UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin expressed on Thursday that expanding the World Cup to 64 teams for the 2030 tournament would be “a bad idea.”
The 2026 World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada will already see the tournament expand from 32 teams to 48. However, Ignacio Alonso, head of the Uruguayan football federation, proposed further increasing the tournament size at the FIFA Council meeting in March. FIFA stated it had a responsibility to consider the suggestion.
Ceferin, speaking at UEFA’s congress in Belgrade, strongly opposed the idea. “It’s maybe even more surprising for me than for you. I think it’s a bad idea,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for the World Cup or for our qualifiers.”
He added that he was unsure where the proposal came from, calling it strange that it was introduced without prior discussion.
The 2030 World Cup will be hosted across three continents, with Portugal, Spain, and Morocco as the main hosts. Additionally, three matches will be played in South America, in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, to mark the centenary of the first World Cup held in Uruguay in 1930. This decision also secured Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2034 World Cup.