{"id":688984,"date":"2026-07-13T09:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T09:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688984\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T09:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T09:10:12","slug":"world-cup-2026-englands-push-for-missing-piece-plus-64-team-expansion-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688984\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: England’s push for ‘missing piece’ plus 64 team expansion debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Expansion would pose challenges for hostspublished at 09:38 BST<\/p>\n

09:38 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Dale Johnson
Football issues correspondent<\/p>\n

\"ArgentinaImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

When Infantino was first elected in 2016, part of his manifesto was to increase the size of the World Cup from 32 teams to 40.<\/p>\n

In less than a year, that rose to 48 and was approved by the Fifa council, effective from the 2026 finals.<\/p>\n

Since then, speculation has never gone away that Fifa would like to go further and faster.<\/p>\n

Going up to 48 teams for the 2022 finals was discussed, but it was accepted that Qatar would not be able to host a tournament of that size on its own.<\/p>\n

And this is the issue \u2013 the bigger the World Cup becomes, the more challenging it is to host.<\/p>\n

This year it is in three countries across a vast area. In 2030, matches will be played in six countries \u2013 Morocco, Portugal, Spain, plus Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as centenary hosts.<\/p>\n

Just how Saudi Arabia would be able to cope with a 64-team tournament, featuring 128 games, in 2034 is unknown.<\/p>\n

Yet it is a great vote winner for Infantino on two counts.<\/p>\n

Firstly, it gives more countries the chance to play at a World Cup. Indeed, a 64-team World Cup would see almost a third of the 211 Fifa-affiliated countries qualify.<\/p>\n

A bigger World Cup also means more revenue to be distributed to the member associations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Expansion would pose challenges for hostspublished at 09:38 BST 09:38 BST Dale JohnsonFootball issues correspondent Image source, Getty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-688984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}