Re: World Cup 2018: The best party money could buy (until 2022)!
So I've been mulling over the whole 48 team world cup and how much I hate the idea of 3 team groups so I worked out a 48 team, 12 groups of 4 tournament where the top 8 group winners get a buy to the round of 16 and other 16 top 2 finishers play for the right to advance to round of 16. Thats a total of 95 games over the course of 37 or 38 days if you do pretty much 4 games a day every day of the first 2 match days. For the simultaneous matches, you'd have 3 groups each day...
In the USA/Mexico/Canada bid, you could have games at 12, 3, 6, 9pm eastern with the last games starting playing in a western time zone...not sure how this would work in other countries but I don't really think this tournament will ever be in a single country again...The big reason to me is this format would require at least 18 stadiums. That accounting for each pitch needing at least 2 days off between matches. if you extended the simultaneous games out 1 or 2 more days you could change that but then it extends the tournament longer...no one seems to want that.
From what I've read, the biggest reason the chose 16 groups of 3 format, it didn't require a longer tournament window (32 days), but it seems terribly uneven with teams playing a strange schedule
Day 1: A1 vs A2
Day 4: A1 vs A3
Day 7: A2 vs A3
That seems like a very challenging difference for the 3 teams. Do you want to be A1 so that if you advance you have more rest before your round of 24, or round of 16 match? Or do you want to be A2 so you have rest and know what you need to advance? I would assume A3 is the least interesting but maybe not because you are fresh compared to your opponent on Day 4? It's just terribly unbalanced compared to now.