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In a 48-Team World Cup, Something Has To Be Done About Qualifiers

The World Cup will be fun no matter what. But, with an expanded World Cup field, the qualifiers may not.

This week, the FIFA Council will vote on whether to expand the World Cup to 48 teams. All signs point to the measure passing smoothly, which should give you plenty of time to get ready for a 48-team tournament in 2026.

The exact format of that tournament is still up in the air, but to my mind that's not the important question; whatever the shape, it will have problems and people will complain but the games will be played and mostly be fun, just like the current 32-team format. For me, the biggest question is how World Cup qualifying will be affected by this drastic and sudden expansion.

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As a big fan of World Cup qualification, I agree. The best part of the journey is ruined otherwise. — James Montague (@JamesPiotr)January 9, 2017

Here's the basic problem: with 16 more slots, qualifying is going to get a lot less competitive, no matter how the places are divided around the world. Here's one possibility of how they might shake out:

Regional slots discussed for expanded 48 team World Cup: Europe, 16; Africa, 9; Asia, 8.5; S. America, 6.5, N/C America, 6.5; Oceania, 1

— tariq panja (@tariqpanja)January 8, 2017

Since we don't have any better ideas at the moment, let's take this at face value. If Concacaf gets six (or more) slots, that means every single team from the Hex automatically qualifies. Instantly, the only round of Concacaf qualifying with any degree of suspense is rendered totally pointless. The same generally holds true for South America; if six out of 10 teams qualify, say goodbye to the highly entertaining, playoff-like Conmebol qualifiers, where only four automatically qualify (as it currently stands, Colombia is in sixth and Argentina in fifth).

So how do we fix this? Interestingly, Conmebol vice-president Laureano González claimed in The Guardian that FIFA president Gianni Infantino is bullish on combining Conmebol and Concacaf qualification. This is not a perfect plan, but it is probably the only way to make for exciting qualifiers in a 48-team World Cup. Instead of uncompetitive regional qualifiers, all of the Americas will compete for something like 13 or 14 slots. Because Conmebol is much stronger than Concacaf, USA and Mexico wouldn't be locks to make the field. I'd still put my money on them qualifying every cycle, but considering Mexico's path to 2014 and the USA's stumbling this cycle, that would still very much be an open question.

The arrangement makes a ton of sense for the confederations, too. Conmebol would surely jump at the chance to regularly hold qualifiers in the lucrative US and Mexico markets. For its part, Concacaf would doubtless welcome big ticket draws like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina with open arms, as the USA did this summer with the Copa America Centenario. Smaller countries would see their increased chance of qualifying for a 48-team tournament significantly reduced by a merger, but Conmebol/Concacaf could, perhaps, promise them a larger cut of the revenue pie to entice their support. (It's tough to say it will take much; I'm pretty sure Jamaica or Honduras would be just as excited to play against Brazil and Argentina as anyone else.)

The biggest issue with this plan is travel, but there a few things to keep in mind on that front. First, Conmebol/Concacaf's best players in Europe already travel a ton for qualifiers. South Americans, especially, have 10-hour journeys or so each way. With more money in the pot, perhaps FAs could spend with the idea of minimizing travel and making the logistics as reasonable as possible, perhaps by finding neutral locations for training bases. Maybe the confederations could set up neutral bases any team can use, spread throughout the continents. Schedule-makers could group away matches together so every team plays the US and Mexico on the same trip.

As soccer writer James Montague pointed out on Twitter, "qualification IS the World Cup." Although many people don't think of it this way, he's right. Condemning the part of the World Cup that occurs all over the globe for two-plus years to superfluous afterthought would be to lessen the World Cup itself. No matter what, something has to be done to overhaul World Cup qualifiers in a 48-team format, or there will be no reason to watch. For all the obvious costs of an expanded tournament, none would be bigger than that.