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How can you be a World Champion if you haven't defeated everyone?

A while back US sprinter, Noah Lyles, mocked the USA's sports trend of calling their national champions "World Champions" & he was right in doing so but the manner he did it rubbed many in US sports the wrong way. How can any team call itself "World Champions" if it has not beaten every team in the world? This led me down a rabbit hole, now I'm questioning how a knockout competition is a real test of ability? You beat the teams that beat other teams only once & not consistently & you sometimes don't beat every team you face. Knockout competitions are often just one leg, surely they could - at least - have two legs. A knockout competition where teams play each other just once almost seems cowardly. If FIFA World Cup qualifiers are like mini leagues, why can't the FIFA World Cup itself be a sort of league? 


Imagine this; it's FIFA World Cup 2022, thirty-two teams divided into four groups. Eight teams each group & each national team plays the other countries in the group twice. So each team plays fourteen games, each group has fifty-six games totalling two hundred & twenty-four games in the group stage. The top team of the four groups play a semifinal stage also with two legs (four games in total) & so does the final. That's a total of two hundred & thirty-one games (including a single-leg third-place game) compared to the sixty-four games that are usually played in a thirty-two team World Cup. It may seem very testing but it's what could be a true test of a real World Champion. FIFA now has expanded the teams to participate instead of changing the World Cup format. Hopefully, this proposal will reach the organisers of AFCON & we could have a real football festival than the harsh & often disappointing three-game group stage. 


In this tournament format, the groups for the 2022 FIFA World Cup would been something like this: 

GROUP A               GROUP B               GROUP C               GROUP D 


Qatar                      Argentina               Spain                      Brazil 

England                  France                    Belgium                  Portugal 

Ecuador                  Saudi Arabia         Costa Rica              Serbia 

Iran                         Australia                 Canada                   Ghana 

Senegal                  Mexico                   Germany                 Switzerland 

USA                        Denmark                Morocco                 Uruguay 

Netherlands           Poland                   Japan                      Cameroon 

Wales                     Tunisia                    Croatia                    South Korea 



Looking at this concept makes me realise how much people undermine any league champion because this looks like, over the fifty-six games that each group will have, any of a variety of things can happen. Which would add to the excitement. And, in this format, the competition could be wide open & favourites would really have to prove their grit & countries like Mexico & South Korea could have a real chance at being World Champions. 


And say if each country plays each other in the group stage only once, it would still be as exciting because the group winners & second placed teams may only start appearing after the fourth game. A total of one hundred & nineteent games being played (including a single-leg third-place game) throughout the tournament with each team playing a minimum seven games each & not the three games & elimination we've become used to. Teams stay a bit longer in the tournament, everyone at home enjoys it a bit more because their home national team participates a bit longer & surely benefits the host country more with tourism. 



For AFCON: 

GROUP A                    GROUP B                    GROUP C 

Ivory Coast                 Senegal                      Tunisia 
Egypt                           Algeria                        Morocco 
Nigeria                        Cameroon                  Mali 
Ghana                         Burkina Faso              DRC 
E. Guinea                    Guinea                        South Africa 
Cape Verde                Mauritania                  Zambia 
Guinea Bissau           Gambia                       Namibia 
Mozambique             Angola                         Tanzania 

• The top team in each group & best second-placed team go through to the quarter finals. 
• Each team plays a minimum of seven games if they play each other once in the group stages. 
• Semifinals & finals both have two legs. 
• A total of ninety-one games will be played including a single-leg third-place game. 



As much as football bosses claim that they want more games being played by having more teams participating in tournaments. I can imagine something like this working better in the FIBA World Cup & Olympic basketball. A team that made it to the final of the FIFA World Cup in 2022 played a total of seven games. Now, it's just four more games. If a country had six stadiums, for example, & games played in those stadiums everyday - the group stage could be done in twenty days & the semifinals up to the final would be ten days making the World Cup the usual thirty days/one month duration it has always been. 

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