u/Scary_Vehicle9023

Group C got skipped so that co-hosts were in different brackets, but why USA specifically moved into the later groups? I think it's because even if the USA doesn't progress to a later round than their co-hosts, they would at least be able to claim they were the last host to be knocked out (so long as they didn't finish 3rd in their group) to satisfy egos.

Randomly thought of Sergio Romero, who played 461 career games, with 96 of them being senior internationals for Argentina. So close to a fifth of all his professional games were at international level. That got me looking up and a fifth isn't too absurd a proportion when scaled up to the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. But it got me thinking - who has gained the most international caps as a percentage of their career matches? Anyone with a third? Half?

The men's continental football tournaments of Europe, South America, and Oceania all take place in the Summer Olympics year. Africa is moving to that schedule from 2028, Asia has paused their tournament bidding process to reassess their schedule, so only North America is left.

With the Club World Cup taking place the year before the World Cup, this leaves the summer after the World Cup as the only space in the men's calendar. While it could be used to dedicate attention to the Women's World Cup, I don't believe that's the case.

I think the best ranked X number of teams on a certain date, who didn't qualify for the World Cup, will be automatically put into the 'World Shield'. This will be a back up tournament for big teams that missed out like Italy, Denmark, and the remaining South American teams. The number of teams will fluctuate depending on what is needed to get teams like China and India involved. The winner will earn a place in the inter-continental play-offs for the next World Cup, should they fail to qualify on their own terms.

World Cup format: is this it forever?

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For me, I love having a wide variety of different teams qualify but still, the 32 team tournament is the peak World Cup format. There is too much bloat in this current format personally.

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But it got me thinking, is this the best it can possible be now? Assuming FIFA never shrink it, is there no way of possibly improving it? Every other format change i can think of only runs into even worse problems than it currently has.

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For example, imagine an expansion to 60 teams, with 20 groups of 3, with the group winners and 12 best runners-up going to a last 32. Even though there are more teams, they would play 12 fewer matches in total than the current format. But the fact that the knockout draw would be completely unknown until the end of the groups, with some group winners having to play each other, would be a logistical nightmare.

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Do you have any other ideas? Or do you think any further changes would be only downhill?