Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
The teams are there. I agree that 32 out of 55 doesn’t make a ton of sense but it’s still half of the field gets eliminated in qualifying.
Iceland, Northern Ireland, Serbia, Georgia were the teams that lost the play in games.
And Ireland, Norway, Greece, Northern Ireland are in the top 50 of fifa world rankings.
I’m not sure adding & teams like that takes away from the overall quality of the tournament, and you’d probably get a better final 16.
That or remove 4 teams and go with 4 groups of 5, and top 2 from each group make it. That would probably make for a really fun group stage with some great matches.
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The first time the World Cup went to 24 teams in Spain 1982, they had 6 groups of 4 and the top two advance to 4 groups of 3 and then the winner of those 4 groups went on to the semifinals.
People found that three team groups sucked and that they weren't balanced. Two groups would have two first placed teams, and the other two groups would have two second placed teams.
Ironically the two crappy groups became the powerhouse groups. Brazil, Italy and Argentina. England, West Germany and Spain.
This is the only time in history this format was used.