Ken Early: World Cup plans to turn beautiful game to plain Jane

This Tuesday the Fifa council meets in Zurich to vote on proposed changes to the format of the World Cup from 2026 onwards. Fifa president Gianni Infantino will ask the 37-member council to choose how the competition will look in the future, and there is no secret about which outcome he prefers.

The promise to increase the number of countries that participate in the World Cup finals was part of Infantino’s election campaign last year. His original idea was to expand from 32 to 40 teams, but since then he has decided that 48 teams would work even better.

The council will be presented with five options. Option one is to do nothing: leave the World Cup as a 32-team tournament. Option two is to expand to 48 teams, with a group stage consisting of 16 groups of three teams each. Option three would again be 48 teams, with a preliminary knockout play-off round involving the 32 lowest-ranked teams, followed by a 32-team tournament identical to the current World Cup.

Option four is 40 teams split into 10 groups of four. Option five is again 40 teams, but divided into eight groups of five.

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Non-runners

Options four and five are non-runners, which have been included merely to give the illusion of choice. The 10x4 option would involve six of the second-placed teams reaching the knockout stage, which would unfairly disadvantage teams drawn into more difficult groups. The 8x5 option would mean all four semi-finalists would have to play eight matches, which would infuriate clubs already reluctant to release their players on international duty for such an extended period.

The third option, in which 32 teams play off in a knockout round before the 8x4 group stage, would mean 16 teams going home after playing just one match, which would seem rather abrupt. The format would also create unfairness in that the 16 top-seeded sides would have to play fewer matches than their opponents.

Infantino's preference is for option two, the so-called 16x3. The idea was backed last week by Jose Mourinho, one of Infantino's highest-profile supporters.

As a major club manager, you might have expected Mourinho to be sceptical about any further expansion of the main international tournament. But he is very supportive of the idea, and his reasons why tell you a lot about the true status of international football.

“As a club manager, if the expansion meant more games, less holidays and less pre-season for players, I would say no. But it’s important for critics to analyse and understand that expansion doesn’t mean more matches. Players are protected and clubs are protected in this way.”

In fact the 16x3 expansion does mean more matches: the format would produce 80 in total, instead of the current 64. But since there are 50 per cent more teams, the average number of matches teams have to play would fall from four to 3.33. In this sense at least, more means less.

Incentivising mediocrity

Mourinho continued: “Football is developed in the clubs, so we can’t expect football to explode in terms of quality at a World Cup. The World Cup is a social event and football can’t relinquish this opportunity to further reflect fans’ passion.”

There you have it: the World Cup is a social event, the real football these days is played in the clubs. There was a time when the World Cup winners could feasibly claim to be the best football team on earth. Nobody even pretends that any more. The World Cup still calls itself the biggest sporting event in the world, but the truth is it has lost all sporting significance. And this expansion amounts to Fifa’s admission that the World Cup is now just a lucrative television show rather than any kind of serious sporting competition.

Letting in 16 extra teams that would not previously have been good enough to qualify is not going to improve the level of play. But it’s not simply a question of the average quality taking a dive. Under the 16x3 system, the very structure of the tournament will incentivise mediocrity.

One tweak that has to be made for 16x3 to work is that you can’t allow draws in the group stage because they create an unacceptable risk of teams colluding to produce mutually agreeable results. For instance, if team A beats team B, and team B then draws with team C, teams A and C can each guarantee their progress to the next phase by drawing against each other in the last group game.

So instead there will be penalty shootouts to produce a winner in each drawn group game. This removes any incentive for weaker teams to play positively. If they know they could convert a draw into a win with a few well-placed penalties, the obvious strategy for the game itself is not to concede. If you want a vision of the World Cups of the future, imagine three glorious summer weeks in which every second match is like Germany v Northern Ireland at Euro 2016.

As ever, Fifa assumes the diminishing quality of the football won’t affect ratings. They project that the 16x3 format will create an extra billion dollars in television revenue. Most countries favour expansion because it increases the chance that they will get to qualify and get their share of the cash. Everyone’s a winner – everyone except the World Cup itself, and all the dupes who tune in hoping to see some good football.