On 10 January 2017, the FIFA Council voted unanimously to expand to a 48 team tournament.
The tournament will open with a group stage consisting of 16 groups of 3
teams, with the top 2 teams progressing from each group to a knockout tournament starting with a round of 32 teams.
The number of games played overall will increase from 64 to 80, but the
number of games played by finalists remains at 7, the same as with 32
teams, except that one group match will be replaced by a knockout match.
Interesting Format. For coming out of Group stage, 2 out of 3 is not a big deal. Then 1/32 Round is Knockout.
If Asia has 8 confirmed spots, on present form - Japan, South Korea, Australia, Iran look like confirmed entries while Saudi Arabia, UAE, Uzbekistan, Thailand, China can dream of World Cup. Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, North Korea are also ahead of India. 9 years are there, we need to improve massively.
Something similar to this happened with Wales and Romania that was planned one Our case we avoided friendlies for ISL
The key aspect of Wales’ remarkable rise is that, following a friendly against Netherlands in June 2014, they went an incredible 17 months without playing another non-competitive game. So in July 2015 – with detrimental friendly ranking points avoided – Wales entered the world’s top 10 for the first time their history
Nobody is posting about the new FIFA rankings where India is 129th. Really surprised !! These days I am a bit busy. I thought some active and enthusiastic members will post it.
Comments
Teams like Uzbekistan, Jordan and Bahrain might finally qualify for World Cup. Uzbekistan especially !
But 48 teams is stupidity. 32 is perfect man.
Can we sort out the current mess and target that? Our dreams
Interesting Format. For coming out of Group stage, 2 out of 3 is not a big deal. Then 1/32 Round is Knockout.
If Asia has 8 confirmed spots, on present form - Japan, South Korea, Australia, Iran look like confirmed entries while Saudi Arabia, UAE, Uzbekistan, Thailand, China can dream of World Cup. Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, North Korea are also ahead of India. 9 years are there, we need to improve massively.
6-7.5 is my call with the .5 fight against south american/african team
Our case we avoided friendlies for ISL
The key aspect of Wales’ remarkable rise is that, following a friendly against Netherlands in June 2014, they went an incredible 17 months without playing another non-competitive game. So in July 2015 – with detrimental friendly ranking points avoided – Wales entered the world’s top 10 for the first time their history