Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread - page 149. (Read 57610 times)

@shogun47
I think it's quite good the way it is right now, there is no reason to think that you should be doing more than what we are doing right now for certain continents, the result wouldn't be really that good. We have very fun world cup as it is and we are going to see increased number of entries as well, which means that it is going to be even more fun because we are going to see even more teams. That alone is good enough addition to what we have and I do not think that we require more things to change.

I think 2026 will be a great one but we are still three years away, so there is no reason to keep talking or thinking about it. Let it be for a while and we are going to see some stuff be the same and some stuff changing.

I have had this discussion as well already and I think this is really opinion-based and both sides have their pros and cons.

Talking about the weather conditions as a factor that makes the qualification "hard" would apply if it makes it relatively harder to qualify in direct comparison to any team from Europe. That's like, physically harder, but I guess this is not what we are discussing here. You are right with the weather, this is harder than in Europe, but it is not referring to the discussion about the quotas.

Regarding who are the best players in the world dominating the sport, this is very complicated because these things don't always go hand in hand with the country's performance a player is coming from. Actually, I don't even know if it strongly correlates with each other. Messi and Ronaldo won 11 world soccer player titles together and never won a World Cup, until Messi won the World Cup and his 7th individual title (12 in total then from both).
Imagine Haaland now dominating the Premier League and becoming the world's best player for several years, but will Norway ever win the World Cup?
Or what are the odds that Argentina has a next Messi anytime soon? Or what are the odds that Argentina has a world soccer player at all in the next 5 - 10 years?

You can see the same in tennis with Djokovic and Federer having won 43 Grand Slams, but the Davis Cup was won only once by each country.

But to avoid that you get me wrong here, I believe that throughout the future the majority of the best individual players might still come from Argentina or Brazil and I prefer their game and Messi is the GOAT for me. But Europe also has Ronaldo, Mbappe and Haaland as an example. Or take Iniesta, Zidane and Matthäus. Van Basten, Beckenbauer, etc.

If we just take a look at the quota, just the numbers, I think 6.5 slots for CONMEBOL with 10 starting teams is ok, otherwise why even play a qualification? If 7 teams out of 10 can qualify, what would a suggestion be to make it easier for CONMEBOL? 9 slots for 10 teams? I think that is what the discussion is about.

I'm not a huge fan of same amount of slots per "area".  What ends up happening is an uneven balance of poor performing teams.  And some of the top teams in the world are left out.  I don't know if there is a perfect way to get the right balance but I'm all for having the top teams in the world compete.

The truth is that I differ a lot from you, I know that the world cups have been more European, but the total dominance that should be seen in Europe is that of Germany and Italy with 4 cups each, but Brazil has 5 in supremacy world cups, sun in the American continent and only if we go to South America, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay stand out, which are the countries that have the most, Europe differs in terms of the number per Country, so in this case, I would say with great propriety that the qualifiers The most difficult in the world are in South America and specifically CONMEBOL, UEFA has its level, but even so, Italy has 3 World Cups in a row that does not go to a World Cup (which has hurt me) because I love how Italy plays.

I know that in Europe they can say that their tie is more difficult, but come on, in South America you can have a difficult match at more than 40°C in the Barranquilla stadium and after two days if you play against Bolivia it's cold. extreme and with special conditions, that due to the altitude the players run out of oxygen, so the demand and the level of demand is very high, apart from that if you have to play against Brazil and finish off with Argentina it is something that I do not wish on anyone, only people like Messi, Neymar, and some more can say it.

So here in this part of the world, by level, there should be more quotas to be able to have more options to see teams that are only 1 point away or sometimes tied to qualify for a World Cup, even some have sometimes gone to the World Cup based on average goals, everything That is what should be considered here, otherwise if the South American qualifiers were not there, I would say that the most Difficult is the UEFA one , but come on, let's do a count, the best players who have stood out the most worldwide have It has been more from Brazil, Argentina, in these times it is still in that dominance, I have not seen a European player who causes so much Furor in people Worldwide , well until now, however, that is why I say that things are more Difficult in terms of it's over Here..

I think it's understandable, think about it in team rankings way and you will realize that it's not really that shocking, we talk about something that will be unique in that aspect and should be considered a good deal one way or another.

I get it, not everyone thinks the same way and some people want equality on this, but the reality is that if we check the rankings of the teams then we will see that most of them at the top are European, and even though there are some good teams from other continents, the overall continent as a Europe has more better teams than any other continent. This makes it easier to decide this and make a clear choice. Hopefully people will realize this and can see world cup without too much complaint.

I'm not going to say Venezuela couldn't get qualified because it didn't have a good financial situation and they couldn't spend money like some other countries for their football team, but the fact about Venezuela is we can't expect too much from them because have no potential and because of the bad management situation in their country and football teams, they usually can't get many achievements and that's why it's not surprising for them to not be in the world cup.

I'm not too sure about that. In a Venezuela vs Denmark or Sweden match, I think it would be a good game, and it could go either way. San Marino for example, yes, they are not very good, but those Scandinavian teams are quite alright.

I do agree that CONMEBOL has a more difficult qualification process though.

I can't prove it since there haven't been any serious games between Venezuela and Denmark or Sweden or Iceland, but I am pretty sure that they would meed on eye-level or, if you prefer, on a 60:40 level for Venezuela. Saying that Venezuela would crush them doesn't make sense because we have now long seen that the number of obvious underdogs is decreasing significantly. Yes Liechtenstein and Andorra are low quality and there are several more of those, but you are turning something upside down here.

You are saying that it is so hard for Venezuela to qualify because there are all these strong teams. Yes, it is, but their chance to qualify is probably still much higher than for Andorra or Liechtenstein. Every association has a core group that usually takes the spots. Yet there are times when a team like Italy fails.

I think that doesn't really feel like I would be shocked to learn that. I mean I have never heard of them in the football setting, I did hear about their name when it comes to talking about high inflation and poor nation, but I have never heard of them in the football setting.

Not entirely sure if there are many great Venezuelan players out there neither, but even if there were a few, they were never really that good as a team and never felt like I have seen them anywhere at all. In the end some teams are just not that great, it just doesn't feel like it would be anything that major and we should consider it to be as normal as it gets to be able to survive the situation and just make it happen as much as possible.

My proposal is to have the 2022 format for qualifiers from different continental confederations. So that works out to:

Total spots available: 32 (From Qatar allocation, I gave one more to OFC, and reduced one from AFC).

AFC: 5
CAF: 5
CONCACAF: 4
CONMEBOL: 4
OFC: 1
UEFA: 13

Now, there should be a separate tournament, where the best teams that could not qualify will compete. I would suggest a total of 32 participants, and out of them 16 would qualify. So the proposal is like this:

Total spots: 16
Total participants: 32

Participants by confederation:

AFC: 8
CAFL: 8
CONCACAF: 4
CONMEBOL: 5
OFC: 1
UEFA: 6

I reached the numbers by subtracting the number of slots in 2022 World Cup by confederation from those in 2022 World Cup, and then multiplying this number by 2.

But one defect with this system is that even with this format, teams like Bolivia will never get a chance to qualify.

Let me know your feedback on this.

Whenever we are talking about having more teams in the world cup as qualified teams, people will usually think about some confederations leaving fewer slots than others.
For example, you may think African countries should get more chances than what they currently have. But if you check the countries and teams who won the world cup in the past, you can understand that Europe got much more titles than other countries, also every time in the world cup there are more countries in Europe we were expecting to see them playing won world cup but they couldn't get qualified for this tournament.

European countries currently rule football. Among the non-European countries, Brazil and Argentina are two countries that perform well as non-European countries. In the last World Cup we saw European countries doing well as well as teams from Latin America and Africa doing well. In the last World Cup, Morocco became the first African country to play in the semi-finals of the football World Cup and another Latin American country, Argentina, became the world champion. Although these two countries were successful in World Cups outside Europe, the Europeans dominated throughout the tournament. The next World Cup is going to be different, Europe and America are going to host the next World Cup tournament together, where the Europeans have a good chance of doing well. Many are again saying that Brazil will do well in the 2026 World Cup as a Latin American country.

Personally I find this proposal interesting, instead of simply giving more slots to each confederation and be done with it, it would have been interesting if so many spots were given in a special tournament in which all the countries which did not qualified played against each other, now it is true the level of such tournament will not be as high as the world cup, but with such a huge prize on the line most teams would do their utmost effort in order to place as high as possible and gain a place on the world cup.

LOL.. I really can't believe what I am seeing here. Are you guys really saying that CONMEBOL qualifiers are easier compared to the UEFA qualifiers? Seriously? CONMEBOL has 10 high quality teams. On the other hand, half of the teams in UEFA are low quality ones such as Liechtenstein and Andorra. In CONMEBOL, high quality teams like Venezuela and Bolivia almost never get a chance to qualify for the world cup, because the competition is so tough. And trust me, teams like Venezuela would sweep the floor with Danmark or Sweden, if they face one-to-one.

We fully agree here. Only looking at the slots and then saying that Europe has an advantage is wrong. Calculating the coefficient of number of teams fighting each other per 1 slot shows a different picture. I hope I didn't get any of the numbers wrong, but when you check them out it becomes obvious that qualifying for the World Cup in the CONMEBOL are is much easier than qualifying for the World Cup in the European area.

I think even 6+1 slots are a lot for CONMEBOL because there are not many strong teams and countries that have a chance to win the world cup and even teams like Venezuela if they play in the world cup they won't have any chance in this tournament. While even with 16 direct qualification slots, still there are many teams that should play in the world cup but they can't.

true, for America Latin national teams Venezuela never participants in World Cup and their achievement stuck on qualifying round trough difficult stopping Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. For next World Cup have added national teams from 32 become 48 and chance for all national teams never qualifying to World Cup get bigger chance and make debut playing in FIFA World Cup 2026.

No doubt with Europe have many national teams slot qualify to World Cup, they have 16 national teams will play in FIFA World Cup 2026 and become continent with many national teams participants than Asian, African, and Latin America. BTW have details about each continent how many slots they have and I easily to check which one potential national teams will qualify to World Cup 2026.

As Venezuelan, I can tell you that here people does not have a much of hope for our team to go to a world cup any time soon. People here mostly lean towards supporting other South American teams when comes to the World Cup.

During the last one, one could see thousands of people here cheering for the Argentinian team during the France v. Argentina Match. Even at home one could heard the screams of excitement.

It i sad to say it but simply there is no enough investment here so we can push our national talent in the international landscape, there are very good players, though; however I am very sure they would rather to emigrate and eventually find opportunities in other selections and clubs once they move.

No Denmark isn't much worse than Bolivia or Venezuela. I actually think that it would be quite even if they played against each other. It seems that Venezuela never played at a World Cup. Check the Wikipedia but it says they withdrew sometimes and most of the time didn't qualify.

Europe has 55 starting teams and 16 direct qualification slots and no play-off slots. If you put that into perspective, it is still hard to qualify for European teams.

CONMEBOL has 6+1 slots for 10 starters!

World Cup never intended to be fair in reality. European countries are the best teams in the world and have the best players so they have more chances to qualify, yet sometimes top Nations like Italy might risk not playing there if they were not fit.
Asian, African, North Americans and Oceania teams performance are quite limited and their chances to succeed is limited.
South America, Conmebol, comes after UEFA and it is dominated by Brazil and Argentina most of the time. The other teams chances are quite the same.