Don't want more teams in FIFA World Cup? Actually, it's great for fans

Football fans would never have gotten to see a sublime array of talent if FIFA hadn't expanded the number of qualifying slots for the Asian and African regions

Thirty-two to 48. The unusually disappointing quality of the first round matches -- with some sparkling exceptions -- in the 21st edition of the FIFA World Cup has raised misgivings among fans and analysts about the prospects for the expanded tournament to be hosted by the three NAFTA countries eight years from now. Will the World Cup remain the premier football competition we know it to be once more teams of dubious abilities are allowed in? 
 

Naturally, dark accusations are being bandied about of Underhand Dealings between officials of the world football governing body and various member confederations for increasing the number of teams to participate in the World Cup Finals of 2026 to 48 -- the biggest expansion since its inauguration. Questions Are Being Asked about how Saudi Arabia --  which did not appear to have mentally turned up for the inaugural match against an industrious host nation leveraging home advantage -- made the cut or how on earth Iran and Serbia are in Russia when Italy and Holland sit this one out.

A reality check here. These were the same rumblings we heard when the tournament was expanded form 24 teams to 32 in 1998. No doubt, the same griping accompanied the expansion of the tournament from 16 to 24 in 1982. In general, FIFA deserves all the opprobrium it gets for its serial shenanigans -- the award of the current and next editions of the World Cup being Exhibit A -- but the expansion of the tournament isn't one of them. Here's why. For all its venalities, FIFA's high officials, from Sepp Blatter and Michael Platini, both of whom made ignominious (and deserved) exits in 2015 for serious ethics violations, understand the two basic facts about the Beautiful Game: that the essential kickers, forgive the pun, are money and talent.

The point is this. Much is made of that ephemeral quality called National Pride that warmly envelopes the winner of the Jules Rimet trophy, but the hard fact is that the World Cup Final is really a grand bazaar for the European, South American and, increasingly, the emerging US club leagues. TV cameras may focus on fans in the stands, but many of the players from lesser teams are hoping to catch the attention of the talent scouts from major club teams and the growing legions of shadowy oligarchic team owners with deep pockets and no thought of profits. As more teams and players get to showcase their talent on a global stage, the game becomes the richer for it in more ways than one.  

Until the late eighties, world footballing talent was divided among the established powers of South America and Europe. From the time the 38-year-old Cameroonian star Roger Milla burst on the stage with his goals and trademark celebratory twerk, bootstrapping his team to the quarter-finals of Italia '90, you sensed an exciting change was a-coming. The early rounds of each subsequent World Cup inevitably yielded hot new talent. Today, African and Asian stars have a significant presence in European club football. From Ivory Coast's Didier Drogba and Yahya Toure to Egypt's Mo Salah, Senegal's Sadio Mane, Japan's Shinji Kagawa and Leicester City's Shinji Okazaki and China's Sun Jihai, to name just a few, fans would never have gotten to see a sublime array of talent if FIFA hadn't expanded the number of qualifying slots for the Asian and African regions. Europe needn't worry, it still gets 13 slots to Asia's 4.5 and Africa's 5 -- the fact that leading European national teams are now happy to include players of these nationalities is testimony to Europe's gains from immigrants (a message to their political leaders, perhaps?). 

Which brings us to Russia 2018, and the valid questions about the qualification process for 2026. Currently, it involves, for the most part, matches played within each of the six major regional confederations with the host nation getting automatic qualification (the ticklish question of US, Mexico, and Canada getting a free pass for 2026 is under discussion). The obvious asymmetric standards between teams in each confederation -- Asia in particular -- can mean that you end up with mediocre teams qualifying and top ones being discarded. No one's yet worked out a way to solve this problem, but one solution could be to add another layer of matches so that teams from each group compete with others across federations in a winnowing process. Of course, the crowded footballing calendar would make this difficult -- and attract the ire of club managements for taking players away for international duty. But either way, FIFA, ever in search of broadcasting revenue as sponsorship earnings decline, needs to urgently think of some way to ensure that the first rounds of World Cup matches do not degenerate into an exercise in mediocrity.