washington: A push to expand the men's 2030 World Cup to 64 teams is “a bad idea,” UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said on Thursday.
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 said.
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.