Looking forward to England becoming the first team to be eliminated from the '16 groups of 3' stage by losing two penalty shootouts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38565246

And the Jocks still won't qualify...

It's just mental, 16 groups of 3 is ridiculous. It's all about money, already looking forward to seeing us getting knocked out by Papua New Guinea.

Gianni Infantino, the bald Sepp Blatter lookalike...

Why stop at 48 ? There must be 144 countries in FIFA, six groups of 24 played in two centres, Mongolia and Easter Island spring to mind, do away with qualifying and just play a rolling tournament and if everybody gets pissed off with it before it's finished just give the trophy to the country with their tongue furthest up the FIFA chairman's behind, whoever that may be.

KER-CHING!.... It's all about the money.

The games fucked

Penalty shoot outs for draws too


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Hopefully by the time this happens all the mercenaries and so-called "top players" will be neck deep in a trough of Chinese money. Then, maybe, the Football League and F.A. Cup will be worthy of their names again and the World Cup will be a four yearly, TV only, irrelevance. Pools will still be permanently in the bottom 4 of the bottom fourth division - if we're lucky!

I may have given the impression it's all about the money. I must apologise, I forgot to add getting popular with the minnows.

World Cup 2026...

The reason they have changed the system is on the back of the amazing success of the EFL cup, imagine the exitement of watching Burkina Faso v Gibralta

They should bring in International B teams as well.

"Lost" yeah right.

http://www.iol.co.za/sport/fifa/fifa-an ... es-7376616

I doubt Ronaldo would have been that impressed with a £10k watch anyway. He's probably got shoelaces that cost more than that.

How many countries have the stadium and infrastructure for a 48 team tournament. Surely it's just so they can get shit national teams like China and India into the competition, and they the can sell advertising to the most populated countries in the world.

I think the reaction has been a little over the top even though I do think the expansion is a bit of a nonsense. When the World Cup comes around though as lovers of the game we'll probably enjoy being able to watch more football over that summer.

Mentions of Gibraltar and India are a bit daft though, it's not going to significantly impact on the quality of the tournament. More than 48 nations in the World now have decent enough national teams. Take Europe for example, I think I heard yesterday that only three more places will be created for European nations so the qualification process and the quality of the teams are going to be impacted on pretty minimally. If you think one or two 'big' European nations usually miss out with the current format. This is also the case with Africa and South America.

I think the format could be better though, why not have the outright qualifiers go straight into the normal 32 team tournament then the teams who would normally contest the play offs or have 'qualified' through the play offs travel to the tournament and compete in this first stage for the right to get to the last 32. Less chance of early miss matches or dead rubbers then.

I think there's been about 10 different posters expressing different points of view, some not entirely serious!

Even so, under the new format the bigger European and S. American footballing countries are going to have to under-perform spectacularly not to get through, the USA and Mexico may as well have byes straight into the finals if the number of CONCACAF places is increased, and a bigger number of Asia qualifiers will help countries intent on buying footballing credibility like China, UAE, Oman, Qatar and the Saudis to achieve their ends.

But you're right, the absolute no-hopers like India, Gibraltar and Scotland still won't get through.

Market expansion.

One reason Blatter kept his place for stop long was realising that it's one nation one vote. .. he promised development money to small nations, each of whom has the same voting power as England etc! So for example promising more WC places to Asia wins lots of votes from places that carry equal weight with European and South American nations. ... Infantino is making sure he gets reelected. ...