Soccer: Infantino says 32, 40 and 48-team World Cups on the table

FIFA President Gianni Infantino attends the World Summit on
Ethics and Leadership in Sports at the headquarters of FIFA in

Zurich, Switzerland September 16, 2016FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Thursday that
proposals for a 32, 40 or 48-team World Cup in 2026 were still
on the table and that a larger tournament would not mean a
drop in quality.
Confirming that a decision on the format would be taken in
January, he stood by his own idea, first mooted last week, for
a 48-team tournament, starting with a playoff round featuring
32 teams in which the 16 losers would go straight home after
a single game.
A document presented to the FIFA Council, and seen by
Reuters, offered 10 different possible formats, for varying
numbers of teams.
"There is a positive feeling around the council but the details
are still to be elaborated, whether it's 40 teams, eight groups
of five or 10 groups of four, or 48 teams with a playoff at the
start," Infantino told reporters. "This is still very much a work
in progress."
Infantino said the standard of the tournament, which
expanded to include 32 countries in 1998 and has remained
the same since, would not be affected by having more teams.
"I don't agree with diluting the quality," he said. "I would like to
remind everyone that in the last World Cup, Italy and England
were eliminated by Costa Rica.Infantino's own suggestion, made during a presentation in
Bogota last week, was for a playoff round featuring 32 teams,
where the losers would go home and the winners would
proceed to the group stage, joining 16 teams who would
receive a bye.
Critics have questioned whether it would be viable for teams
to spend weeks preparing for the tournament and then to
travel around the world for a single game, but Infantino said it
was.
"Already today, you have playoffs where teams travel from
one part of the world to the next and they play home and
away in four days," he said, adding that the playoff would be a
"final" for the teams involved.
"It's certainly an exciting moment for the country and the
fans... Look at England, where one of the most followed
matches is the promotion playoff (from the second tier
Championship)."
Infantino also said that FIFA would take more control over
ticketing and organization at the World Cup from 2022
onwards as he outlined the federation's strategy for the future,
known as 'FIFA 2.0'.
He said this was a question of streamlining the administration
and did not stem from a lack of trust in local organizers.
"It has nothing to do with trust, it is just to do with efficiency,"
he said. "It's simply about being professional."
He reiterated his promise, made when he was elected in
February, that each of FIFA's 211 member associations would
receive $1.25 million per year to invest in development.
Another aim was "to increase total participation in football --
players, coaches, referees and fans -- from 45 to 60 percent
of the global population."