FIFA president Gianni Infantino said he would reconsider the format of the 2026 World Cup in North and Central America. Initially, FIFA announced that the 48 teams to be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico would be divided into 16 groups of 3 teams, with the first and second place in each group advancing to the round of 32.

However, after the FIFA board meeting on the 17th (Korean time), Chairman Infantino held a press conference to reveal his thoughts ahead of the closing of the tournament, saying, “We need to reconsider the plan of forming 16 groups consisting of three teams. Maybe a group of 12 with four teams would be better. It needs to be reexamined or discussed again,” he said.

He confided that the huge success of the group stage of the World Cup in Qatar changed his mind. Previously, after finishing the group stage, he was very satisfied, saying that he had advanced to the round of 16 in all continents. In fact, the change was reviewed because there was a consensus that it was difficult to guarantee the participation of all continents with the existing method of selecting 32 teams for the round of 16. that it did

However, on this day, he explained, “The composition of the four teams here brought absolutely unbelievable results,” and “I didn’t know which team would advance to the tournament until the last match.” He added that it will be a key agenda for the next meeting.

In addition, even with the 3rd and 4th place matches and finals left, 3.27 million spectators visited the stadium, expressing satisfaction with the box office performance, saying that the total number of spectators in Russia 4 years ago was close to 3.3 million.

President Infantino said the tournament will be held in Morocco from February 1 to 11 next year in the current Club World Cup format. 메이저사이트 FIFA initially announced last year that it would hold an expanded competition with 24 teams from this competition, but this plan was withdrawn due to the corona pandemic.

Instead, President Infantino said he would play the FIFA Club World Cup, expanded to 32 teams. “We discussed some strategic principles,” he said at a press conference. For men’s football, an agreement has been reached to host a new Men’s Clubs World Cup, which will take effect from 2025. 32 teams will participate and make it like this World Cup.”

In addition, FIFA announced that it plans to organize friendly tournaments between different federations in even-numbered years, 2024 and 2026, using the March A-match period. He also announced that he would play 4 games instead of 2 during the A-match break from the end of September to the beginning of October. “We saw the importance of teams from different continents playing against each other more regularly,” Infantino said. Also, in even-numbered years, we would like to organize a friendly tournament between four teams from different federations, taking advantage of the A-match period in March.”

However, it seems that player protection is excluded from these discussions. Even so, there are criticisms that games like the 3rd and 4th place games are meaningless and only focus on making money for FIFA. FIFA is obsessed with increasing the number of matches to increase broadcasting rights, and it seems to take it easy because it is too accustomed to compensating players financially when they complain. It is also a problem that President Infantino, who has been in office for a third consecutive term, is announcing a plan to drastically increase FIFA finances as a kind of election campaign to get votes.