Copied from Sport illustration
By Brian Straus
It’s the End of the World Cup As We Know It With the next men’s World Cup set to expand to 48 teams, enjoy this one last tournament of structural perfection.
There’s a decent chance that when the men’s World Cup makes its way to North America in 2026, with its field expanded from 32 to 48 teams, locals will be introduced to a bit of suddenly relevant old soccer lore. The famed “Disgrace of Gijón” remains a 90-minute cautionary tale of how significantly tournament scheduling and structure can impact results.
Gijón is a coastal city in northwest Spain, and the disgrace was perpetrated there during the 1982 World Cup. That 24-team tournament—where the first round started with six groups of four—allowed only two African entrants, and one of them, Algeria, stunned West Germany, 2–1, in the opener. No African nation had ever advanced at a World Cup, but by the time the group stage was concluding, Algeria remained in the hunt with the West Germans and Austria for one of the group’s prized two spots in the second round.
The problem was that Algeria had already finished its group-stage schedule when the other two teams kicked off their final game, in Gijón, and the neighbors knew what was required to go through at Algeria’s expense. Horst Hrubesch’s 10th-minute goal lifted West Germany to a 1–0 lead, and that was it. The rest of the game played out like that farcical scene in The Simpsons.
Cut to Kent Brockman: “Halfback passes to the center, back to the wing, back to the center. Center holds it, holds it, holds it …”
Austria’s actual commentator, Robert Seeger, famously told viewers to turn off their TVs.
All three nations finished group play with two wins and a loss, but Germany and Austria advanced on goal differential. FIFA rejected Algeria’s protest—no rules had been broken. But reforms followed that persist to this day, reducing the likelihood of conspiracy or chicanery in soccer tournaments and leagues across the world. Most notably, group-stage (or regular-season) finales would kick off simultaneously.
But that may not persist into 2026, as the influx of teams will require a format shake-up. For FIFA, the definition of fairness has evolved.
There were the two African sides at the 1982 World Cup, and just one four years earlier. And Asia, the planet’s most populous continent, somehow received only one ticket to Spain. The World Cup was barely that, and, as soccer went global, access had to evolve.
Sixteen years after Gijón, FIFA finally seemed to find the happiest medium. France 1998 featured 32 teams—17 from outside Europe—and a generally agreeable balance between inclusion and quality. Nobody was blown out. Everybody belonged. The tournament format itself was square, symmetrical and satisfying: eight groups of four teams each, with the top two finishers in each advancing to the knockouts. There were no wild cards or third-place reprieves, and every contender had the same, seven-game path to the title. And yes, group-stage finales were played at the same time. After decades of tinkering, it felt like FIFA had found its ideal format. It remained largely unchanged for the next six World Cups.
But growth is inevitable—or at least the desire for it is. The NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS, NWSL and Mexico’s Liga MX have all increased their playoff fields in recent seasons. The size of the College Football Playoff is going to triple. Overseas, men’s continental championships in Europe, Africa and Asia all now feature 24 national teams, while UEFA’s club competition overhaul includes a Champions League enlarged from 32 to 36 teams starting in 2024, as well as the Europa Conference League, a lower-tier tournament created last year. More participants and more product mean more investment, sponsorship and TV revenue.
“We are in the 21st century, and we have to shape the World Cup of the 21st century,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in early 2017. “The football fever that you have in a country that qualifies for the World Cup is the biggest promotional tool for football that you can have.”
The FIFA Council vote that preceded Infantino’s remarks was unanimous. When the planet’s biggest sporting event balloons to 48 countries in 2026, a significant majority of the additional berths will be allocated outside of Europe. There were a few pockets of resistance among football’s elite, but they were swiftly swept aside.
“I think the number was pretty comfortable,” says Concacaf president and FIFA vice president Victor Montagliani, a Canadian businessman. “Some of the pushback was, you always have the traditionalists who think it should stay where it was. I’m sure some [FIFA] members think it should’ve stayed at 16 until the end of time. That’s not our reality.
“A lot of members have been investing in their development programs, and we thought this was a balance that still kept the exclusivity of a World Cup but also giving people that have been investing and members that hope. That’s one of the things we always have to provide.”
As alarming as the 50% increase seems, Montagliani’s use of “exclusivity” still isn’t entirely off base. FIFA has 211 members—that’s more than the United Nations—so less than 23% of the world’s national teams will make the enlarged World Cup. That’s a far lower percentage than the playoff qualification rates of any of the major North American leagues, and it’s stingier than any of the six continental championships, which are a national team’s secondary target. (The Concacaf Gold Cup is the most exclusive, at 39%.)
Expansion will have an impact on regional qualifying tournaments, which constitute a major portion of the international soccer calendar. South America, for example, has traditionally staged a 10-team double round robin that sends four countries directly to the World Cup (while a fifth typically enters through a playoff).
