April 6 – In early March, Ignacio Alonso from Uruguay made the wild proposal of expanding the FIFA World Cup from 48 teams to 64 in 2030. It is a proposal that is supported by Conmebol president Alejandro Dominguez and insiders say it is the brainchild of Gianni Infantino.
Aleksander Čeferin, UEFA President, who is also a FIFA Vice President, was unequivocal last week at a news conference after UEFA’s annual meeting in Belgrade, Serbia, when he said that this is “a bad idea”.
“This proposal was maybe even more surprising for me than you,” said Čeferin.
“It is not a good idea for the World Cup itself and it’s not a good idea for our qualifiers as well,” he added.
A 64-team World Cup would entail a mind-boggling 128 matches, and the quality of play would certainly suffer with the dilution of meaningful fixtures until the final rounds and tournament fatigue levels – for players, management teams, and fans – likely to have left many not really caring or interested by that stage.
For the 2026 edition of the World Cup, UEFA will be sending 48 countries to the United States, Mexico, and Canada – 16 more than played in Qatar in 2022. This expansion did have the benefit of teams playing fewer matches as the groups were smaller than usual.
Čeferin wasn’t convinced about the origin of the idea as Uruguay is set to host a centenary match in 2030, in what will be the most complex World Cup ever, as three continents will participate.
“It is strange that we did not know anything before this proposal at the FIFA council,” Čeferin said. “I don’t know where it came from.”
FIFA has given no details of how and when it will consider the proposal. FIFA has its annual congress of 211 member federations on May 15 in Paraguay’s capital, Asunción.
It is almost certain to come up again with the South Americans still smarting and of the belief that the centenary World Cup in 2030 was theirs by right. Expanding to 64 teams would certainly open the opportunity for the South Americans to host more games, and be more significant to the centenary World Cup in 2030, than just the three games granted them.
A 64-team World Cup would ensure that 25% of countries on the planet would qualify for the tournament, which fits in with Infantino’s global plan of bringing more football to the world, but 128 matches would be a massive undertaking that would require cooperation from multiple countries.
Infantino at the start of his presidency had some wild and potentially damaging ideas that the confederation presidents and the FIFA Council managed to dismiss – remember the £20 billion sell off of FIFA’s rights to a Japanese bank and the proposal to run the World Cup every two years? Since those failures, Infantino has been given pretty much a free ride with everything else he has brought to the table as he has wielded power ruthlessly over a supporting cohort of nations generally outside of those where the biggest leagues and clubs come from. Such is his imperial power this is an idea that is unlikely to go away without political bloodshed.
Contact the writer of this story, Nick Webster, at moc.l1744035269labto1744035269ofdlr1744035269owedi1744035269sni@o1744035269fni1744035269. Additional reporting by moc.l1744035269labto1744035269ofdlr1744035269owedi1744035269sni@n1744035269osloh1744035269cin.l1744035269uap1744035269