For the good of the game,” is Fifa’s slogan. But the global football authority’s decision to expand the World Cup to 48 teams in 2026 is bad for the game. In fact, it is a perfect example of Fifa’s interest clashing with that of neutral fans. Fifa will make more money and Gianni Infantino, its president, can expect grateful Asian and African federations to re-elect him in 2019. But even most Asian and African fans will suffer as football’s premier tournament slides into tedious mediocrity as a result of this decision.
In World Cups, to borrow the writer Kingsley Amis’s phrase, more means worse. In 1978 the World Cup featured only 16 teams. Since then ever more weak teams have been admitted. Most come to the tournament to defend, run around and foul. For fans, it is like watching someone spend 90 minutes parking a bus. Connoisseurs of these matters consider Ukraine-Switzerland in Cologne in 2006 (goalless until the penalty shootout) the nadir of 10,000 years of human civilisation, though Paraguay-Japan in Pretoria in 2010 (when goals were not merely absent but inconceivable) is another contender.
Last year’s Euro 2016 shows what happens when international tournaments expand — in the Euros’ case, from 16 teams to 24. The weak teams defended and average goals per game plunged to 2.12, a 20-year-low.