The head of European football, Aleksander Ceferin, has come out against the idea of expanding the World Cup to include 64 nations for the 2030 tournament.
This comes even as FIFA, world football’s governing body, is already set to increase the number of teams from 32 to 48 for the 2026 World Cup, which will be hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
The suggestion to go even further, to 64 teams, came from Ignacio Alonso, who leads the Uruguayan football federation, at a recent FIFA Council meeting in March.
FIFA said they felt they “had a duty to analyse” the proposal.
But Ceferin, speaking at UEFA’s congress in Belgrade, made his feelings clear. “It’s maybe even more surprising for me than for you. I think it’s a bad idea,” he said.
“I think it’s not a good idea for the World Cup itself and it’s not a good idea for our qualifiers as well, as you know. So, I’m not supporting that idea. I don’t know where it came from. It’s strange that we didn’t know anything before this proposal at the FIFA Council.”
The 2030 World Cup will be a bit unusual, taking place across three continents. Portugal, Spain, and Morocco will be the main hosts, but three matches will also be played in South America – in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay – to mark the 100th anniversary of the first World Cup, which was held in Uruguay in 1930.
That decision then paved the way for Saudi Arabia to be the sole hosts of the 2034 World Cup.
