48 Team World Cup

[Bully Wee Villa]

I'd like to see the Copa America stick with the 16 team format.

[HibeeJibee]

WC 1954 had an unusual format... 4 groups of 4 - but there were 2 seeds and 2 non-seeds in each, and the seeds and non-seeds didn't play each other, so each only played 2 games.

Seeds had been predetermined before qualification. Turkey beat Spain in qualifying and accordingly "took on" their seeding as in EL.

Scotland lost 1-0 to Austria, 7-0 to Uruguay and went home without playing Czechoslovakia (both would have been eliminated anyway; as could have been expected given both were non-seeds).

Unseeded hosts Switzerland beat Italy forcing a deadlock and won the playoff. Turkey did valiantly and it took unseeded West Germany - who went on to win the whole tournament - a playoff to break deadlock in their group. Yugoslavia beat France and drew with Brazil to pip the French in the other section.

Other oddities were that drawn group games went to extra-time - although in both cases they remained drawn at FT in ET - and that the group winners played one half of the knockout stages, while the runners-up played the other.

Altogether an odd experiment.

[just me 2]

If the games were to go to penalties, can you imagine the penalties if both teams knew they were already through and knew the winner would play an Argentina or Germany but the losers would play Scotland

[Bully Wee Villa]

I wouldn't be overly-concerned about that prospect.

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

1 hour ago, AyrshireTon said:

Groups of three will just lead to more lf the fiasco we saw in Spain 82 where Algeria were shafted by West Germany and Austria. 

A beats B

B and C draw

So A and C know a draw will see them both through and there'd be f**k all B could about it.

Really shite idea.

Maybe team B should have won one of their 2 games.

This can be solved with the points system used in the League Cup. A draw goes to penalties and the winner gets a bonus point.

--

The more likely issue is 3 teams finishing with exactly the same record. Although a shootout between the two teams competing in the final match would be a suitable on the pitch tie-breaker.

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

Apart from the countries you'd mentioned (and I think even Russia would struggle), I think there would have to be, possibly multiple, co-hosts. The likes of England, France or Spain wouldn't be able to cope with that many teams, and I don't see how Australia (who have been desperate for ages) could ever host one.

I suppose it depends on how big you can go geographically before it gets silly. A South American tournament would have to played over about half of the continent.

I don't see why it would be a problem for Australia to host this, especially if they roped New Zealand in to co-host.  The country is used to hosting big sporting events, and already has plenty of stadiums which would be more than suitable for the World Cup.

Straight away, you have Sydney(x2), Melbourne(x2), Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Geelong and Newcastle.  Then you can look at places like Parramatta, Blacktown, Gold Coast, Central Coast, Townsville, Canberra, Hobart and Wollongong which all either have planned new stadiums, or could have existing stadiums expanded.

If you rope New Zealand in, you have Auckland and Wellington straight away, and could look at expansion in Dunedin, Hamilton or Christchurch.

[Bully Wee Villa]

No to Australia. They already keep ruining cricket and rugby World Cups by hosting them in stupid time zones, without starting on football.

Unless they're willing to make the effort to move the island somewhere closer to GMT they shouldn't be considered as potential hosts.

[grazza]

19 minutes ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

Unless they're willing to make the effort to move the island somewhere closer to GMT they shouldn't be considered as potential hosts.

I wonder where the highest viewing figures come from whether its Europe or Asia. The next 2 world cup hosts would perhaps indicate a location more friendly to both. I do wonder if it will get to the state where they consider splitting the earlier stages of the tournament in different area to allow them to spread out the fixtures throughout the day and ensure every TV market as plenty content at prime times. I hope it doesn't go down that round but money may talk. I imagine the Asian market is continuing to grow so world cup in Australia probably would  be perfectly viable from a commercial point of view.  

2026 I think will be North Americas turn and cannot see past US to win that. 2030 will be centenary so there will be support for some sort of Uruguay/ Argentine bid though not sure the infrastructure and finance to host a 48 team world cup is there at moment and Europe will then be over a decade without a world cup so will want to host. Beyond that under current rules would be next time Asia could host ins 2034 The Aussies would have a decent chance and NZ will have easiest route to world cup so no big deal making them a junior co-host with maybe a couple of venues, though I cannot recall an international tournament with one host with say 80% plus of venues with a smaller co-host and not sure how well received that will be up against a good single nation/equal joint host bids. China assuming leadership continues their interest and investment and if they really wanted to host would be hard to see past for next Asia federation host.

[mizfit]

was reading this morning that USA, Mexico & Canada are considering a joint host bid for the 2026 tournament. 

[Bully Wee Villa]

Trump won't like that.

[Bully Wee Villa]

Grauniad suggesting the allocation will be as follows:

The proposed breakdown would comprise: Europe 16 teams (13 currently); Africa 9 (5); Asia 8.5 (4.5), South America 6 (4.5), Concacaf 6.5 (3.5), Oceania 1 (0.5), Host nation 1 (1).

[forameus]

It'll have to be joint bids of various makeups to host such a large tournament.  England could probably stretch to doing it themselves, but adding Glasgow/Cardiff/Edinburgh/Belfast into the mix would spread out the teams a bit better and make it a bit more manageable.  Unless we've physically seceded by that point and floated off towards Iceland.

The plan has its good points but definitely has its poor points.  The group stage is probably going to be a farce.  They'll have to put some kind of bonus points system in there to try and alleviate the meaningless or downright fixed games, but even then you're probably still going to have Team A and Team B knowing that they can eliminated Team C with a certain result.  Potential host nations, like already said, will be thin on the ground, so we're likely to get tournaments spread over even larger areas.  A UK one would be nice, but could see them aping 2020 and doing a whole Europe one.  Not necessarily the worst thing (I think it's quite good for 2020) but not the best option.  

[Sergeant Wilson]

13 minutes ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

Grauniad suggesting the allocation will be as follows:

The proposed breakdown would comprise: Europe 16 teams (13 currently); Africa 9 (5); Asia 8.5 (4.5), South America 6 (4.5), Concacaf 6.5 (3.5), Oceania 1 (0.5), Host nation 1 (1).

Scotland would be in with a shout in a play off with half of the Micronesia team.

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

1 hour ago, mizfit said:

was reading this morning that USA, Mexico & Canada are considering a joint host bid for the 2026 tournament. 

Eton College to enter and win it.

http://www.etoncollege.com/WallGame.aspx

[forameus]

1 hour ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

Grauniad suggesting the allocation will be as follows:

The proposed breakdown would comprise: Europe 16 teams (13 currently); Africa 9 (5); Asia 8.5 (4.5), South America 6 (4.5), Concacaf 6.5 (3.5), Oceania 1 (0.5), Host nation 1 (1).

So going by the standings for 2014, and taking a bit of liberal choice with the formats, we'd have the below.  Great for some of the nations getting involved, but there's hardly a huge amount of quality added.

* means qualified for the tournament anyway, bolded are the extra teams

Host
Brazil

Asia (there's two groups of 5 with the 2 top in each qualifying then two going into a playoff.  Assume they'd change the format(
Iran*
Japan*
Australia*
South Korea*
Uzbekistan
Jordan
Qatar
Oman

Africa (final round is single knockout with the winners going through, fed from 10 group winners. Taking the 9 best group winners instead, so Burkina Faso miss out.  Gutted)
Ivory Coast*
Ghana*
Algeria*
Nigeria*
Cameroon*
Tunisia
Egypt
Senegal
Ethiopia

North America (six sides in the final stage, so all of them qualify.  Best of the rest goes into the playoff)
USA*
Costa Rica*
Honduras*
Mexico*
Panama
Jamaica

Oceania
New Zealand

Europe (seven best runners-up go in automatically rather than playoffs)
Belgium*
Italy*
Germany*
Netherlands*
Switzerland*
Russia*
Bosnia & Herzegovina*
England*
Spain*
Romania
Iceland
Sweden
Ukraine
Portugal
France
Greece

South America
Argentina
Colombia*
Chile*
Ecuador*
Uruguay*
Venezuela
 

Playoffs (Currently two sides in Asia play off to see who goes in to the main playoff)
Lebanon/Iraq
Guatemala

 

 

[Bully Wee Villa]

The Asian section looks by far the weakest. You'd imagine they will improve over the coming years given their population. China were abysmal in the last WC Qualifiers but will likely fancy their chances of being competitive given the money spent in the area.

I'd like to see Palestine vs Israel in the World Cup. Surely now this is at least feasible.

[mizfit]

7 minutes ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

The Asian section looks by far the weakest. You'd imagine they will improve over the coming years given their population. China were abysmal in the last WC Qualifiers but will likely fancy their chances of being competitive given the money spent in the area.

I'd like to see Palestine vs Israel in the World Cup. Surely now this is at least feasible.

 

I have a feeling Israel would refuse to play if they were drawn against Palestine, or would request to be swapped with another country. 

[forameus]

It's the balance between it being a "World" Cup and just being a showcase of the best sides on the planet.  If there was a world qualifying pot that was organised so the better sides would rise to the top, you'd get a pretty uneven skew of nations in there.  Oceania would probably never feature again, as would the lower sides from places like North America, Asia and Africa.  You'd end up with a Europe vs South America fare with a few random nations thrown in.

Not necessarily a bad thing maybe, but they still have to offer that balance.  Personally I'd do the following

Europe 20 teams (16 proposed, 13 currently);
Africa 9 (9, 5);
Asia 8 (8.5, 4.5),
South America 5 (6, 4.5),
Concacaf 5 (6.5, 3.5),
Oceania 1 (1, 0.5),
Host nation 0 (1,1).

Remove the host nation qualifying, because you're likely to have more co-hosts, and that could get messy.  Keep Oceania at 1 to give them something guaranteed to play for more than getting pumped in a playoff.  CONCACAF get 5, up from 3.5.  USA, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico will likely always be up there, plus 1 other.  Anymore and you're diluting quality.  COMNEBOL get 5, removing the need for a playoff.  I don't like the idea of more than half of a group qualifying for some reason, otherwise I'd give them more spots.  Asia get pretty much four more, again removing the need for a playoff.  Africa keep their 9.  Seems like that is the main driver behind these plans, and their fans at least would bring something to a tournament.  Hopefully it sees an increase in their fortunes too.  Europe are the ones that deserve more spots though.  It's probably the most competitive confederation of them all, as although there are continents with more nations involved, they're highly unlikely to qualify.  The gap between the top sides and the bottom is a lot smaller.  

[sergie's no1 fan]

3 hours ago, mizfit said:

was reading this morning that USA, Mexico & Canada are considering a joint host bid for the 2026 tournament. 

Mental stuff.

Thank f'ck we won't have to worry about forking out thousands of pounds extra to go and watch this shite.

 

 

[Bully Wee Villa]

I don't think the joint hosting would be bad so long as they regionalised it.