EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsThe FIFA World Cup is the biggest and most expensive sporting event in the world, but it's also a way station of sorts -- a way to track the game's changes in terms of technological progress or simple evolution of rules. The 2014 World Cup was the first one to use goal-line technology and vanishing spray. The 2018 edition introduced the video assistant referee (VAR). The 2022 tournament gave us five substitutions (and a concussion sub).The 2026 World Cup was a pretty good reflection of just how much the game is changing at the moment. We saw the tournament's first expansion since 1998 (and a pretty big one at that), and we saw plenty of shifts in the philosophy behind ticket prices, hydration breaks, and even tiebreakers.While there was certainly a theme behind a lot of these moves -- FIFA's undying love of cash -- some of the changes provided clear benefits, while others enhanced nothing.With the tournament in the rearview, let's look back at each major change and how it impacted the game. (We'll ignore the changes in how VAR was used, both because VAR's usage is always shifting and, frankly, I don't enjoy talking about VAR.) One big change was great; others, less so.- World Cup musings: Argentina let Messi down; England have regressed- Borden: How the 2026 World Cup was like no other as it inspired and incensed- Marsden: Why Spain are top of the world in both men's and women's gamesExpansion to 48 teamsActually, let's split this one into pieces: the premise of expansion, and the impact of having specifically 48 teams.Expansion in generalWhen FIFA began allotting new bids for emerging federations a half-century ago, there was some pain involved. In 1970, El Salvador got outscored 9-0 in three matches; four years later, Haiti was outscored 14-2, while Zaire was famously outscored 14-0. Because this tournament's lore is so imprinted on so many brains, these teams became reference points again as the tournament expanded to 48 teams this summer. We would have too many blowouts! It would dampen the spirit of the competition!Granted, Germany did wallop outmatched newcomer Curaao 7-1 in one of the tournament's first matches. But (A) Germany sometimes beats heavyweights by that same score, and (B) the floor of the sport was too high for that to happen frequently.The world was ready for expansion. Congo DR (formerly Zaire) finally got a chance to right the wrongs of 1974 and proceeded to draw with Portugal in the group stage and scare the hell out of England in the knockout rounds. Curaao pulled a point from an Ecuador team that went on to beat Germany, and fellow debutant Cape Verde, of course, did far more than that, first advancing to the knockout rounds and then nearly toppling defending champions Argentina. (Two other debutants, Jordan and Uzbekistan, didn't fare as well. But hey, they got to score goals and whatnot.)Expanding the World Cup meant more potential Cinderella teams and more stories to learn. Yes, it also meant more matches to broadcast and more money to rake in -- FIFA's motivations are always impossible to extract from the occasional good they might cause -- but this was a better tournament because it was bigger.Grade: A+The logistics of 48 teamsThe specific number of competitors, however, created some awkwardness. With 32 teams qualifying for the knockout rounds from 12 groups of four, that meant that two-thirds of the tournament's third-place teams advanced.If you had three points and a positive goal differential, you advanced; only two teams in the entire tournament won a match and didn't advance. With the bar that low, plenty of teams headed into the final matchday happy to settle for draws. This helped to create a lot of agreeable circumstances for those final group stage matches. They didn't feature as much drama as they could have, despite Algeria's late deception against Austria. (Plus, there was the awkwardness of Scotland having to stick around for days after their disappointing campaign ended, just in case a miracle occurred and they ended up qualifying.)This was all still better than FIFA's original idea for handling 48 teams, which featured 16 groups of three teams playing two group stage matches each. The whole point of an expanded tournament is to tell a deeper and more enjoyable story, and you can't do that with a bunch of teams spending millions of dollars and traveling thousands of miles to play only two matches.Ironically, you know what would scratch the expansion itch but rid us of the third-place shenanigans? Expanding the tournament further.We know FIFA is considering a 64-team field (with the top two teams advancing from 16 groups of four), and after the massive shift that the 48-team setup required -- we added 24 more group stage matches and 16 knockout round matches and asked the four semifinalists to play eight total games -- adding another 24 matches but keeping a team's maximum total at eight matches almost seems easy.The 2030 tournament's hosting structure makes it doable, too: Argentina, Paraguay and original tournament hosts Uruguay are scheduled to host "centenary" matches to celebrate the tournament's 100-year anniversary, before handing the reins to Spain, Portugal and Morocco for the rest. Start the group stage in South America for a few days, shift it over to the primary hosts, give the early participants time to travel and refresh before the knockout rounds, and voil!(Granted, the idea of Saudi Arabia hosting in 2034 and potentially needing to build even more stadiums, both real and fake, makes my head hurt. Some have proposed expansion to 64 as a one-off for 2030, but have you ever seen an organization voluntarily shrink a tournament? Usually when it expands, it remains expanded.)Is a 64-team field stretched too thin from a quality standpoint? Perhaps. Based on how qualification played out, a 64-team field in 2026 would have included teams such as Bolivia (pre-tournament FIFA ranking: 76), Cameroon (57), Denmark (21), Gabon (78), Indonesia (122), Italy (12), Jamaica (70), Kosovo (80), New Caledonia (150), Poland (31), Romania (47), Suriname (123), Tahiti (157), UAE (68), Venezuela (48) and Wales (32). It's fair to guess that teams such as Indonesia, New Caledonia, Suriname or Tahiti would have struggled to compete, even more than Curaao, Jordan or Uzbekistan. But a majority of these teams had rankings similar to those of Congo DR or Cape Verde. Some would have surprised and thrived.Money could cause this plan to run aground if important figures or nations begin to conclude that a 64-team field might produce less media rights money per team than 48 and begin to push back. But at this point, I'm guessing it's more than 50% likely to happen. And guess what: We'll still enjoy it, and FIFA will get away with it again. They do, after all, get away with everything.Grade: BDynamic ticket pricingThis was the most spiritually bankrupt change of the bunch. FIFA basically said, We can sell you access to our product at whatever price we want, and we're going to milk you for everything you're worth. FIFA president Gianni Infantino declared that since this event would basically be "104 Super Bowls" -- an absurd claim even by Infantino's lofty standards -- ticket prices for every game were priced as highly as they could possibly sell. Pricing out anyone below the upper middle class was fine as long as someone bought the tickets.While not every game was a sellout -- and there were certainly visible empty seats at a lot of later-round matches -- someone indeed bought nearly every ticket. FIFA gave us the most exponentially expensive ticket prices of all time, and we proceeded to buy 6,810,966 of them -- 65,490 per match. That's 22% more tickets per match than in any World Cup since the last one the U.S. hosted (1994). While the 1994 edition did have a higher average per game (68,991), 1994's venues also had 8% higher capacity. And, of course, 2026 featured twice as many matches.People might be soured on FIFA's shameless greed, but the organization was still proved right. FIFA has no proof that we'll ever actually turn away from the World Cup no matter what it does to it.Since FIFA's cynicism paid off, I can't actually give this an F like I want to. But I'll come pretty close.Grade: D-Hydration breaksThe concept of hydration breaks in soccer is a familiar one now; it comes with playing more games in increasingly hot climates, and when the temperature is high enough, it makes all the sense in the world from a player welfare perspective.Having them in every World Cup game, however -- even those indoors or those played during cooler (or even rainy) conditions -- was obviously something altogether new. Traditionalists were appalled, both because traditionalists are always appalled and because the reason behind them was so painfully obvious. In this extremely American World Cup, we had two things American sports are very much known for: four-quarter games and more commercial breaks.Because commercial breaks make media companies money, it wouldn't be a surprise if these breaks became more and more common in big events moving forward. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. Boos were common as teams trudged off the field for strategy sessions, and some teams handled this variable better than others. Much better.Using an adjusted goal differential figure I reference from time to time (70% expected-goal differential, 30% goal differential, 11-vs.-11 situations only), here are the 10 teams that performed the best in the 10 minutes or so after the breaks. (I used the 25th to 35th minutes of each half to approximate this.)1. Argentina (plus-0.50 adj. GD per game)2. Canada (plus-0.44)3. Ecuador (plus-0.31)4. Ivory Coast (plus-0.29)5. Iran (plus-0.28)6. Austria (plus-0.26)7. Trkiye (plus-0.24)8. France (plus-0.23)9. Uruguay (plus-0.22)10. Scotland (plus-0.21)That's an interesting combination of successful and relatively unsuccessful teams. Only France and Argentina also ranked in the top 10 in adjusted goal differential in the other 70 minutes of a given game, too. In the (approximately) 10 minutes after these breaks, Argentina outscored opponents 5-0; that made quite the difference for a team so addicted to close games and drama.Here's the bottom 10:48. Jordan (minus-0.76)47. Qatar (minus-0.69)46. Iraq (minus-0.59)45. New Zealand (minus-0.58)44. Haiti (minus-0.49)43. Saudi Arabia (minus-0.40)42. Uzbekistan (minus-0.33)41. Tunisia (minus-0.31)40. Curaao (minus-0.30)39. United States (minus-0.28)Nine mostly poor teams ... and the U.S., which ranked 14th in the other 70 minutes but, for whatever reason, didn't really play its best out of the breaks. Three of the United States' eight goals allowed came in the 28th, 31st and 33rd minutes of a given half.Did this genuinely ruin games? No. Do extra commercial breaks still stink? Yes.Grade: C-Head-to-head results as tiebreakersWhile goal differential has long been the standard first tiebreaker if two teams are tied at the end of group play, FIFA elected to instead give the top spot on the tiebreaker list to head-to-head results. If you beat a team you ended up tied with, you ranked ahead of them. That played a massive role in the USA's group.After two matchdays, here's how Group D looked:1. USA (6 points, plus-5 goal differential)2. Australia (3 points, even goal differential)3. Paraguay (3 points, minus-2 goal differential)4. Trkiye (0 points, minus-3 goal differential)With the U.S. playing Trkiye and Australia facing Paraguay in the final matchday, there would have still been plenty up for grabs under the old system. The U.S. would have still been likely to finish first, barring a blowout loss, but Trkiye would have had an excellent shot at third place -- and potential advancement to the knockout rounds -- and the U.S. wouldn't have been able to afford sitting nearly every starter, as coach Mauricio Pochettino elected to do. Instead, because of head-to-head, the U.S. had already clinched first, and Trkiye was already eliminated. That match became an exhibition. (It was a super fun exhibition, but still.)Plus, with so many third-place teams advancing, Australia and Paraguay headed into their match knowing that if they tied -- and they did -- they would each reach the knockout rounds. That didn't have anything to do with the head-to-head tiebreaker, but the combination of the two created a wobbly incentive structure for a lot of teams. The U.S. and others knew they had clinched first place and didn't have to field first-string teams, while the Australia-Paraguay, Japan-Sweden and, most notably, Austria-Algeria matches all had exceedingly (and perhaps unnecessarily) agreeable circumstances.Even if the next World Cup expands further and gets rid of the third-place advancement, the head-to-head tiebreaker limits potential drama late in the group stage. Generally, we're in this for more drama.Grade: C-Quick substitutions and restarts and delayed reentryThree changes intended to speed up gameplay worked just fine. Players being substituted were supposed to be off the pitch within 10 seconds, and throw-ins and goal kicks were supposed to be taken within five seconds. Plus, if a player had to receive medical attention on the field, they had to exit the field and wait one minute before returning. The intention was good, and refs weren't overzealous in enforcing them. No problems here.Grade: ARed cards for mouth-coveringThe Prestianni Rule attempted to eliminate the "he said/he said" uncertainty of what happens when a player covers his mouth during a confrontation. Do it, and you're gone. Paraguay's Miguel Almirn was the first (deserving) victim of the rule, which evidently required the most demonstrative of announcements.We saw the potential downsides of the rule when Lionel Messi tried to turn Spain's Marc Cucurella in for what sure looked like a casual touch of the face during an unconfrontational moment between them in the final. This will always be blurry and open to interpretation, but I don't mind the intent.Grade: B
