I don't know if it's just me, but feels that Finland may be more excited about the World Cup than almost any other country that has never qualified themselves. I've been watching pretty actively since 1990 and I don't really watch football other than Champions League finals and such, some Olympics and European championship playoffs and Finland in qualifyings.
In lots of sports I'm always unhappy about tournament systems. The old 32 team system was one of the few I had nothing to complain about. The new 48 team isn't.
Simply put, I hate the "best 3rd of group" thing. I never want to see that, results against different opponents being compared. It just add to luck-in-draw factor: the same teams that have easier group to qualify directly also have it easier to get points. And you have first playoff round where some group winners play a group third and some group second and some group seconds each other.
The problem comes from 48, that's a bad number to have any kind of good system. Either you have this, have too many matches (say, 8 groups of 6), too few matches (with 16 groups of 3 and 16 team playoff, 2/3 of teams would only play two games) or using the otherwise best system of 16 groups of 3 with 32 team playoff (though still 16 teams only play 2 matches and other 16 3), there's the risk of a match where both want to draw because that's enough for them to move on.
IMO they should've made it 40 teams, 8 groups of 5 and then 16 or 32 team playoff, matter of opinion. If you had to expand from 32 at all, it's really all for money.
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