FIFA said that is will “review a proposal to expand the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams to mark the centenary of the sport’s marquee event,” according to REUTERS. The 2026 World Cup has already been expanded from 32 to 48 teams. A FIFA spokesperson said the idea was “spontaneously raised by a FIFA Council member,” and it “was acknowledged as FIFA has a duty to analyse any proposal from one of its Council members” (REUTERS, 3/6). In N.Y., Tariq Panja cited sources as saying that a delegate from Uruguay “made the proposal” as the meeting was “drawing to a close and had reached the section of the agenda earmarked for ‘miscellaneous’ issues.” Sources said that the reaction from others was “stunned silence, and the proposals will almost certainly be met with a huge outcry.” However, they said that FIFA “was likely to be guided by financial and political benefits as much as sporting ones when it came to taking a decision on the matter” (N.Y. TIMES, 3/6).
EARLY REVIEW: In London, Oliver Brown writes that FIFA “intends to up the ante” for next summer’s World Cup final by “designing what sounds like a shamelessly derivative take on the Super Bowl half-time show.” FIFA President Gianni Infantino has yet to “address the glaring unanswered question of how this gaudy shebang can possibly be shoehorned into 15 minutes.” Even the musical element of the average Super Bowl production “lasts this long with a single headliner.” Adding all the “rigmarole of setting up and dismantling stages and lighting rigs,” the average interval time is “more like half an hour.” Soccer’s 15-minute halftime duration is codified by the International Football Association Board’s laws of the game, with an “emphasis that it must not be exceeded.” But even this universally observed window -- the “optimum period for players to rest their muscles, for coaches to impart their wisdom, and for the flow of the match not to be disrupted -- can apparently be tweaked when FIFA has the scent of stardust.” Brown wrote it is “unfortunate that Coldplay wish to be involved in this latest monument to FIFA’s folie de grandeur.” Brown: “This threatens to be less the ‘incredible’ theatre of Infantino’s dreams than a star-spangled monstrosity” (London TELEGRAPH, 3/6).
