For Fifa and its increasingly bloated competition structure, less is definitely not more

For Fifa, less most certainly does not mean more, despite what the old adage says. For an organisation designed to extract maximum revenues, mostly legal, occasionally illegal, for the task of “running” the beautiful game, more means more.

And under current president Gianni Infantino, who succeeded a short, but equally ravenous line of Fifa leaders, the organisation continues that great tradition of making money.

Fifa’s small but powerful gaggle of top brass, known as the council, gathered in Kigali this week to map out their future of money-mak… er, running soccer and unsurprisingly gave us a plan for more soccer and therefore more money.

The main source of that growth is for the next men’s World Cup to be jointly staged in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It’s a vast geographic footprint that will grow another aspect – carbon emissions, but that’s a topic for another day.

Although the schedule has not been finalised, what was decided in Kigali this week is that the 48-team finals tournament, up from 32 – which has been the case since 1998 – will see 104 matches played instead of the usual 64.

And, ludicrously, it will take 72 matches to whittle the 48 teams down to 32, which is why the tournament will be almost six weeks long, rather than the monthlong event it has been since 1998.

The new format will also stick to drawing four teams in a group, after a proposal for 16 groups of three was dismissed over fears of collusion in the final group game.

Infamously, West Germany and Austria colluded during the 1982 World Cup in Spain to eliminate the wonderful team from Algeria in the final group game of that tournament.

If Germany emerged 1-0 winners over Austria after earlier losing 2-1 to Algeria, both the Germans and Austrians would advance.

After an early goal for West Germany, the two sides virtually stopped playing. They simply kicked the ball around for a further 85 minutes and Algeria exited the tournament. It led to claims of match-fixing, and certainly collusion, and, as a consequence, final group matches now kick off simultaneously to avoid the scenario repeating itself.

Had the 2026 tournament returned to a three-team-per-group second-round phase, a repeat of the “Nichtangriffspakt von Gijón (the non-aggression pact of Gijón)” – as the scandalous 1982 game became known in Germany – would be a possibility.

However, the number of groups will increase from eight to 12.

The original plan for the 2026 edition had a total of 80 matches, but the decision to increase the number of games to 104 was approved by Fifa’s council at a meeting on Tuesday.

Traditionally, the top two teams from each group advance to the last 16, but the 2026 edition will also have the eight best third-placed teams moving into the knockout round of 32.

The 32-team 2022 World Cup in Qatar completed its 64 matches in 29 days. The last time Mexico (1986) and the United States (1994) hosted a World Cup, there were only 24 teams.

The tournament has had 32 teams since the 1998 edition, with eight groups of four and the finalists playing seven games each. But teams reaching the semi-finals in 2026 will now play eight matches in total – including the final and the bronze medal match.

“The revised format mitigates the risk of collusion and ensures that all the teams play a minimum of three matches, while providing balanced rest time between competing teams,” read a statement from Fifa.

Lionel Messi of Argentina holds the World Cup Trophy after the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 final match between Argentina and France at Lusail Stadium on 18 December 2022 in Lusail City, Qatar. (Photo: Ian MacNicol / Getty Images)

Club expansion also planned

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