The bigger, the better. This seems to be the philosophy of football administrators around the world in recent times. After expanding the UEFA Champions League’s group stages from 32 clubs to 36 comes the proposal of a jumbo FIFA World Cup in 2030, featuring no less than 64 teams.

The 2026 edition in the United States, Canada and Mexico will already have 48 teams – 16 more than at Qatar 2022. If the idea mooted by the South American governing body Conmebol is implemented, an average of almost one in every three countries of the world will be at the World Cup.

The FIFA World Cup in five years will be the centennial edition and will be hosted in six countries across three continents – Spain, Portugal and Morocco, besides the inaugural games’ hosts Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. It commemorates the first World Cup in 1930 staged by Uruguay. It’s being argued that it should be a celebration of the global game, and should involve as much of the world as possible. A 64-team World Cup will consist of 128 matches – double the number in the most recent edition.

“This will allow all countries to have the opportunity to live the experience and so nobody on the planet is left out of the party,” Conmebol president Alejandro Dominguez has said.

“We are convinced that the centennial celebration will be unique because 100 years are celebrated only once.”

Though there was not much support for the proposal forthcoming, FIFA hasn’t rejected it outright, saying it has a “duty to analyse any proposal from one of its Council members”.

Besides the logistical issues arising due to a much-bloated and spread-out World Cup, the matter of quality of football needs to be addressed. The World Cup is the biggest football spectacle on the planet and FIFA’s showpiece event. Hence, only deserving teams should find a place. In recent times, we have seen nations as pedigreed in football as Italy missing out on the World Cup because their current teams were simply not good enough. Making it easier may take away some charm and intensity of the qualification cycle.

Trying to please all

The argument of ensuring “nobody on the planet is left out of the party” doesn’t hold much water. India has never been close to qualifying for a World Cup, but in the build-up and during the tournament, football fever grips the country and hardly anyone loses interest because their national team isn’t featuring.

If anything, a 64-team World Cup would ensure that the ‘major’ European and South American teams don’t miss out. Also, it could be the only way to have the two most populous countries in the world actively involved, for marketing and promotional reasons, as was the argument behind cricket’s inclusion in the Olympic programme.

The proposal is also consistent with the game’s governing bodies taking the elite players’ physical and mental welfare for granted while burdening them with more and more matches. What else could explain the FIFA Club World Cup being expanded to 32 teams, as many as at a World Cup till 2022, increasing the number of games and the duration of the tournament? It has never featured more than eight teams previously. Not that the biggest clubs in the world – mostly the European ones – can evade all blame regarding player welfare as they regularly schedule lucrative off-season tours to Asia and North America.

A 32-team group stage of a World Cup or the Champions League has symmetry and is easy to follow. Teams are divided into eight groups of four with the top two in each pool advancing to the Round of 16, from where the tournament is played on a knockout basis. In this season’s Champions League, teams played eight games in the group stage (up from six) against different opponents, with all sides being ranked in a joint group. It necessitated a playoff round before the Round of 16 and greatly increased the total number of matches in the main competition. Not every fan could be expected to follow the new format in its first season.

Opposition from Europe, Americas

Thankfully, the proposal to have a 64-team World Cup has faced some pushback from the outset. UEFA and Concacaf – the North and Central American regional governing body – have termed it unfeasible. Even the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), which could benefit with more representation at an expanded tournament, has been quoted as saying that it could lead to “chaos”.

“Someone might come along and demand raising the number to 132 teams. Where would we end up then?” AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa said.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has called it a “bad idea”. European football will be most impacted as its high-profile club competitions may suffer due to player injuries and shorter off-season.

The top Concacaf official also articulated the apprehensions about a 64-team World Cup. “We haven’t even kicked off the new 48-team World Cup yet, so personally, I don’t think that expanding to 64 teams should even be on the table,” its president Victor Montagliani told ESPN.

“I don’t believe expanding the men’s World Cup to 64 teams is the right move for the tournament itself and the broader football ecosystem, from national teams to club competitions, leagues, and players.”

At the heart of the matter is the devaluation of the achievement of qualifying for the world’s most-watched sporting competition. If qualification is made easy, where’s the sense of accomplishment and the jeopardy in one of the ‘big nations’ missing out?

Conmebol has 10 member nations and a 64-team World Cup could allow all of them a spot, making the qualification process redundant. Also, it may increase the chances of mismatches in the main competition. Teams that feature at the World Cup need to be there on merit.

There was a similar proposal a few years ago, of having the World Cup every two years, but fell victim to vehement opposition. Having the event every four years after a long and intense qualifying process often results in heartbreak and shattered dreams for many, but it just shows what making it to the biggest party on the planet means. In basketball terms, if one is facing difficulty making a three-pointer, the answer doesn’t lie in making the basket bigger.