FIFA are back at it again if you know what I mean and they continue to push the envelope just to see what they can get away with but they're so preoccupied to see if they could they don't stop to think about if they should life uh finds a way but we've already seen them change the Champions League to add more games and also add more to their pockets but what happens when they touch the most beloved tournament in all of sports what happens when they change the World Cup and that's exactly what FIFA are doing
which is expanding the world cup from 32 to 48 teams which in turn changes the amount of matches played from 64 to 104 matches now of course the motive behind it is the green that goes in their pocket but is the World Cup going to be doomed by this new system is it going to fall apart is it going to be unfair at times or is it actually a good thing because there are four teams that are going to be represented in the World Cup which is a tournament meant to represent the world given that
the sitting FIFA president is a spitting image of Dr Evil you would lean towards thinking it's doomsday breathtaking I shall call him mini [Music] me and that the World Cup is going to be on a downfall but let's think about the fact that there are more teams that are going to be represented in the World Cup which I don't think is a Bad Thing inherently because you've got 54 countries in Africa and you've got 55 in Europe yet 16 slots go to Europe and only five go to Africa of course Africa should be more represented
you're going to go from five countries in Africa all the way up to nine countries being represented in Africa Asia are going to get four more slots Europe are going to get three more slots South America are going to get two more slots cona we going to get three more slots and then also the oceanic region is going to be guaranteed a slot which we can basically call the New Zealand spot so congratulations to New Zealand for qualifying for all of the World Cups for the rest of Eternity now if you've been following along closely
and you're decent at math which I'm not particularly which is why I'm trying to become a YouTuber and not get a real job where again they might make me do math so please subscribe then you'll notice that something doesn't add up that was 17 more slots but there's only 16 more teams and that's because the host country doesn't have a separate Reserve slot to get qualified to the world cup instead they'll take a spot from whatever Confederation they're in so if they're from North America like in 2026 where Canada Mexico and the USA are all
automatically qualified then of the six slots for conaf three are already taken so that means that the rest of the Confederation and all those countries have to fight for the remaining three slots which you would feel bad about until you recognize that yeah it doesn't really matter if we add a team like Trinidad and Tobago to the World Cup because there's only been eight different teams that have ever won the World Cup in fact there's only ever been a team from either South America or Europe that has made the World Cup final let alone win
it so adding all of these extra conaf and African and Asian teams it doesn't really have a very big impact on the final result of the World Cup unless Vietnam goes on one hell of a run in the end adding more teams to the World Cup was never going to ruin the World Cup they've done it before in the '90s they went from 16 to 32 teams and that was great the only problem is that FIFA didn't think about this for 3 seconds before doing it because 48 is an impossible number to work with in
a tournament if you're looking at a tournament with a group stage they proposed that there would be 16 groups of three and that is a disaster for many reasons first if you spent four years trying to qualify you could get knocked out after two matches which is a complete buzz kill and you just have to go home you wouldn't even get that third group stage match then you also have a problem where you could play one match and then you have to go play the other team in the group who hasn't played a match yet
but this is your second match so you could have potentially picked up an injury or some fatigue it's just not very fair but then the real disaster comes into the final match of the group stage because you can't have matches going on at the same time there's only three teams which means that if the points really add up nicely then those last two teams could just say hey if we draw this match we finish first and second screw over that third team so you're going to see a couple of very suspicious nil-nil draws and very
defensive matches coming into the end of the group stage and so FIFA decided to scrap that idea thankfully but their new idea has a lot of holes in it as well because it's going to be 12 groups of four the top two teams Advanced to The Knockout rounds just like normal but only eight of the 12 third place teams advance to The Knockout rounds and the tiebreaker is going to be based on the amount of points you got in your group so let's say you finished third place in group a and you had four points
but there's another team in group b who had two points and finished in third place the team from group a would most likely be going to The Knockout rounds the team from Group B would most likely be going home but team Group B could have had to play against Brazil and France where team group a might have had to play against Tunisia and New Zealand no offense to my kiwis but here's the big issue with the new World Cup format because 67% of teams are now getting Advanced from the group stage which means that if
you win your first two matches you are mathematically guaranteed to go to The Knockout stage because if you get six points even if you finish third which is possible to have six points in third that's the most points you could have in third place which means that you're going to The Knockout rounds anyway and so you're incentivized to bench your starters in that third match because you don't want to hurt them before The Knockout rounds begin so whoever plays against France or Brazil in their third match is going to have a much easier time with
beating them maybe if you're playing against France in the first game you to play against Killian mbappe up top but if you're playing France in the third game you get to play against Kum muani which I'm not saying that France is going to have bad substitute players but it's not mbappe and so you're going to have a better chance of getting a result now I'm not saying that the World Cup needs to be 100% Fair that's impossible sometimes you get drawn into the group of death and you got to deal with it sometimes you get
drawn into the Mickey Mouse Cakewalk group it's just how these random draws go but but you can't deny that with a 48 team system there are so many different holes and issues that FIFA have completely overlooked and that are going to inevitably cause issues when the World Cup comes around the third match day of the group stage it's going to be an issue for some teams you're going to see some third place teams get screwed out of going to the round of 32 just based on being in the group of death whereas some other groups
are going to have easier points to pick up and they get compared to their group's points like they played the same teams and it's like apples to oranges it just doesn't seem fair that you can compare one group's points to another group's points but that's how they're doing it and so I think inevitably we're probably not going to see the final change for the World Cup in history happen this year it's going to change and change again in the future and hell maybe by 2030 or 2034 we'll have a straight up 64 Team Bracket like
March Madness now that is something I can get behind
