FIFA's president is floating a World Cup so big it would include nearly a third of the planet's national teams. Gianni Infantino says soccer's showpiece should be "for the whole world," and that the success he claims for the first 48-team men's World Cup has opened the door to studying a 64-team version after the 2026 tournament wraps up, the BBC reports. A formal pitch to supersize the 2030 tournament is already on the table from South America's confederation, though no ruling has been made. The tournament expanded from 24 teams to 32 in 1998.
- "Every nation should be able to dream of taking part in the World Cup," Infantino told Swiss broadcaster Blue Sport, per ESPN. "We can see that the quality of the teams is extremely high, and it's getting higher and higher everywhere in the world. If you don't give smaller countries the chance to participate in the World Cup, they also lose the incentive to keep improving."
The idea is dividing the sport's power brokers. Infantino says this year's expanded tournament has been a "huge success," noting that nine of 10 African teams reached the knockout rounds in the new format, up from five African participants previously. But UEFA chief Aleksander Ceferin has called 64 teams a "bad idea" and Asian confederation head Sheikh Salman warns of "chaos." Victor Montagliani, chief of Concacaf, the governing body for soccer in North America, Central America, and Caribbean, says it "doesn't feel right" and could hurt the wider soccer "ecosystem."
A 64-team event would also strain hosts: It would mean 128 matches, up from 104 this year and 64 in the format used from 1998 to 2022. The 2030 tournament is already spread over six nations, with Morocco, Portugal, and Spain hosting and Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay hosting one game each to mark the World Cup's centenary. Saudi Arabia is set to stage 2034, and it's not clear how well it would cope with a 64-team tournament, the BBC notes.
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