Don't watch the bad teams and only watch the good teams problem solved, the issue with the group stages is it for most part cut the clutter out for the knock out stages now the clutter is guaranteed to make it into those stages for sure, minnows could essentially make the quarter finals by drawing other minnows essentially making their run look more impressive then it is. You'll see the worst teams twice while the meh teams go deeper than they normally would in tournaments only to provide a free win and semi final spot for the more capable teams.

If a group of death is drawn then that's tough luck you're meant clash with other heavy hitters to win it anyway, such groups added to the tournament, picture how the Fifa rankings are going to look after that tournament.

Meh teams have done it before but they've at least been forced to work for that spot as opposed to smashing minnows, a lot of time they got there by pulling off upsets something else that added to the tournaments.

Minnow is a slang term in the UK for a tier of opponents who are just there to provide wins for all other teams, picture a meh team like Egypt making it to the quarters after beating the likes of Oman, Uzbekistan, Jamaica and Iran.

That's the problem right there like I mentioned before it's rigged to give the so called elite a better tournament otherwise the scenario I mentioned earliar would be common for each tournament. In order to avoid a battle royale of minnows they have to place a member of the elite to try regulate things.

In practice however things won't work as intended because example scenarios like a meh team like Switzerland would just get a draw against Italy and beat a team like Oman 4-0 and top the group from goal difference or something because the Italians tend to just win 1 or 2-0, the Swiss would then face another meh team. I have a feeling scenarios like this are going to pop up and some of those bad Asian and African teams will get far this way.

Actually no Italy aren't, Italy just won't lose it's what they've done for decades it comes down to style of play they've never really been high scoring, I know for a fact teams like Nigeria, Ivory Coast and such have no issues dispatching lesser teams more convincingly as they've done it many times before. Italy would outscore these teams if they were facing the elite but against minnows the 1 and 2-0s stops becoming a hurdle for these teams to get past.

They're sometimes bad, Egypt are a good example of the type of team I'm talking about as they smash minnows but freeze against harder opposition.

maybe spain would've advanced in that group/jk

I don't like it, I prefer the 32 team edition. I like the fact that there is a "group of death", we get interesting matches there 

Yeah, it was just my prefference, kind of inevitable

Anyway, what pissed me off  a little was the distribution of new spots. Conmebol get 2 new ones while Concacaf gets 3 

I read it in a local newspaper, but it could be wrong. And yeah, didn't think about it like that just until I finished posting haha

I guess it will be strange to change from qualifiers where everyone is killing each other for the spots to one where most of us will go. I also read FIFA was considering fusing CONMEBOL and CONCACAF but I don't think the mayority of CONCACAF would want that. I also think they may change the home/away round robin matches with this 

To me groups of 3 make it seem like they want the 'big teams' to go through, so the poor performances from Spain, Italy and England last time would be harder to replicate. It's good for TV and sponsors if the big teams go through and end up playing each other. This 'fixes' it without it looking too fixed. Kinda like the Champions League you can't play a team from your own country crap in the round of 16.

I wouldn't mind either, but I think both don't want to make the fusion for qualifiers

- CONCACAF would probably get only 2 or 3 teams in vs getting 6 or 7(I think even Bolivia and Venezuela would end up getting spots)  

- CONMEBOL doesn't seem to want to loose influence to federations with bigger marketing potential like USA. I heard USA wants another copa america with everyone in 2020 (regular copa america is in 2019 in Brazil) and CONMEBOL doesn't seem to like much that idea