I imagine that the main reason the world cup is such a rare and prestigious event is because it takes place every 4 years.
I don't agree. According to the most probable system, the teams that qualify for the knock out stages will play one additional match only, while they could face weaker teams in the group stages. Therefore, their performance won't change a lot in my opinion. On the other hand, increasing the number will give more opportunities for the theoretically weak teams and their fans to appear in the World Cup. However, the decision to increase the number of participants was taken for pure financial reasons.
More teams in the World Cup means more matches and of course more money, but that does not mean that we will see a better competition.
In fact, we will see more boring and bad matches that will not be attractive for TV and fans.
The World Cup should be an exclusive competition in which only the best national teams from all continents can participate, not a competition in which practically every national team in the world can participate.
I think that the increase in the number of national teams at the World Cup was due to another reason, which is that it would be easier for the president and the leadership of FIFA to get support for another term in FIFA.
In the end, it always comes down to politics and money
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