Just so bloated at 48 teams. Again makes it tough for many countries to host. At this rate the only “smaller” FIFA tournaments to be hosted will be Beach Soccer and Futsal.
FIFA moved goalposts as Danish bid for U17 World Cup ignored in favour of Qatar and Morocco: https://www.insideworldfootball.com...d-u17-world-cup-ignored-favour-qatar-morocco/ Due process has taken a huge hit under Infantino. It’s a joke. There is no transparency.
More ideal, in my view, would be something closer to this: UEFA 10 CAF 11 AFC 11 CONCACAF 7 CONMEBOL 6 OFC 2 Host 1 I assume no playoffs, given that this is a youth tournament and they may move to save some cash/effort on that. I want to see this tournament biased a bit more toward the less powerful confederations than the senior tournament is, and giving a near equal number to each of Asia, Africa and Europe + a small boost for CONCACAF over its senior representation (7 vs 6) gets you there. The senior World Cup is simply too important to make much room for smaller federations (expansion to 48 is about as much as it can do), and the biennial World Cup the rest of the world outside UEFA/CONMEBOL wants is simply off the table. The youth world cups fix this problem by offering a legitimate way to spread development across the world without messing around too much with the senior World Cup. Youth world cups are fundamentally developmental. That is why they are held more frequently than senior tournaments and FIFA's enforcement of call-ups for them isn't as strict (allowing for more developmental prospects to partake). For the young players in the majority of countries that don't have fully professional leagues and can't professionalize their best 15 to 19 year olds consistently (my nation is one of these), what you're saying doesn't apply because domestic club football in most nations simply doesn't have the quality, and international exposure is far, far more valuable to them for advancement, development, and securing the attention of proper clubs abroad. I'm going to speak mostly from a Jamaican perspective, since that's the one I know best, but what I say below can probably be applied to many dozens of countries without strong domestic leagues (that is most of the world). I'm focusing on the ages 14 to 19. Jamaica has no fully pro club on the island. There is no proper football academy of the kind Americans, Mexicans and Argentinians are used to seeing. A top Jamaican teen aged 14 to 19 spends the vast majority of those years playing youth football (mostly high school competitions) against players who are vastly inferior to him, for very limited portions of the year (August to November), in a relatively unstructured environment, with shoddy coaching, limited staff support and usually on goat patches masquerading as football pitches. International youth football is a massive step up for these players. It is the only level at which the nations best youth are regularly, consistently afforded remotely competent coaching, training among peer talents, games against peer talents, and real structured participation in the game on better quality surfaces. This expansion of the U17 tournaments (making them annual and going to 48 teams) dramatically increases the amount of time those teens spend in that international environment from ages 14 to 19. Today, the kids probably get one U17 qualifying cycle in that window, and an Under-20 cycle as well, usually with no tournaments. With annual U17 WC proposal that includes expansion to 48, that kid is quite likely to see up to 3 U17 cycles and 3 U17 tournaments, in addition to the U20 qualifying. So we go from just 2 qualifying cycles with no tournaments to 4 qualifying cycles with probably two or three tournaments. This is a massive upgrade for us in terms of the quality of preparation our kids are getting aged 14 to 19. And of course there's the tangential benefit of exposure at higher levels of competition - positive showings against more well known international opponents with better pedigrees in tournament games or qualifiers are good for building more pro opportunities for our kids 16-18 and getting them off the island and into foreign pro setups faster. So by expanding the tournaments and adding more qualifying cycles, we also get the increased odds that the kids can spend the very end of our key 14 to 19 age range (ages 18-19) in a professional setup. It's a net positive all around when the alternative is to have the kids tooling around in amateur schoolboy or semi-professional leagues. And, again, for kids in most countries around the world, that is the alternative - not every nation has the kind of football infrastructure Argentina has.
But that's exactly what its doing. The senior WC expansion was heavily weighted towards the less powerful confederations. In fact, the last two expansions were biased in that way.
That's untrue, see article D7 from the UEFA-ECA MoU 2024-30: [the ECA is] to undertake good faith efforts in supporting the release, by its member clubs, of players for the UEFA age-limited national team competitions including for final tournaments which are scheduled on dates outside the lnternational Match Calendar, provided that the relevant release dates would not conflict with competitions in which ECA member clubs are involved; Virtually all EURO U19 qualifiers are played during the FIFA international windows while the finals are held in July so the best players participate (unless they play in EURO or WC during even years, then of course their participation in U19 EURO would be virtually redundant). By its nature, the EURO U17 features most of the best players whose clubs are happy to release them to the U17 NTs. Again, virtually all qualifiers are played during FIFA international windows.
Incidentally if someone could obtain the 2024-30 FIFA-ECA MoU we would know exactly where U16/17 and U19/20 NTs stand regarding player release globally. I suspect their is a clause in it enabling all U17 NTs which qualify to call the players they want for the annual U17WCs.
I would give OFC four places so the semifinalists at each OFC U16 championship qualify. Some of the Pacific islands have reasonable potential evidenced by how some of them excel in other sports. AFC 10 CAF 10 Concacaf 10 Conmebol 6 OFC 4 UEFA 8* *from 2025 the U17 EUROs will be reduced from 16 to 8 teams (Host included in confederation allocation).
The DBU are wrong, it was clearly stated in the FIFA invitation to bid that they were looking for the first five editions to be hosted in the same cpountry.
Yes, but I noted in my post that this is really as far as it can go. There is only so much room for smaller federations and only so much expansion that will take place. The biennial world cup idea was an attempt to expand that window, but that failed. There won't be further room. The rest of the world wants more, and the youth world cups are going to be the only way to get it. As much as I love the allocation to CONCACAF here, I just don't see how we justify 4 OFC teams. That confederation is just too shallow for that number of qualifiers, we're inviting cannon fodder. It should stay at 2, and those spots should be spread to Asia and Africa IMO. If UEFA can accept 8 places, great, but I'd suggest splitting those between the Americas. So the final allocation would look like: AFC 11 CAF 11 Concacaf 9 Conmebol 7 OFC 2 UEFA 8
A proper way for FIFA to repay decades of world competition barriers against both AFC and CAF. World football would be quite worse today if the African continent had not decided to boycott 1966 WC at England. One reason for their boycott was the 0.5 WC slot allocated to that continent.
Europe did ok initially out of the expansion to 32 originally gaining 2 of the extra spots. They lost these extra spots over the next 2 world cups. with the allocation stabilising by 2006. They also got 4 from the expansion to 24 in 1982, eventually giving one of those spots to Africa in 1994.
But, who really are the *rest of the world*? Are *they* some kind of football monolith, whose demands to FIFA can be easily described? Let us be clear: Arab states (KSA, MAR, QAT) bought their way into hosting world tournaments, while having nothing to do with a so-called *rest of the world*. Their state-driven agendas do not target national squad development. Their focus is to buy political prestige as world tournament hosts. If I recall correctly, no one asked FIFA for more frequent WCs, besides KSA. UEFA+Conmebol refused a biennial senior WC, because it would cut into continental qualifiers TV revenue.
What is worrying is how poorer federations will assimilate higher operation costs via annual u17 qualifiers. Several federations will need to get creative. In the past, CAF's solution was to present over-age u17 players during qualifiers, and take chances at disqualification... which kept happening as recently as 2019 and 2023. Conmebol's solution was to present over-age u17 players and send them to u17WC, with FIFA's blessing. Colombian-born ECU player Byron Castillo, was recently sanctioned by CAS and not FIFA for identity fraud. Castillo played in 2015 u17WC while being 20.5 years old. It did not matter that his fraudulent identity was denounced during 2015 u17 qualifiers: both Conmebol and FIFA kept sweeping that scandal under the rug until 2022, and then CAS told them what's good.
FIFA itself pushed strongly for it as a way to increase its revenues but got strong pushback from UEFA as it threatened their own revenues from their International tournaments. Not sure (can't remember) what drove Conmebol's opposition but the other 4 confeds were all in favour.
@almango accurately described the situation - the increased frequency was pushed by FIFA, but heavily favored by every Confederation save for UEFA and CONMEBOL, who shut it down. There is very strong support for more frequent world cups outside of those two confederations, and for any other action that would increase the presence of the less powerful confederations on the broader world stage. It's definitely not just the gulf arabs on that train. My point is that regardless of that support, the senior World Cup has gone as far as it can re: making room for those confederations. Expansion was it. The answer now is at the youth levels. Expanding the U17 WC is the first step, in addition to increasing frequency. The U20 WC should be the next target (ideally to 32 teams, at least - I think it's fine to keep it biennial).
Also the WC format change from 16 x groups of 3 teams to 12 x groups of 4 teams was probably also part of the negotiation to maintain the WC as a 4-yearly event. The loss of the financial advantage which came from biennial WCs - $4,4bn forecast from the additional WC in the first cycle - is mitigated by increasing the number of games from 80 to 104 in the new format while maintaining the scarcity factor of the 4-yearly event and having very marginal organisational costs from adding 24 extra games. I'm also suprised the biennial U20WC hasn't yet been expanded to 32 teams, so many advantages and no disadvantages I can think of. Perhaps even better would be to give OFC three slots, removing one from AFC or Conmebol. If you do this then the bronze medal playoff at the OFC U16s becomes a very meaningful game.
UEFA has over 25% of the FIFA members in the world. Why would you give them such a small quota. They should get 12 places.
Because from 24/25 the EURO U17 will change format from 16 to 8 teams in the finals so to me it makes sense that qualifying for the finals also qualifies you for the U17WC. OFC needs minimum of 3 places.
The idea is to boost representation for the rest of the world slightly above what they get in the senior tournament. UEFA won out on biennial senior tournaments, basically shutting that idea down singlehandedly. Giving some ground for junior tournaments is a fair trade for that. That said, I am not wedded to 8 teams. 10 seems fair. In this proposal, UEFA gets the same allocation as Asia and Africa, the two other heavy weight (by numbers) confederations. That seems a reasonable compromise - it's a boost for the rest of the world relative to what they get at the senior tournament, and UEFA keeps par with similarly sized confederations on numbers and still sends double digit teams. I'd keep the allocations the same for any hypothetical 48 team U20 WC (which would be an ideal dream to see). UEFA 10 CAF 10 AFC 10 CONCACAF 8 CONMEBOL 7 OFC 2 Host 1 Why? OFC just isnt deep enough for more than two guaranteed slots. It doesn't make sense.
FIFA gave MAs 20 days to bid for U-17, 5-year hosting packages before handing rights to Qatar and Morocco: https://www.insideworldfootball.com...osting-packages-handing-rights-qatar-morocco/
We're still talking about soccer, or did we shift to the Rugby WC? Probably the Fall, like the senior 2022 WC was. The U17 World cup usually runs from Oct to Nov anyway, so its not a big change from the norm.
If you give 3 places to the OFC then not only do both OFC U16 championship finalists qualify but you make the third place playoff a very significant game with a U17WC place for the winner. We shouldn't forget that the qualifiers for FIFA youth competitions are also part of their developmental role so anything which enhances development - like making the OFC U16 third place playoff a very significant game - has to be positive.
It isn't positive here because that benefit is outweighed by the fact that the 3rd place team coming out of the OFC is going to be abysmal. The OFC is not deep enough or good enough for 3 guaranteed places at any World Cup. Ignoring that and removing a place from a much deeper confederation just so a 3rd place game between Tahiti and Solomon Islands or whomever can mean a little more doesn't make sense. They can continue to play the 3rd place game and receive some extra developmental minutes without the need to guarantee an abysmal side a spot at the tournament.