Football fans should not sweat the 48-group Globe Cup

Gabriele MarcottiSenior Writer, ESPN FC4:18 PM ET6 Minute Study

FIFA finalised the format of the 48-group 2026 Globe Cup on Wednesday.Marc Atkins/Getty Pictures

There are a lot factors to be angry and worried when it comes to football.

Manchester City have been charged with false accounting to cover up Monetary Fair Play breaches. Barcelona, the league leaders in LaLiga, face corruption charges following it emerged they paid the vice president of the Spanish referees’ committee half a million dollars a year among 2016 and 2018. Juventus, who have currently been docked 15 points this season, face each a sporting investigation and a criminal investigation for false accounting and misleading shareholders. France’s league leaders Paris Saint-Germain are run by a guy who also takes place to be chairman of the European Club Association, a UEFA Executive Committee member and — wearing his other hat as chairman of beIN Sports — 1 of the largest bankrollers of the game, and he has been implicated in an investigation into “kidnapping and torture.”

So yeah, these are fraught occasions for the game. And the above are all worth worrying about simply because unless there is a transparent verdict everyone understands — 1 way or an additional — we will not have closure, we’ll just have much more accusations and lingering mistrust.

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Here’s what you need to not be concerned about: a 48-group Globe Cup in 2026. Not now that FIFA came up with a affordable format, anyway.

The FIFA Council authorized the 48-group format on Wednesday: 4 groups of 12, with the eight finest third-spot teams advancing to a new round of 32. Cue the biblical gnashing of hair and pulling of teeth.

The high quality of the Globe Cup will be diluted! Will not somebody please assume of the players’ welfare! The quantity of matches is escalating by 60%! This is all about dollars and greed!

I assume that is a fair compendium of the counterarguments. If there are other valid factors not to move to 48 teams, I am all ears: hit me on Twitter.

In the meantime, let’s contemplate the most cited arguments, beginning with dilution of high quality. Positive, if you have 48 participants as an alternative of 32, “high quality” will get diluted simply because, presumably, the additional 16 teams will not be as fantastic as the original 32.

But so what? Reduced-division teams participate in cup competitions everywhere in the planet. Does Wrexham’s presence ruin your enjoyment of the FA Cup? Extra broadly, the Globe Cup is not about showcasing the most qualitative teams in the game, simply because, nicely, the finest teams are club teams. Why? Due to the fact they have the funds and the capacity to recruit the finest players and coaches regardless of provenance and they play and train collectively year round.

So yeah, if you are sniffy about “high quality,” then international football is not for you — and neither is reduce-division football and generally each single game other than the Champions League knockout stages, Large Six clashes in the Premier League, the Clasico and a handful of other option matches. Sorry.

In truth, the Globe Cup hasn’t been about high quality for a lengthy time. It really is the largest occasion in sports and it is about participation, complete nations stopping to watch games, obtaining kinship with your neighbour or colleague who annoys the crap out of you in actual life but, for 90 minutes, when your group is playing, becomes a member of your circle and a guy you want to hug if your nation scores.

It really is a showcase of football from about the planet. And although locations in the competitors have traditionally been dominated by nations from Europe and South America (in the name of “high quality,” of course), it is only proper that the rest of the planet gets a shot, also. FIFA has 211 member associations, permitting 48 of them in the Globe Cup signifies 22.7% get to participate. For most of the competition’s history, that is been roughly the ratio of participating nations. When it went from 16 to 24 nations in 1986, it was 19.7%. And when it went from 24 to 32 in 1998, it was 18.three%. I can reside with that, if it signifies the majority of fans about the planet get to be element of a Globe Cup much more than after or twice in their lifetimes.

And although we’re at it, a good byproduct of a 48-group Globe Cup is much more meaningful group games. It really is a lot significantly less probably that everyone will be eliminated even if they shed their very first two matches. And although it is accurate that it is far much more probably that you are going to clinch qualification with two wins in your very first two games (and hence want to rest your starters in the final group game), if the organisers are clever, they will offer a plum incentive to win the group, like guaranteeing that group winners will not have to travel drastically (or at all) in subsequent rounds. That wasn’t an problem in Qatar 2022 thinking about all games have been generally in Doha, but with a far higher footprint in 2026 when the tournament comes to the U.S., Mexico and Canada — and subsequent 48-group Globe Cups — not obtaining to travel could be a gamechanger.

As for the player welfare argument, positive, playing 62.five% much more matches sounds brutal, does not it? But in reality, we’re speaking 4 teams playing an additional game (and for two of these teams, it is the third-spot playoff, which no one but instant loved ones members will ever don’t forget. Speedy! Who completed third in Russia 2018? See?). Beneath the prior format, 24 of 32 teams played 4 or fewer matches. Beneath this format, 32 of 48 will play 4 or fewer matches.

Player welfare is not some thing to be taken lightly, I agree. But a summer time tournament preceded by no matches for at least 3 weeks, followed by no matches following the tournament for at least an additional 3 weeks (longer for teams that are knocked out just before the semis, which is the vast majority) is hardly the challenge. The tournament is anticipated to final 39 days. At most, if your group is 1 of these that starts later and you attain the semifinals, you are going to play eight gams in 33 days, which currently takes place on a regular basis for a lot of players through the club season, except they do not get a month off just before and following.

Which brings us to the greed and dollars argument. No one is going to dispute that a 48-group Globe Cup will produce much more money, just by virtue of playing much more games. Yes, FIFA likes to make dollars. So does Apple, Google and Tinder. The distinction is that the vast majority of FIFA’s income gets redistributed to member associations, much more than half of whom would not even exist without having the annual infusions they get from FIFA. That is why they voted for a 48-group Globe Cup: it brings in much more dollars and enables them to, you know, truly run a federation, tournaments, youth and women’s football.

God forbid the poorer nations about the planet need to back a Globe Cup format that enables them to truly play a sport with a modicum of dignity.

Positive, critics will point to the various FIFA scandals of the previous and speak about how this amounts to patronage and pork barrel politics and it provides Infantino or whoever is in the major chair at the time outsized energy to swap FIFA funds for votes from poorer nations. And, yes, we all know about the bribery and corruption that took spot in the Sepp Blatter era. (We had a reminder of it just this week, when a former Fox executive was convicted by a New York court of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to safe broadcasting rights to the Globe Cup.)

But it is a bit like welfare payments or economic help for college tuition. If there are men and women who defraud welfare or a government economic help system, do you just shut it down for absolutely everyone? Or do you make it tougher to defraud the government by obtaining a much more transparent technique and higher vigilance?

I type of sense that at the heart of the complaints about the 48-group Globe Cup is some sort of simple conservatism and rose-tinted nostalgia for what the game was when we very first fell in really like with it. When — most of us anyway — have been younger, fitter and had significantly less to be concerned about. But the planet adjustments and, with it, football.

So, please, reserve your be concerned and righteous anger for other football-connected matters. The 48-group Globe Cup will be just fine. You are going to really like it. Trust me.