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FOr all the absurd political theater around. world cup 2026 Draw, there was still a feeling of “magic” – As Scotland manager Steve Clarke said – As countries started imagining the tournament. They could see groups, so they could see the way, so they could dream.
This used to be the case with the Champions League, but no one would really say that there is any sense of magic in the competition during this early stage. This is quite the opposite. It’s all very mundane. Filler.
Tottenham Hotspur moved up a few places after beating Slavia Prague on Tuesday night, but does it really matter? The stakes are very vague.
The Champions League group stage has become classic football in content rather than pure competitive play, as has been previously discussed on these pages.
One concern with the 2026 World Cup is that the expansion to 48 teams starts to take it that way. And this is not one of those unfair jibes about Uzbekistan against DR Congo in a potential play-off qualifier.
It’s that Portugal versus Colombia, in the same group, doesn’t have the same sense of danger.
It is simply a basic fact that there will be naturally less tension in the group games due to the need to allow eight third-place teams. There is a huge safety net there.
Since 48 teams is not a symmetric number as far as dividing the field to ultimately reach a two-team final, fifa The latter has had to come up with some sort of resolution to be engineered.
And including third-place teams from four-team groups never works. It’s not as clean and, as a result, not as stressful.
Many people reading this will no doubt be screaming that this was exactly the format in 1986, 1990 and 1994, one of everyone’s favorite World Cups.
And all this is true, but there is a difference.
For one, those World Cups had a smaller 24-team field, which brought more competitive tension. The unfair and unequal imbalance towards more developed European and South American teams also ensured a high baseline of quality.
Second, two of the four qualifiers work much better. There is no logic about this. We have direct evidence. In 2022, the most famous thing is that Argentina lost their first match and were immediately under immense pressure to win the next two, which they did. Same was the case with Spain in 2010.
In 1990 and 1994 respectively, Argentina and Italy both lost their opening games but still finished third with one win and one draw.
It is immediately visible that there are not equal stakes.
A characteristic irony is that Gianni Infantino and FIFA recognized this Some? Its in the last World Cup. The FIFA president announced that the 2026 World Cup will not take place with the original idea of three-team groups, as 2022 had shown how electric four-team groups are. Every single one of them went down to the wire, most of them requiring teams to see what was happening in the other games. It was as pure sports tension as you can imagine.
It is really quite sad that the person in the highest office in football, the FIFA President, should need the most recent tournament to find out. Isn’t this something that any football fan simply realizes?
And, as is usually the case, FIFA came up with the wrong solution.
Allowing third-place teams, especially when an expansion weakens quality, also weakens the play that impressed Infantino in 2022.
But ironically, there is a better solution, partly inspired by the Champions League.
To keep the extreme tension of the two teams from four to 48 to 24, why not allow the eight best group winners to go straight to the last 16 with a play-off in between?
Such an idea would immediately reduce many of the problems from the “bloat” of this World Cup.
Even the issue of the first-placed teams fielding weaker sides for the final group games will be resolved when the opposition still have qualification on the line, as they will have the incentive of finishing in the top eight among the 12 group winners.
And while there is an argument that the mezzanine play-off round could lead to too long waits between games for the best teams, it is no longer as relevant in this calendar. Conversely, a longer break in the middle of the tournament would probably be even more of an incentive, as fatigue takes over.
Anyway, the Group A winners will have to wait six days between the final group match and the Last 32, while the Group L winners will have to wait only five days.
Increasing it to seven or eight is hardly a negative enough amid the many positives. The actual World Cup calendar can be determined a little more sensibly.
And if anyone disputes the fact that the eventual champions will only play seven games instead of the maximum of eight… well, does it really matter? It simply rewards the best performance in the first stage, and yet makes more mathematical sense for a sports tournament than the current round of third-place qualifiers.
Above anything else, a little more of the old magic will be preserved. Group stage matches – and by extension the entire World Cup – will have even more meaning.