48-team World Cup of 16 three-team groups to be proposed by FIFA president Infantino

Ever since he became president of soccer’s global governing body in February, Gianni Infantino has pushed for a 48-team World Cup starting with the 2026 edition of the quadrennial tournament, which doesn’t yet have an appointed host but for which the United States is the early favorite.

In fact, Infantino was proposing this idea in the months leading up to his election as well, as he jostled with several others to succeed the ousted Sepp Blatter. Expanded World Cups are a popular sell within the game’s national federations, after all, since it means more countries reach the big tournament and everybody stands to make more money. At first, Infantino spoke of 40 teams. But why stop at 40 when you can have 48?

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How, exactly, such a format would work was the question. Because 48 is an obviously problematic number. At 32 teams, the World Cup’s size since 1998, eight tidy groups of four teams apiece produce 16 knockout-round entrants. At 48, it all gets much more muddled.

On Wednesday, AFP reported that Infantino envisioned a World Cup with no fewer than 16 groups of three teams apiece and will pitch this to the FIFA Council at its meetings on Jan. 9 and 10.

There had previously been talk of a kind of play-in round in which 16 or 32 teams – depending on whether it was a 40- or 48-team tournament – would play for a spot in the group stage with the 16 highest-seeded countries qualifying automatically. The trouble with that idea is that eight or 16 teams would leave the World Cup after just a single game.

So let’s speculate what a system of 16 three-team groups might look like. Let’s assume two of three teams in each group would advance after a double round-robin. Because if just one advanced, it would all devolve into a bit of a lottery, and worse chances of advancing would probably make the constituent member federations unhappy.

With two of three teams advancing, the knockout stage would necessarily have to include a round of 32 ahead of the existing round of 16, before moving onto the quarterfinals, etc. That would effectively keep the same number of group-stage games that we have in a 32-team World Cup – 48 – but add 16 knockout games. The total number of games would grow from 64 to 80.

The upside of such a format is that 16 more straight knockout games would add excitement. The downside is that merely a third of the field would be knocked out out after the group stage. We saw at Euro 2016, when only eight of 24 teams – also a third – went home after the first round what a bore that can be. And that’s to say nothing of the logistical nightmare of having to schedule 24 games to take place simultaneously within each group on the final day of the group stage. (Although this might also favor a U.S. bid, since its abundance of stadiums would facilitate this considerably.)

Nevertheless, if you really insist on a 48-team World Cup – and Infantino does, although his more-is-merrier argument ignores that there aren’t four dozen worthy teams in the world – doubling the number of groups is probably the most elegant way of accommodating 50 percent more teams.

A play-in round would diminish the accomplishment of actually reaching the World Cup, since you would then play another glorified qualifier once you get there to make it into the tournament proper. And, realistically, moving just one team on from the group stage just isn’t going to happen if you know anything about FIFA’s internal politics.

But this all accepts that a 48-team World Cup is a good idea, which it isn’t. Neither is a 40-team World Cup, which would also create format issues. Infantino has argued that there are now enough strong teams around the world to build out the tournament without diluting the quality of play, but there is no evidence to support his assertion. The Euro, after all, produced an awful lot of sleep-inducing games when that tournament grew by 50 percent.

If, however, Infantino really does insist on imposing expansion on a tournament that needs no fixing – and has only in recent editions gotten to a point where it held no obviously weaker teams – his 16-group format is probably the way to go, however unwieldy it may seem for some teams to be drawn into Group P.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.