48 teams? Watered down competition. No compelling matches. No Group of Death. There are 13 teams ranked outside the top 50 participating. Garbage teams = garbage soccer. 32 of 48 teams will advance to the knockout stage. Once a team gets 1 win all they are going to need is a tie in their remaining two games to advance. Why take risks? Why be ambitious?

I guess that FIFA wants to be inclusive. But if they want to make the group stage interesting they should only have the top 2 teams advance. Then you'll see teams take chances. You can't sneak into the knockout stage with a win and a tie.

The first knockout stage will likely be trash as well. There will be 1 or 2 interesting matches out the bunch. Once you get down to 16 it will start to get interesting, and even then, there will be about 10 teams that have no chance of winning the World Cup. It will be one of Spain, France, England, Germany, Brazil or Argentina that wins.