Welcome to issue #022 of Contemporary Football, your inside look at how the game really works behind the scenes.
Monday to Friday, you’ll uncover a new perspective on football business, and sometimes a deeper story that sharpens your thinking and gives you an edge in the beautiful game.
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Hey everyone,
Let’s talk about something important for people like us in love with football.
The World Cup.
The next editions will have 48 teams instead of 32.
Some people love the idea:
“More nations, more stories, more inclusion.”
Others hate it:
“It kills the meaning of qualification and adds too many weak games.”
So last week I asked you:
What do you think about a 48-team World Cup?
655 of you voted.
Here’s what you said:
18% → Good for football’s global growth
27% → Quality drops
38% → Financial move, not sporting
16% → Too early to judge
Let’s sit on this together for a moment and try to reason it through.
Most of you don’t see this as a pure “football decision”
The biggest share of votes went to:
“Financial move, not sporting” → 38%
So before anything else, this tells us something clear:
You don’t think this was done for the game.
You think it was done for the money.
More matches.
More tickets.
More TV hours.
More sponsors.
Is that automatically bad?
Not necessarily.
Football needs money to grow.
But your instinct is:
“Be honest. Don’t tell me it’s about inclusion if the driver is revenue.”
And I think that’s a very healthy reflex.
One in four of you worries about quality
27% chose:
“Quality drops.”
This is the classic argument:
more weak teams
bigger scorelines
group stages that feel slow
less sense of “only the best are here”
The World Cup used to feel like a closed circle.
Getting there was already a badge of honour.
With 48 teams, the fear is that qualification becomes less special.
More like a big conference event than a rare peak.
I understand this.
Only 18% are fully positive but they’re not wrong either
18% said:
“Good for football’s global growth.”
And they have a point.
More teams means:
more countries exposed to the top level
more players on the biggest stage
more reasons to invest in infrastructure, coaching, academies
Think about nations where a World Cup qualification changes everything.
Stadium upgrades.
Government support.
Grassroots funding.
Media attention.
From that perspective, a 48-team World Cup can be a development tool.
Not just a product.
The problem is not the argument.
It’s whether the system is designed to actually help these countries,
or just use them for more content.
16% are waiting before judging
16% went with:
“Too early to judge.”
I respect this a lot.
Because the truth is:
we haven’t seen a 48-team World Cup yet.
We don’t know:
what the new format will feel like
whether the group stages will drag
whether we get more Cinderellas or more boring games
how fans will respond emotionally
Sometimes football surprises us.
We hated some ideas on paper, then enjoyed them on the pitch.
Other times, it’s the opposite.
So holding judgment is not a weak position.
It’s a smart one.
My take
I think two things can be true at the same time:
Yes, this is mainly a financial move.
The structure, the timing, the messaging… it all points there.
Football’s biggest competitions are now global entertainment assets.Yes, it can still create positive side effects.
More nations involved.
More investment in “non-traditional” countries.
More chances for new stories to emerge.
The real question, for me, is this:
Will a 48-team World Cup protect what makes the tournament special? Or will it turn it into just another long, content-heavy competition?
If we lose the sense of privilege,
the feeling that “this is the pinnacle”…
Then we’ve traded magic for volume.
And that is never a good deal.
If you were designing the World Cup from scratch today, how many teams would you include, and why?
See you tomorrow,
Federico