FANTASY FOOTBALL

A bloated 2026 World Cup has been created to produce more content. But just like Disney, this means prioritising quantity over quality while the product suffers, writes Miguel Delaney

- Miguel Delaney

As Thomas Tuchel finally enjoys space to drill England at their post-season camp in Girona, internal discussion has naturally turned to how the squad could do with a similar base for next summer's World Cup. But it isn't that easy to decide...

The FA naturally want the best possible facilities, but that would probably require booking before December's draw. The problem could then be that their base ends up well away from one of the three geographical zones in which they are placed - west, central or eastern.

If they pick California, for example, they could then find themselves with fixtures in New Jersey, Boston and Toronto. As such, the current thinking is for a central location like Kansas.

But it is still causing a few logistical headaches.

The physical fatigue may still be to come, along with a number of other issues. While the absurd geographical size of "United 2026" has received some focus, and there has obviously been a lot of discussion about how Fifa president Gianni Infantino might be facilitating "the Maga World Cup", there has been less attention on the actual format.

The tournament expanded to 48 teams in 2017, before a 2023 decision to split those into 12 groups of four. The size of this World Cup is utterly unwieldy. Even spelling it out is an arduous task.

The entire tournament runs for almost six weeks, with the first 17 days devoted to those 12 groups. At the end of that, after which 72 of the 104 games will have been played, we will simply return to what the current World Cup is: 32 teams. The one bonus is that you then get an almost FA Cup-style tournament, with five knockout rounds.