposals be ratified, as expected, it will consist of one team from each confederation except Uefa playing a pre-tournament playoff, with the final team taken from the confederation of the host country. Meaning another Oceania team should be playing in this tournament too but could see the end of Confederations Cup.

This playoff system seems quite unbalanced. Two teams get seeded and then get to play the winner of another game that's happened just a few days earlier. That's quite an advantage. 

That is very unbalanced. Seems like they have done that too still try make sure the teams that are higher in the rankings get through.

Will require a lot of re-jigging of confed qualification process to make them interesting. For example, in CACACAF, this allocation would wipe out the entire last stage of qualification. Would probably result in some lesser countries playing more than 2 WCQ in each cycle. Which would be a benefit. 

Over half of CONMEBOL will qualify. Which is fair, quality wise, but doesn't exactly make for a thrilling qualification process