The Most Unpredictable World Cup in History

The 48-team World Cup was expected to dilute football’s greatest tournament, but it widened opportunity, challenged old hierarchies and gave more nations reason to believe. France, one of the leading contenders, finished fourth. Yet there was another winner at this World Cup: the tournament itself.

For years, the expansion of the FIFA World Cup from 32 to 48 teams was criticised as a triumph of politics and money over sporting quality. The argument seemed straightforward. More teams would mean weaker teams.

Weaker teams would mean more mismatches. More mismatches would mean a bloated tournament, predictable results and a diminished spectacle. The 2026 World Cup provided a different answer.

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Across 104 matches, the expanded field produced new contests, unfamiliar opponents and repeated challenges to football’s established order. That was not what expansion was supposed to produce. The traditional criticism of an expanded World Cup assumed that international football remained divided into two distinct groups: the established football powers and everyone else.

That assumption increasingly looks outdated. The expansion to 48 teams brought more countries, more football cultures and more tactical approaches onto the world’s biggest sporting stage. Far from simply providing cannon fodder for the traditional giants, many of the new and less fancied participants arrived organised, disciplined and unimpressed by reputation.

The result was not the dilution of competition. It was the disruption of hierarchy. The great football nations still possessed the deepest squads, the most expensive players and the greatest historical pedigree.

But none of those advantages guaranteed victory. Smaller nations defended intelligently, pressed selectively and counter-attacked with speed. Goalkeepers became match-winners.

Coaches found ways of reducing the technical advantages of stronger opponents. Players who may never command the transfer fees or global profiles of their opponents repeatedly demonstrated that, for 90 minutes, reputation counts for remarkably little. The World Cup became a tournament in which almost everyone could trouble almost anyone.

Nowhere was the effect of expansion more significant than in Africa. Nine African countries progressed to the round of 32. That statistic alone deserves attention.

For decades, discussions about African football have been framed around potential. Africa was always the continent that would one day arrive. It possessed the talent, passion and athletes, but its teams were too often eliminated before the latter stages of the tournament.

The expanded World Cup provided more African countries with the opportunity to compete. What happened next mattered even more: they competed successfully. Nine African nations reaching the first knockout round was not charity. It was qualification earned on the football field.

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