Luis Figo wants to let 40 teams participate in the World Cup!

[KC McElroy]

Either 16 or 24 teams is enough for a World Cup. Any more than that and crap teams make their way in.

[Salar]

We should be good enough to Qualify as one of the 4 teams of asia in every world cup.

[Ghermez Agha]

32 is a perfect number, anything more than that would significantly damage the quality of the tournament. Hope it doesn't happen.

[Bi-honar]

Ya except, how long of a WC did you want? If you have to play 4 times instead of 3 in round 1, do we continue giving the same length breaks or do we cut it shorter risking greater injuries and more fatigue? What about the challenge of final critical matches playing simultaneously? Chances of final games being meaningless increase and teams will not start their strongest lineup to protect against injury and fatigue. What about the difficulty of maintaining pitch quality?

Well, the breaks in between the games would be the same as now, so that takes care of pitch issues, fatigue, etc.

But you're absolutely right, you can't have simultaneous final matches at the group stage with an odd number of teams - did not think about that one and I guess that would be a deal breaker.

I can't see them coming up with a magic formula for groups of 4 and groups of 8 teams would just take too long, so I guess this isn't workable at all. I guess math wasn't Figo's strongest suit!

[PSGman#19]

32 is a perfect number, anything more than that would significantly damage the quality of the tournament. Hope it doesn't happen.

Exactly! the current formula is perfect. They should use their time and energy to improve others things rather than try to buy vote of small federations.

[Karimi 8]

I don't like this idea I think it would lower the quality of the competition and the joy and thrill if qualification and advancement at the WC in my opinion

[AminGP]

If they go to 40 teams with the existing format for the round of 16 (i.e. top two teams of 8 groups of 5 will qualify), it's actually not a bad idea. Otherwise, if they're going to make it 10 groups of 4 teams and do some weird stuff to come off with the playoff spots, it's pretty retarded.

It would of course make the cup last longer as well, which is not bad thing.

They want to increase it to 40 teams and increase the group teams to 5. The world cup will be longer probably for another 3-4 days which is not going to cause a lot of trouble. It's better for fans and better for Fifa and hosting nations. they make more money and people would have to spend more money staying there.

[persepolisfan]

I highly doubt this will ever happen. 32 teams is just fine

[EKBATAN]

why fix something thats not broke ?? world cup is already a huge success with billions of people watching it regardless of who makes it or not. i dont see the point in changing that, FIFA needs to focus more on other issues they're facing with the sport. cheating, diving, replays, bad calls, racism, access to the games by the average people