FIFA Men's World Cup

FIFA president wants 48-team World Cup with 16 teams eliminated after one game

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:36 p.m. ET

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FIFA president Gianni Infantino campaigned for his job on the idea of expanding the World Cup to 40 teams, but now he wants to expand it even further.

Infantino proposed expanding the World Cup to 48 teams on Monday, according to reports. In his plan, 16 teams would go home after just one knockout match and then the tournament would continue with a 32-team group stage, which is how it works currently.

Under his plan, there would be a play-in round of sorts, where 32 teams would have to duke it out in single-elimination match-ups at the World Cup to be granted entry into the group stage. Another 16 teams would be seeded into the group stage and bypass that play-in round.

The decision on expanding the World Cup field will ultimately be up to FIFA Council, who will look at the proposal in January.

"These are ideas to find the best solution, we will debate them this month and we will decide everything by 2017," Infantino reportedly said. "They are ideas which we put forward to see which one is the best."

The idea would certainly give more teams a chance to go to a World Cup, but it remains to be seen how much support there will be for having 16 teams exit the tournament after just a single game. Another option, if FIFA wanted to consider it, could simply be to have a larger group stage with 12 groups of four teams, rather than the current eight groups of four teams. Or alternatively, each of the current eight groups could be expanded to six teams.

The World Cup used to have 24 teams before it was expanded to 32 teams in 1998. That has been the format ever since.

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