Increasing World Cup

 

 

I don't think we should expand the final tournament either, but I was interested in hearing ideas as to how a 36 or 40 team tournament could be sensibly structured. I suspect one of the reasons why FIFA stopped talking about it is that there isn't really a structure available that doesn't create nearly 100 matches.

 

PS wolfman's original comment was a throwaway line within a larger posting - I don't want to create the false impression that he was seriously asking for expansion.

Any increase in teams has to be balanced with a minimal increase in matches and time. The players in top European leagues get approximately a 2 month break, which is reduced by a month when they are involved in the WC or Euros or other continental championships (except Africa and next year's Asian Cup)

 

With 36 teams - 9 groups of 4 (54 matches) followed by the same 16 knockout matches we have now. Gives us just 6 extra games (70), adding 2-3 days to the schedule. Could be done. 9 group winners, and 7 best runners-up progress from groups.

 

Alternatively,12 groups of 3 before the knockout stages, with group winners and 4 best runners-up progressing. 12 fewer matches (52), but possibly a few more rest days needed in the first round. 

 

I thought about 6 groups of 6, but that gives us 90 matches in the group stage alone, which think is too many.

 

I considered Foal30's knockout idea too. However, I would keep the one tournament location concept and play it like the pre-war Cups in Italy and France. Straight knockout, one-off games, with rest days between rounds which could be used for replays - no penalty shootouts. I would seed teams. With 32 teams, 4 pots of 8 teams (Seeds 1-8, seeds 9-16 etc). With 36 I would go with the top 3 pots containing 8 teams, and the 4th pot containing 12. 4 unlucky teams get paired off just to enter the main draw. Alternatively, we expand to 64 teams.

 

The two problems with straight knockout that I can immediately see are:

 

1- Teams are going to be unimpressed at going through qualifying, then travelling to the host nation, then being eliminated after 1 match.

 

2- Referees are going to favour "big" teams even more than they do now. Who's going to want to be the ref that lets Brazil go out to a team like New Zealand in the 1st round?

 

For inspiration have a look-see at all the world cup history since 1930. There's been different and interesting structures right from day one..

 

My personal favourite as a lover of statistics is 1950. The final stage was a group stage, meaning they'd structured it in a way that there would be no grand final as such. Obviously the gods didnt appreciate it and set about providing the perfect results to ensure that the final group match (uruguay vs brazil) would be the decider anyway! Brazil only required a draw but managed to lose in front of 200,000 home fans, meaning we nicely avoided the dreaded asterisk... ahhh that just about gives me a statistical boner...

 

Anyhow, back on topic, i personally think the current format is the best of all. There's enough talented teams in the world for 32 spots, and it makes for a nice even fit into the 16 team KO stage as sinz pointed out...

 

Luckily we're blessed in football with a sh*tload of quality worldwide that enables a nicely competitive tournament - only one decent shellacking at this cup (portugal - n.korea) and even then n.korea still gave brazil a good go in their earlier game...

 

better than rugby, rugby league, netball and to a lesser extent cricket, basketball and softball where there's some real ass rapings in the earlier stages.

 

And we don't get that in football?

Because we are the global game we have to go through an extensive qualifying process just to make the final 32. All the other sports with the exception of basketball have 2 men and their dog playing.

 

In rugby league the dog doesn't even play.

 

11/4/2001

 

Australia American Samoa 31 0

 

BTW, on that 1950 WC. The de facto final was played before the de facto 3rd place match, so it was actually the penultimate group match.

 

re: the first sentence - thanks sinz, i was indeed referring to the finals tournament only. Bun1, in case you werent aware, there are qualifying stages for the other sporting tournaments i mentioned as well - that's where you expect to see massive blowouts, not at the finals tournaments.

 

re: the second sentence, i had no idea sinz! thanks for that wee gem, i'll go have a read about it now! And to think they say no one wants to play the 3rd/4th game now - imagine if it was after the final!

 

The far more reliable RSSSF, however, say KOs were parallel. If RSSSF say it is so, then I must be wrong. Either my memory is faulty or FIFA made an error in an article they've since replaced.

 

but i would think radio was more than adequate at the time - just an assumption though, where's our older YF members to comment?

 

 

 

I don't believe 2 is an issue. People assume refs favour big teams, but I don't see that. Refs make mistakes both for and against big teams, so you could selectively construct a list for both biases if you wanted as well as combine them. 

 

1 is interesting though. We had a KO first round in 1934. USA*, Brazil and Argentina spent all those weeks in a boat to Europe played one match and then went home.

 

*It gets better. The USA and Mexico had to play the CONCACAF final qualifier in Italy three days before the final tournament started, so the US actually got two matches from their weeks at sea while the Mexicans didn't even get to play in the Finals!

 

We also had a KO first round in 1938. Indonesia were the unlucky "faraway" nation to only get one game that tournament, in which Hungary thrashed them 6-0. And because it was KO, Austria's annexation by Germany (and resulting lack of football team) meant Sweden got into the QFs without having to play a first round match (England, who were genuinely considered the best in the world at the time, refused FIFA's request to participate in Austria's place).