Vanity Fair: What can the 23rd FIFA World Cup be remembered for?
It will be a new competition from many points of view. It cannot be called revolutionary, but one thing is for sure — this is the largest football tournament ever held in history. How will the increase in the number of teams by a third affect the development of football and the World Cups themselves, who will benefit from this and who will lose — in the Izvestia article
What's the matter
The FIFA World Cup is the number one competition. It is more important and more popular than the Olympics, it attracts viewers all over the world and generates huge revenues. But until the 80s of the twentieth century, only 15 teams played in its final stage, despite the fact that about a hundred played football in the world.
USSR national team players Yuri Gavrilov and Tengiz Sulakvelidze in the Poland-USSR match of the 1982 FIFA World Cup. The match ended with a score of 0:0
The first major expansion was in 1982, from 15 to 24 teams. It was justified and logical. The role of Europe was dominant — 14 teams, from South America — 4. It was impossible to hold the tournament without representatives of other continents, even though Kuwait, Honduras and El Salvador looked like extras. The latter set the anti—record of the tournament by losing to Hungary 1:10, but Algeria and Cameroon made a big fuss – the Algerians were "fused" by the Germany-Austria match, and Cameroon did not lose a single game at all and did not advance to the second round only on goal difference.
In 1998, the World Cup logically followed the same pattern, until it seemed to come to the final version — 32 teams, 8 groups of 4 teams, the share of continents was justified. But the most important thing was that there were almost no passing matches, and the USA (the previous hosts in 1994) and Japan (the next hosts in 2002) performed the worst, where football as a whole continued to develop.
Each subsequent championship has become a bright celebration — fierce competition for reaching the final stage, a lot of sensations inside the tournament. Since FIFA did not allow the World Cup to be held on the same continent twice in a row, and there was no shortage of applicants in Asia, Africa, or South America, the development of football and its popularization proceeded at a significant pace.
In 2018, Russia won the competition from eight (!) contenders and organized the World Cup, which was subsequently recognized by the FIFA Council as the best in history. According to the financial report for 2018, it became the most profitable in the entire history of the event — $3.5 billion in net income. The Qatar tournament in 2022 opened up new technologies, the Middle East market and the know-how to host a successful global forum in a limited space.
FIFA World Cup Winners' Award Ceremony, July 15, 2018
FIFA's vector towards globalization and popularization of football has led the organization to triumph. But in 2026, something broke.
The USA didn't even win the competition. Their joint bid with Mexico and Canada simply had no rivals (we don't take Morocco into account). But the reason for this fact lies on the surface: a year before the choice of the country of the tournament, FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced an increase in the number of participating countries of the final tournament by 16 (sixteen!) national teams. It is important to understand that FIFA has always been against joint bids, the only exception was made for Japan and Korea in 2002, just so that the two countries would not quarrel with each other. But no one wanted to "pull" such a large number of teams. Everyone withdrew their applications, even China and India, realizing the enormous costs ahead.
The same scheme worked as with the Olympics — FIFA receives the main income (from the sale of broadcast rights) (as well as the IOC), and the main expenses are borne by the organizers. But it's not just about expenses.
Why does Germany need a match with Curaçao?
The sports component was blurred. Curacao, Haiti, Jordan, Cape Verde, Uzbekistan, Congo, and New Zealand reached the final stage. And this is despite the fact that Italy, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Nigeria, Cameroon and Georgia were not included. Well, Russia, for obvious reasons. But the main thing is that the number of matches has increased from 64 to 104. With an average stadium capacity in the United States (about 70,000 spectators), a huge profit increase is being created. The reconstruction of the Champions League looks the same, where the number of matches has increased from 60 to 200, but... The winners will be the same everywhere. New teams will appear in the early stages of the playoffs, and perhaps some will even reach higher stages, but no more.
Joseph Blatter, President of FIFA, 1998-2015:
An increase in the number of teams means a deterioration in quality. 48 teams are one fifth of all the national teams in the world. It is clear that Africa and Asia want more places at the World Championships. Well, take 2-3 places from Europe. By the third round, when the fate of the playoff berths will be decided, the playing teams will be able to agree on the result. This is not the World Cup.
By the way, one more revealing fact. The Orta Analyst supercomputer, which collects and analyzes statistics from around the football world, estimated the chances of all teams winning in the United States. The chances of Curacao, Haiti, Cape Verde and Congo are equal... zero. So why are there five teams playing in the final stage of the World Cup that can't even theoretically win it? How should this speak to the overall development of football?
After the Argentina– Jamaica match in 1998, the score 5-0 and the song of the Chaif group became an ironic symbol of the defeat of a small country by one of the football giants. Germany – Curacao is one of the meetings of the band E. What song will they write now?
And what's next?
And then 2030. It will be hosted by three countries: Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay will each host the opening match of the tournament. Gianni Infantino said in March 2021: "The more candidates we have, the better..." And promised to make the choice of the venue for the 2030 tournament "clean" and "transparent." At the same time, there are already rumors about an increase in the number of teams to 64, but the conclusion from this is ambiguous.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino at the opening ceremony of the international broadcasting center for the 2026 FIFA World Cup
On the one hand, from a marketing point of view, FIFA has won a brilliant victory over all competitors, making football a global entertainment, and fans will not leave their televisions, not only in Curacao, but also in Russia. Football is not an Olympics that should be held in one city, "merging together" the necessary and unnecessary. This is only the "number one sport". The World Cup is turning into a five-week-long world fair, with huge broadcast revenues and the same winners.
Secondly, the lack of coordination between FIFA and UEFA will have an impact sooner or later. In Europe, the number of matches is "inflated" beyond any limit, and the matches of the national teams here are the third most important after the domestic championships and European cups. UEFA President Ceferin noted that complaints about calendar congestion come from players with high salaries and from clubs with a large number of top players. No one has the strength to play at the highest level for another month in the summer after such a season, especially the stars.
According to the FIFPro football players' union, 17% of the 1,500 analyzed players played more than 55 matches per season in 2023-2024. For many football players, this figure exceeded 70 matches, and this inevitably led to a loss of the quality of football itself. In 2024, the European leagues and FIFPro planned to complain about FIFA to the European Commission due to the overloaded calendar of international matches.
And finally, satiation with football will come quickly enough, as from too long a play or movie, from a super-spectacle that does not go "in one breath", the fan will inevitably get tired. This means that sooner or later such a desire to make money from the audience (FIFA has no other motivation) will lead to overheating. But since for Gianni Infantino, as it says in the great Soviet cartoon, "there can't be too much gold," the impasse won't happen "tomorrow."
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
