Awesome for us if true. However, I still hold faint hopes that the WC will be moved away from Qatar... hate the idea of a middle of the season WC, in the heat - as if there wasn't enough disruption in professional football as it is.
Goodbye to any meaningful senior mens international football games in NZ ever again :(
What meaningful games in NZ? If you take out Bahrain, Mexico and Peru...
At least with regular WC participation we have finally have a bit of $ to invest in friendly games...
I love my games when they're played in NZ but if I have to choose between one play-off game every 4 years and no WC OR NZ at the WC every four years and no play-off games, I choose the latter option.
EDIT: I'm an idiot
It all depends on whether FIFA proposed Global Nations League, can get off the ground. At this early moment only UEFA (whole concept was an idea from them to start with) and CONCACAF, have run with the idea in their Confeds.
If AFC also setup a Nations League (maybe they are waiting until post Asian Cup) for Asian Confed, you would think FIFA would push for OFC countries to join AFC in some format. One of the reasons Infantino has been pushing this concept, is supposedly to increase the opportunities of developing countries playing meaningful games against stronger nations. I think you could call all the nations in OFC (except maybe NZ), as developing nations - so seems then pointless to not have them join AFC (maybe an East Asia grouping) to increase chances to then play bigger teams.
With proposed setup all OFC nations apparently will start off in the lowest level (4th tier) - so initially just the usual home & away games against minnows. But with promotion & relegation between the various tiers, and if the AWs are good enough to be promoted to even the 3rd tier, they would be playing meaningful home and away against sides of better quality.
Basically the proposed Global Nations League, represents a great chance for the AWs to have regular quality games home & away - something that should excite NZ football fans. Will greatly soften the blow of losing those 4 yearly high stakes Confed playoff games, that would come with an expanded 48 team WC.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1419881
http://www.espn.com/soccer/blog/marcottis-musings/...
Q: What about Oceania?
A: I figured you'd ask that. They don't get a top division -- not when their best side, New Zealand, is ranked 122 in the world. But they still get to play and participate. The top Oceania group will probably be a fourth-tier group.