The draw for next year's World Cup is now completed. There are a lot of discussion on which team has the easiest path to the final, both in terms of opposition and travel; which teams have the misfortune of being drawn into "Groups of Death"; which group stage match-up is the most intriging (Spain-Netherlands, US-Germany). While there are some grublings on how the berths are distributed among continents, there are very few, if any, teams among the 32 finalists that are vastly inferior to the rest of the field. In last year's European Championship, which featured 16 teams, matches were contested by teams of high quality.
The competition format for tournaments featuring 32 and 16 teams (and any power of 2) are easy to design — teams are drawn into groups of four, where teams drawn to a specific group play each other once (a round robin tournament); the top two teams from each group (ie half the field) then advance to a single elimination knockout tournament, where half the remaining teams are eliminated in each round. However, a FIFA executive has recently suggested that the World Cup final should be expanded to 40 teams and the upcoming European Championship will exapnd to 24 teams.
The reason behind the decision is simple: more teams mean more matches and more fans, which leads to more sponsorship, bigger TV contracts, and, of course, more money for the organizers. On a sporting perspective, expanding the field means deserving teams are less likely to be left out. On the surface, it's win-win. However, after some considering, one has to wonder if expanding the field is a good idea.
While increasing the number of teams means strong teams are less likely to miss the tournament, it also means weaker teams are more likely to qualify. This would likely lead to more lopsided matches, which attracts fewer spectators and a smaller TV/web viewership, in the final tournament. (Who would want to see rows of empty seats on TV?) In addition, qualifying for the World Cup should be an achievement. One should not expand the field simply because it is possible for "strong, popular, or glamurous " teams to miss out. If orgainzers wishes to include the big teams, a better idea would be "go all the way and stage a tournament which features every team, stages hundreds of matches, and lasts multiple years. Wait! Isn't that exactly the same as a qualification tournament?" (The quote was from an on-line article I read a few years ago.)
Expanding the field also means a change in the competition format. If the World Cup is expanded to 40 teams, one would expect the knockout stage to feature 16 teams (if 32 advances, one has to ask "why bother with staging a group stage"). So the tournament should feature 8 groups of 5 or 10 groups of 4. The former is preferrable (to me at least) as the top two from each group would advance to the knockout stage. If the latter format is adopted, one would have to resort to rank the second-placed teams to determine which 6 should advance (and join the 10 group winners), a system which no football fan I know likes. Another problem is that the tournament would have to last longer, meaning less time for teams to prepare and players to recover from the wear and tear they sustained from the previous season, meaning matches of lower quality.
In order to accomodate more matches, more stadiums would have to be built. (Otherwise the playing surface would become difficult to play on and increases the chance of someone sustaining an injury.) While there should be little trouble of filling the stadium during the tournament, it may be difficult to sell out the stadium unless it is taken over by a popular club team. (There are too many white elephants from past World Cups to count.)
After stating why expanding the World Cup is a bad idea, I now present a proposal to keep the World Cup field as it is and make the "big" teams which are left out — an invitational knockout competition, featuring 8 teams which failed to qualify for the World Cup, should be held, in another country shortly before the actual World Cup commences. That way fans get to watch "powerful" teams compete without drawing eyeballs away from the World Cup.