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
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