Expansion Skeptic Counts the Wins and Finds Only Eight

When I heard the tournament would expand to 48 teams, my first thought was: this is obviously just watering it down.

From 32 to 48 is a jump of 1.5x. The bar for qualifying drops, the group stage turns into a showcase for weak teams, and easy games for the top sides multiply. I suspect a lot of people assumed exactly that.

But before criticizing, I decided to actually count. Yesterday marked the end of the full group stage schedule (all 72 matches), so this is exactly the moment to check. How many wins, in total, did the teams that wouldn’t have qualified under the 2022 standard — the “picked-up” group — actually get? Let’s count it for real.

All figures below are as of the end of the group stage. The knockout rounds (round of 32) have just begun.

First, define the “picked-up” group

Before counting, I need to decide who was actually “picked up.” If this stays vague, the conclusion can’t be verified.

The method is simple. 2026 has 48 slots. Applying the 2022 confederation slot allocations (32 total), the difference comes to exactly 16. For each confederation, I cut off the lower-ranked teams that exceeded the 2022 slot count, based on qualifying standings and FIFA ranking. The remaining 16 are below.

Below, I count the group-stage results for these 16 teams.

Counting it up: 8 wins in total

The 16 teams in the picked-up group recorded 8 wins total in the group stage.

But the meaning changes depending on who they beat. Broken down:

(A) “Giant-killing” wins against teams that should have qualified anyway… 4 wins

• South Africa 1–0 South Korea
• Bosnia 3–1 Qatar
• Ghana 1–0 Panama
• Paraguay 1–0 Turkey

(B) “Internal” wins between two picked-up teams… 4 wins

• Scotland 1–0 Haiti
• Colombia 3–1 Uzbekistan
• Colombia 1–0 DR Congo
• DR Congo 3–1 Uzbekistan

The 4 wins in (B) are matches that wouldn’t even have been scheduled under a 32-team format. Neither team should have been there in the first place, so those fixtures only exist because of the expansion. The purely “expansion-driven” wins are the 4 in (A), where a supposedly higher-ranked side was beaten.

Even so, whether those 4 wins in (A) truly count as giant-killing is questionable. The teams they beat were South Korea, Qatar, Panama, and Turkey — none of which can be called clearly “higher-ranked” opponents.

On Paraguay vs. Turkey in particular, let me add my impression from watching the match. Paraguay’s defense was extremely solid, and even after going down to 10 men following a red card just before halftime, they held out for nearly the full 90 minutes. That was simply remarkable, something achievable only with relentless patience and a fierce will to win. Turkey clearly lacked ideas and showed tactical instability, but even accounting for that, Paraguay deserves credit for this match. That said, the relative strength of the two sides is a separate matter — Turkey sits in the 20s in the FIFA rankings, Paraguay around 40th. Both are mid-tier, neither has reached the last two World Cups, and their recent records are similar. Without a clear gap in class, this was a fine win, but too weak a case to call giant-killing.

Notably, 7 of the 16 teams advanced to the knockout stage. Given the assumption of “nothing but cannon fodder,” that’s a high number. Five teams did finish with three straight losses (Tunisia’s goal difference was −10), so there were certainly some make-weight teams, but there were also teams that fought well. If the story stopped here, the conclusion would simply be: expansion wasn’t so bad after all.

Suspecting Colombia

But there’s one snag in this table of 8 wins: Colombia.

Colombia went through the group stage unbeaten, with 2 wins and 1 draw, topping their group. Their FIFA ranking sits around 13th, making them the third-strongest South American side after Brazil. They don’t look like a rescued underdog. The only reason they’re in the picked-up group is that they finished 5th in South American qualifying. Under the 2022 standard (4 direct slots plus 1 intercontinental playoff), 5th place wouldn’t qualify directly and would be sent to a playoff. Since they couldn’t get in unconditionally, I mechanically placed them here.

But this isn’t accurate. Colombia didn’t finish 5th because they’re weak — South American qualifying is a round-robin of 10 teams where strong sides grind each other down, so even a team ranked around 13th in the world can end up sinking in the standings. In other words, I was mistaking the standing (a reflection of how brutal the qualifying format is) for actual strength.

So counting Colombia’s 2 wins in the picked-up group isn’t appropriate. They should be excluded. But excluding them needs one more piece of justification. Without clarity on whether “5th place in South America” is a weak slot or one that almost always gets through, the call can’t be made.

The culprit was Australia

So I lined up the past five tournaments’ worth of the South American 5th-place slot (the 4.5-slot era, 2006–2022).

The success rate is 3/5, or 60%. At first glance that looks like a number that doesn’t support “practically a direct qualifier,” but the breakdown changes the picture.

Against everyone except Australia (Costa Rica, Jordan, New Zealand), the record is 3 wins in 3 matches — the 2014 game against Jordan was a one-sided 5–0. Meanwhile, both eliminations came against Australia, and both were decided on penalties (0–0 and 1–1). Not a single one of those losses came on the run of play — the element of luck that is a penalty shootout simply fell to Australia both times.

Worth adding: Australia came via OFC in 2006 and via AFC in 2022. The entry confederation was different both times, yet the opponent that fell out of the bracket was Australia on both occasions. It’s an accident of timing — a strong team that doesn’t normally belong to that tier slipping in during a weak year for Asia/Oceania.

In other words, the real expected value of the South American 5th-place slot is that, excluding Australia, it is essentially a direct qualifier. The judgment to place Colombia in the picked-up group was, after all, a mistake.

Colombia, to begin with, is a strong side that fought its way through the toughest qualifying league in the world, competing with Brazil and Argentina. They should be seen as genuine title contenders, not as a rescued team. Out of respect, I remove them from the table.

Subtracting their 2 wins (both “internal” ones), the picked-up group’s real result becomes 6 wins (4 giant-killings, 2 internal).

Setting the baseline: 6 wins out of 52

To judge whether 6 wins is a lot or a little, let’s put it in context.

The group stage had 72 matches total. There were 20 draws, so 52 matches produced a winner.

Of those 52 wins, the picked-up group (excluding Colombia) accounts for 6. Of those, 4 came against opponents that could be called higher-ranked (though as noted, that framing is shaky).

• Total group-stage wins: 52
• Picked-up group’s share: 6 (about 12%)
• Of which, considered giant-killings: 4 (about 8%)

One in twelve decided matches was won by the picked-up group, and wins over supposedly stronger teams make up less than a tenth of the total. Not so many as to say “nothing but cannon fodder,” but not enough to praise them lavishly for fighting well either. Seen against the whole, it’s a number that shows up only occasionally.

Is the harvest small? The same logic as a lottery

Only 4 giant-killings, and even those are shaky. This could be read as “the fruits of expansion were meager.” But that’s only true if you view football purely as a contest of strength.

Viewed as entertainment, the assessment changes.

If you want to determine the strength hierarchy precisely, upsets are a nuisance — fewer of them means the stronger teams advance in the expected order. But as entertainment, a predictable outcome is boring.

The 48-team format separates these two things. In the upper tier, where the title is contested, seeding protects the top sides from grinding each other down early, letting them progress as expected. In the lower tier (weak groups, first-time entrants), room is left for the unpredictable. It’s a design that barely moves the question of who contends for the title while multiplying the question of where something unexpected might happen.

Seen this way, the easy games aren’t a design flaw — they’re the cost of making upsets possible at all. It’s the same logic as a lottery needing losing tickets for a winning one to mean anything: Tunisia’s and Iraq’s three straight losses sit on the flip side of Cape Verde holding Spain to a 0–0 draw, or Scotland’s first win in 36 years. Erase only the losing tickets, and the winning ones disappear too.

This is a familiar pattern in business, too. Lower the barrier to entry, and the value of simply “getting in” fades, while evaluation shifts to what you did once you got in. FIFA expanded the slots to capture fans and broadcast reach in new countries and regions — the metric they’re watching is the number of participating countries. The metric that matters to someone purely watching the football is the substance of who survives. It’s the same tournament; only the number each side cares about differs.

Prediction: the quarterfinals will almost certainly be “the usual suspects”

How far up will the upsets reach? This part is a prediction, but I’m fairly confident.

Some of the picked-up group will survive to the round of 16. But the lineup in the quarterfinals will almost certainly be identical to what a traditional 32-team format would have produced.

Two reasons. First, seeding protects the top seeds from meeting each other early. Second, among the picked-up group’s survivors (6 teams, excluding Colombia), there are internal matchups like Colombia vs. Ghana, so the numbers naturally thin out the further the tournament goes.

Corroborating evidence has already arrived. In the first knockout match involving the picked-up group, South Africa lost 0–1 to Canada. South Africa had advanced as a group runner-up on merit, but were stopped by host nation Canada. A start exactly as expected.

Just in case, let me state up front the condition under which this prediction fails.

If even one team from the picked-up group (excluding Colombia) reaches the quarterfinals, this prediction is wrong.

If that happens, I’ll admit it. But I expect the slots simply won’t be filled that way. If the prediction holds, the conclusion becomes: even with 48 slots, the teams left standing at the end are, in the end, the usual names. The entrance got wider; the height of the summit didn’t change.

Closing

Starting from “this is obviously just padding,” I ended up suspecting Colombia, going back five tournaments, and arriving at Australia. Not the conclusion I expected.

What’s left is this: the expanded slots did include some make-weight teams, but also some that fought well. The purely additional wins numbered 4, and even those are shaky in substance. But that’s not meager fruit — it’s simply that the type of fruit shifted from a contest of strength to the chance of an upset. And the lineup at the summit will probably settle out exactly as before.

Finally, a word about the teams that suffered heavy defeats this time.

I watched the Scotland, Haiti, and Uzbekistan matches in full. There’s plenty to work on. The gap in quality against the top nations is clear, there were plenty of careless mistakes, and individual quality also fell short.

Even so, the basics — especially defending from midfield back — were something every one of these teams ran for, endured, and held their ground on. Teams that don’t cut corners there will improve. This is a road Japan has walked too, and as a fan I think I understand how hard what comes next will be. It won’t happen overnight. Building your own style of football takes 10, 20 years.

Cape Verde and Curaçao, making their debuts, along with Uzbekistan, Jordan, and the teams that finished with three straight losses — all of them must have felt, firsthand this time, just how high the wall of the world stands. Watching on television and standing there yourself carry different weight. Even Scotland needed 36 years just to get one win. I hope they take this as motivation and come back again, having grown their own football enough that no one calls them make-weights anymore. When that day comes, I’ll count the wins again.

The 48-team format turned out to be a well-made tournament — one that preserves a structure where the strong properly survive, while still leaving room to enjoy the underdogs’ fight and the occasional upset. The lesson for myself, having jumped to “this is obviously padding,” is: don’t decide before you count.

This piece was conceived and directed by Kuzuryu, written by AI.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2026/06/1683/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.