BELGRADE— A push to expand the men’s 2030 World Cup to 64 teams is “a bad idea,” UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said.
Ceferin is a FIFA vice president who was part of a March 6 online meeting of the world soccer body’s ruling council when the unexpected proposal was made by a delegate from Uruguay.
“This proposal was maybe even more surprising for me than you,” Ceferin said at a news conference after UEFA’s annual meeting in Belgrade, Serbia. “I think it is a bad idea.”
Adding 16 more teams to the 48-team lineup that will debut next year in North America appears to have support from FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who typically backs competition expansion as a way to raise money and drive development of the game globally.
Critics of the 64-team proposal have argued it will weaken the quality of play – in what would likely be a sprawling 128-game format – and devalue the qualifying program in most continents with extra entries on offer.
“It is not a good idea for the World Cup itself and it´s not a good idea for our qualifiers as well,” Ceferin added according to AP.
UEFA has 16 entries in the 2026 World Cup which the United States will co-host with Canada and Mexico.
It reset the European qualifying format with more groups, now 12, and many teams playing fewer games spread over just 10 weeks from September through November this year.
Ceferin also cast doubt on the origin of the idea from Uruguay, which is set to host one game in 2030 in what is already the most complex World Cup across three continents to celebrate the tournament’s centenary.
UEFA members Spain and Portugal are co-hosting with Morocco, but agreed to let South American neighbors Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay have one game each to mark the 100-year anniversary. The 1930 edition was hosted by Uruguay.
“It is strange that we did not know anything before this proposal at the FIFA council,” Ceferin said. “I don´t know where it came from.”
Infantino made a keynote speech to UEFA’s 55 member federations though made no reference to a 64-team World Cup.
FIFA has given no details of how and when it will consider the proposal. FIFA has its annual congress of 211 member federations on May 15 in Paraguay capital Asuncion.
