Too many teams waters down the competition. It was fine as it was. If anything it already had too many countries.
You are missing the fact it is in 3 countries and still in effect are qualifiers, just not in their own countries. We (Barnsley) have the season interrupted by bloody qualifiers even at our level. And I'm not in the least interested until the final stages. I hope Qualifying during our regular season does not affect us as much. And as I'd only give England a bit of a look at the latter stages of the finals . I'd also take an interest in all the home countries and Ireland if present.
I thought 32 was perfect but I’d rather have 64 teams than 48. 16 groups of 3 just sounds terrible. I like the idea of two teams through & two teams out of each group & then knockout games all the way which you can still do with 64 teams. I think it’s better for South America & Europe who can comfortably provide more quality beyond their current allocated slots but there’s going to be some dross from North America, Asia & Africa getting there. I remember how terrible Panama were in 2018 & they managed to get into a 32 team tournament so I can only imagine how bad some of the sides will be in a 48 or 64 team tournament. It also limits what countries can host these tournaments. Us, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, USA, Brazil, Russia (if allowed), Saudi Arabia & Qatar are probably the only countries that have the facilities to host a 64 team tournament & the latter two only can because they can afford to build it all from scratch.
Will we see an African team win the (mens) World cup, anytime soon ?. Obviously Cameroon made a big impact in '90, and Morocco did as well at the recent Qatar tournament. And Nigeria are a team who always get there, but you just end up thinking they should be doing better!. To be honest, I think for a long time to come, its still going to be dominated by Europe and South America.
No, they’re very poor in general. Morocco did well but I think they rode their luck getting to penalties against Spain. I remember the Drogba & Toure Ivory Coast team getting a lot of hype & then they finished bottom of their group.
Ultimately lead to more injuries, more games played, and eventually some ***** trickling down which will have a negative effect on clubs like ours, as per usual mate.
Presuming the format remains the same as now, and there's a 4 team group stage to kick it off, every team is playing 3 games, with the 'bigger nations' probably playing at least 5 and up to 8. I'm proposing the same argument as I did about the club world cup yesterday. The argument once again from the 'elite' clubs is that there's too much football. So how long until the league cup and/or FA cup are scrapped?
Teams play more games = more revenue let’s not pretend it’s being done for any other reason im actually ok with it… who cares if it used to be 8,16 or 32 countries… let em all play in some random 200 country draw, bin off qualifying and crack on for 2 months in summer!
I'd happily see the League Cup scrapped it it meant the FA Cup returned to its proper format. The one that was tried and tested for over 100 years, and worked brilliantly.
Football League Trophy should be first one scrapped...yes we had a good day out at Wembley but it’s a very poor comp.
It won't though, that's the thing. The excuse that there's too much football keeps getting rolled out, and it's the competitions which still mean something to the none elite level clubs which get bumped. I honestly think we're more likely to have the FA Cup turned into a competition for u21s than we are having replays reinstated.
So basically they’re just ruining it it takes all the jeopardy out of the group games and will make them almost meaningless less is more, morons!
They can have 128 countries in if they like... I'll still not watch it. I think the last one I watched to any degree was Japan/Korea. I think it was the vuvuzela's that did me and FIFA have just got more ridiculous and corrupt ever since.
Not sure how FLT contributes to top players playing too many games? Also does give some interest to lower league teams supporters a bit of hope.
Yes my answer was a bit off track, but I do think the trophy is a waste of space......just take a look at the attendances until Wembley beckons.
Yeah that's kind of what I was suggesting, I don't think any of their (Africa's) nations, are going to win it. Not for a long long time!. As for the scrapping of club Cups/Trophies to ease the seasons fixtures. I wish they could merge the Lg Cup with the Lg Trophy somehow. And as somebody else said, maybe try to put the Fa cup back to its proper format with one replay.