{"id":546627,"date":"2026-07-13T00:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/546627\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T00:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:22:09","slug":"gianni-infantino-hints-at-expansion-to-64-team-world-cup-before-2030-event-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/546627\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianni Infantino hints at expansion to 64-team World Cup before 2030 event \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/fifa\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/fifa\/\">Fifa<\/a> officials will look at the possibility of expanding the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/world-cup\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/world-cup\/\">World Cup<\/a> by another 16 teams before the \u20602030 event, according to Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who said growing the tournament from 48 to \u206064 teams could make \u2060sense.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThat\u2019s definitely \u200ban issue that will be examined and discussed in the relevant committees after this World Cup,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen organising \u2060a World Cup, it\u2019s important to organise it for the whole world \u2013 not just Europe and South America \u2013 but effectively the \u2060entire world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cEvery nation should be allowed to dream of participating in the World Cup. \u200bYou can see that the quality \u200cof the teams is \u200cextremely high \u2013 and it\u2019s getting higher and higher, all over the world. If you \u200cdon\u2019t give smaller countries a chance to participate in the World Cup, they\u2019ll lack the incentive to keep improving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The World Cup field was 32 teams from 1998 to 2022 and was expanded to 48 for the current tournament, increasing the total number of matches to 104.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Infantino \u200bsaid he considered the 48-team set-up a \u201chuge success\u201d, adding: \u201cEvery team played at a high level. Teams from every continent scored goals and earned at least one point. Nine out of 10 African teams reached the knockout stage. At the last \u2060World Cup, there were only five teams from Africa. That just goes \u200bto show how \u200bimportant it is to include \u200ball teams \u2013 to give them this opportunity to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The 2030 tournament \u200bwill be a \u200cmulti-continent effort. The first \u200bthree matches are \u200bscheduled to be played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, with the remaining games to be staged in Morocco, Portugal and Spain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">An expansion to 64 teams could mean the South American nations could each host a four-team group, rather than just one match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">World Cup Wallchart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifa officials will look at the possibility of expanding the World Cup by another 16 teams before the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2956,53114,42,43,40,38,41,39,4018],"class_list":["post-546627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-fifa","tag-gianni-infantino","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}