The 2026 World Cup, which will be held for the first time in three countries simultaneously, Mexico, the USA, and Canada, and also for the first time, this competition will feature 48 teams.
However, recently, FIFA has come up with an absolutely crazy idea and proposal. That in the 2030 World Cup, not less than 64 teams from around the globe should participate at the start!
UEFA responded with a total veto to such a plan for the centenary edition, organized in six countries from three continents. The World Cup started with 13 teams in 1930, and now there is a risk of reaching a more than expanded format, to 64, out of the 210 national teams affiliated with FIFA.
At the beginning of March, Ignacio Alonso, the president of the Uruguayan federation, proposed that an exceptional 64 national teams should participate in the jubilee World Cup in 2030, as the 2030 WC will be an anniversary one, marking 100 years since the first edition.
This reignited the conflict between Gianni Infantino and Aleksander Ceferin, the presidents of FIFA and UEFA, who are always in a struggle for the organizations they lead.
"This proposal was even more surprising for us than it was for you. It's not a good idea for either the World Cup or the European qualifiers. I do not support this idea. I don't know where it came from, but it's strange that we didn't know anything before the proposal from the FIFA Council," Ceferin declared, according to The Guardian.
During the UEFA congress in Belgrade, he suggested that FIFA should have also informed the continental body about the scenario with 64 participants.
D.A.