A good third – Uefa receives twelve starting places at the Club World Cup – Sport

Zurich – The European Football Union will receive twelve places for the Club World Cup, which will be expanded to 32 teams from 2025. That was decided by the council of the world association Fifa on Tuesday. Six starters come from South America, four each from Asia, Africa and North/Central America/Caribbean. A place falls to Oceania, the host is seated. There had recently been a lot of criticism of the new format.

Fifa has not yet made a decision on the mode of the preliminary round at the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada. Details would “follow in due course,” FIFA announced after the Council meeting. The world association only confirmed that all three hosts have a starting place. The three starting places will be deducted from the contingent for starters from North and Central America and the Caribbean. This means that three of the six fixed starting places of the continental confederation Concacaf have already been taken. (At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, German group opponents Costa Rica were the only participants from North and Central America, along with Canada, Mexico and the USA.) The remaining tickets for 2026 will be played in the qualification, and two teams still have chances through the playoffs . The 2026 tournament will be held for the first time with 48 teams. Fifa had initially favored 16 groups of three in the preliminary round, most recently they brought twelve groups of four into the conversation. The number of games is increasing one way or another: in groups of three, 80 instead of the previous 64 games would be played, and in groups of four even 104.