When the curtain falls on the World Cup in Qatar on Sunday evening, preparations will begin immediately for the next planetary tournament, which will be played in the USA, Mexico and Canada in 2026. Or at least those preparations should start…The kind of confusion currently reigning in FIFA has never been seen before. Four years before the World Cup, and two before the start of the qualifications, neither the system of the 2026 tournament nor the qualification for the same is known yet! And the world football association should be a serious organization, or at least they present it as such.Confusion is caused by the fact that the next World Cup will have a revolutionary format, as 48 national teams should play in it. It is a dramatic change compared to the current format in which the 32 best teams in the world participate.##NAJAVA_MECA_6890958##FIFA has not yet decided what such a huge competition will look like, and the number of games in the tournament, as well as how many days it will last, directly depends on that. For now, it is stated in principle that 35 days will be played instead of 29, which is the duration of the competition in Qatar, and that the number of games will rise from 64 to as many as 104!The initial idea was to play 16 groups with three teams each, only to realize a few days ago that this opens up space for all sorts of machinations. And, there have been some throughout the history of the World Cup… For instance – in the last round of the group stage, one national team would be ‘sitting out’, which, with a combination of circumstances, could lead to the other two playing a mutual match in a way that suits both of them. And they send the third one home.It’s coming home – reallyNow the prevailing idea is to divide the 48 teams into 12 groups of four, so the two best from each group plus the eight best third-placed teams would go to the knockout stage. But that also brings a very cumbersome elimination phase of the competition. At the same time, however, it seems like the most rational solution.Option three is to completely divide the World Cup into two groups, two parts of the skeleton. To play two separate tournaments, so that the winners of those two tournaments play in the final. How it would look in detail, there is no data for now.The qualification system for the next World Cup is not known at the moment. UEFA has announced that it will announce its format on January 25 next year. Nothing will change in South America, everyone will still play in one group, only the number of travelers to the World Cup will increase. The other confederations are yet to declare themselves.##NAJAVA_MECA_6890959##What is known is the locations of matches and the number of teams coming from continental federations. Mexico, USA and Canada go directly to the World Cup as hosts. In the future, Asia will provide eight national teams for the World Cup, nine will come from Africa, six from the CONCACAF zone (North, Central America and the Caribbean, with all three hosts from this zone), six will also be from South America, one from Oceania, while Europe will provide the largest number of teams – 16. For the remaining two vacant places, intercontinental playoffs will be played, as before.The matches of the next World Cup will be played mostly in the USA. As many as 11 cities will be from this country: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Kansas City, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston and New York. In Mexico it will be played in three cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, while in Canada Toronto and Vancouver welcome fans from around the planet.World Cup 2026 Host Cities 🇺🇸📍 pic.twitter.com/Ita7FLPBBZ— Barstool Football (@StoolFootball) December 12, 2022
