FIFA officials will look at the possibility of expanding the World Cup by another 16 teams before the 2030 event, president Gianni Infantino said in an \u200binterview.<\/p>\n
Infantino told Bluewin, a Swiss media outlet, that growing from 48 \u200cto 64 teams could make sense.<\/p>\n
“That’s definitely an issue that will be examined and discussed in the relevant committees after this World Cup,” he told Bluewin.<\/p>\n
“When organizing a World Cup, it’s \u200bimportant to organize it for the whole world not just Europe and \u200bSouth America but effectively the entire world.<\/p>\n
Every nation should be \u2060allowed to dream of participating in the World Cup. You can see that \u200bthe quality of the teams is extremely high and it’s getting higher and \u200bhigher, all over the world. If you don’t give smaller countries a chance to participate in the World Cup, they’ll lack the incentive to keep improving.”<\/p>\n
The World Cup field was 32 teams \u200bfrom 1998 through 2022.<\/p>\n
The current 2026 edition is the first with 48 \u200bteams.<\/p>\n
Four teams Argentina, England, France and Spain\u00a0 remain in the tournament. Two semifinal matches and \u200cthe finals \u2060are all that remain from the initial 104-match schedule that saw action in Canada, Mexico and across the United States.
\nInfantino said he considers the 48-team field to be a “huge success.”<\/p>\n
“Every team played at a high level. Teams from every continent \u200bscored goals and earned \u200bat least one \u2060point,” he said. “Nine out of 10 African teams reached the knockout stage. At the last World Cup, there were only \u200bfive teams from Africa. That just goes to show how \u200bimportant it \u2060is to include all teams to give them this opportunity to participate.”<\/p>\n
The 2030 tournament will be a multi-continent effort.<\/p>\n
The first three matches are scheduled to be played in \u2060Uruguay, Argentina \u200band Paraguay one per country with the remaining \u200bgames staged in Morocco, Portugal and Spain. Expansion to 64 teams could mean that the South American \u200bnations each could host one four-team group, rather than one match.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":30393,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-39399","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The World Cup field was 32 teams \u200bfrom 1998 through 2022.\r\n","published_date":"","news_description":"The World Cup field was 32 teams \u200bfrom 1998 through 2022.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39400,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39399\/revisions\/39400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=39399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}