In his 2022 World Cup Quarterfinal Open Thread, the esteemed Mr. King Hippo, Esq. came up with a pretty good idea for how to handle the addition of 16 teams for the next World Cup to be hosted in Canadia, México, and the United States in 2026. When you have a field of 48 teams (was that a subtle dig at North America to point out that we are fat and bloated?), it’s going to be a different organization.

Hippo invited us to come up with another system and I took him up on the challenge, posting a comment showing how 8 groups of 6 teams would work. I did that just off the top of my head, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Hence, I put some more time and effort into figuring out exactly how it would work. This post is the result of that effort.

Hippo will be coming along shortly to peer review, provide constructive criticism, and judge me WASPily for my over-indulgence/promotion of the anal arts.

First, let’s set up the groups:

That’s 48 teams. FIFA has not determined the qualification process yet, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. My assumption is that the 8 teams labeled “1” will be the seeded teams, as is tradition.

If you have 8 groups of 6 teams each, that means that each team in the Group Stage will play 5 times. This is great news for México because they will finally get to play that fifth World Cup game they’ve been so desperate to play!

It does, however, mean that the Group Stage could take forever. Currently, there is a maximum of 4 games played per day. In order to keep the length of the tournament to a reasonable timeframe, we will need to increase this to a maximum of 5 games per day. That will not only be more fun for everyone, but it will allow us to stay on a relatively good schedule. The table below shows how the Group Stage games would play out:

In what may have been a coincidence, luck, or just beautiful design, the Group Stage ends for all teams on the 24th day of competition. You will note that I put in the days of the week in the table in a weird order. There is a reason for that and I’ll discuss that a little bit later.

Considering we have 24 uninterrupted days of nonstop fútbol, I think that’s a winner! I mean, ain’t no one working for those 24 days!

In order to accommodate the 5 games a day, we will need to schedule the game start times as follows:

• 9 AM Pacific (Game held in the East Coast with a start time of noon Eastern)
• Noon Pacific
• 3 PM Pacific
• 6 PM Pacific
• 9 PM Pacific (Game held in the West Coast)

It’s now a good time to look at the cities that will be hosting games:

You have an abundance of stadiums in the East Coast, so the restriction of having those early games only in the East Coast can be accommodated. On the other side of the country, however, there are only 4 stadiums on Pacific time. They will need to split up the 24 night games, so each city should get 6 games. That seems cool and fair.

Now, let’s consider the Knockout Bracket. In my proposal, I go NHL-style and allow half the teams to move on to the Knockout Round. The Group winners get an automatic bye into the Round of 16 while the 2nd and 3rd place teams play each other. To make things interesting and even, the Group winners go to the other side of the bracket from their groups. It looks like this:

• K1 = 2A v 3B
• K2 = 3A v 2B
• K3 = 2C v 3D
• K4 = 2D v 3C
• K5 = 2E v 3F
• K6 = 2F v 3E
• K7 = 2G v 3H
• K8 = 2H v 2G
• R1 = K1 v 1H
• R2 = K2 v 1G
• R3 = K3 v 1F
• R4 = K4 v 1E
• R5 = K5 v 1D
• R6 = K6 v 1C
• R7 = K7 v 1B
• R8 = K8 v 1A
• Q1 = R1 v R2
• Q2 = R3 v R4
• Q3 = R5 v R6
• Q4 = R7 v R8
• S1 = Q1 v Q2
• S2 = Q3 v Q4
• F = S1 v S2

Here is how the schedule would run for the remaining games:

If you get drawn into the E, F, G, and H groups and finish 2nd or 3rd, you will get some shorter rest days in the knockout rounds, but all in all, it’s not that bad. As Hippo says, this will really test the teams’ depth.

As you can see now, I put the Days of the Week in the order I did so as to ensure that the World Cup Final is played on a Sunday, as God intended.

What say you, Sir Hippo? Please note that this post was written using Block Editor, the far superior editor in WordPress. Please note that I have included here a “Classic Paragraph” block so you can post away your thoughts:

Hippo’s Thoughts

Seriously, there’s not much for Hippo to critique, Mr. Wrong Hole!  I do suggest 30 man rosters, which is a nod to modern footy anyway (ie, the value of substitutes and player rotation).  Try as I may, I can’t figure out a workable method to enforce more rotation, but this format very properly encourages same.  This is also a highly wonderful header pic, and I would love to apologize to her someday.  The TV folks will love the new arrangement, wall-to-wall coverage (like the NCAAT used to be).

What say the rest of you?