Infantino's joke about Italy reopened the debate on the limits of World Cup expansion
Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, sparked a new debate after, in an interview with Brazil's CazéTV ahead of the opening match of the 2026 World Cup between Mexico and South Africa, he ironically commented on Italy's absence from football's biggest tournament. According to the Spanish outlet Cadena SER, Infantino, speaking about the idea of expanding the World Cup to 64 national teams in the future, said that “maybe even Italy could qualify” in such a format. In the same tone, he added that the tournament “could also be expanded to 228 national teams” to see whether Italy would qualify, although FIFA officially has 211 member associations. According to the same source, the statement quickly went viral in Italian sports media and on social networks, where it was received as an inappropriate joke at the expense of the four-time world champion. Although the comment was made in a relaxed tone, its political and sporting weight stems from the fact that Italy is missing the World Cup for the third consecutive time.
A sensitive moment for Italian football
Italy is not taking part in the 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States of America after losing on March 31, 2026, in the final of the European play-offs to Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to UEFA's official report, the match in Zenica ended 1:1 after extra time, and Bosnia and Herzegovina won 4:1 on penalties to secure a place at the final tournament. Moise Kean put Italy ahead in the 15th minute, Alessandro Bastoni was sent off before the end of the first half, and Haris Tabaković equalized in the 79th minute. UEFA states that Esmir Bajraktarević converted the decisive penalty, giving Bosnia and Herzegovina its second World Cup appearance in its history. That defeat deepened the Italian crisis because, after missing the tournaments in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, the national team also remained outside the finals in the 2026 cycle.
Because of that context, Infantino's joke was not perceived merely as a passing quip, but as a comment on the long-term decline of one of football's most successful national teams. Italy last appeared at the World Cup in 2014 in Brazil, where it was eliminated in the group stage, and then missed three consecutive editions of the competition. This is a national team that has won the world title four times throughout history, so its years-long absence from the tournament is symbolically stronger than an ordinary failure in qualification. Italian football is simultaneously facing debates about the development of young players, the competitiveness of the domestic league, the role of foreign footballers in Serie A and the frequent changes of technical plans in the national team. That is precisely why the sentence uttered before the start of the World Cup touched on a topic that has been extremely sensitive in Italy for years.
FIFA is already in the middle of the biggest expansion in the tournament's history
The debate about 64 national teams comes at a moment when FIFA has just begun the first edition of the expanded World Cup with 48 participants. According to FIFA's official information, the 2026 tournament runs from June 11 to July 19, is being held in Canada, Mexico and the United States of America, and includes 104 matches. The new format provides for 12 groups of four national teams each, with the two best teams from each group and the eight best third-placed national teams advancing to the knockout stage. This has introduced an additional elimination round, the round of 32, which means that the future world champion must play eight matches if it reaches the title. FIFA presents such a format as a way to expand global participation without abandoning groups of four teams, which have also been retained because of the sporting integrity of the competition.
The expansion from 32 to 48 national teams has already opened numerous dilemmas in itself. Supporters point out that a larger number of places allows countries and football associations that had remained on the margins of major tournaments for decades to appear, especially from Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Oceania. Opponents warn that a larger number of matches increases pressure on players, the calendar and organizers, and may dilute the quality of football's most prestigious competition. In the case of 2026, logistics are an additional element, because the tournament is being played in 16 cities across three countries, with great distances between individual locations. For that reason, the idea of a new expansion, before the first tournament with 48 national teams has even shown its sporting and organizational effects, immediately raised the question of whether FIFA is ready to go even further.
From CONMEBOL's proposal to a global controversy
The idea of a World Cup with 64 national teams did not arise only from Infantino's joke. According to Associated Press reports carried by ESPN, the president of the South American confederation CONMEBOL, Alejandro Domínguez, officially proposed in April 2025 that the 2030 edition be temporarily expanded to 64 national teams. Domínguez linked the proposal to the centenary of the first World Cup, played in 1930 in Uruguay, and said that such a format should allow as many countries as possible to participate in marking the tournament's 100 years. According to the same reports, the proposal had previously been opened by the Uruguayan representative at a FIFA Council meeting in March 2025, which surprised some European officials. FIFA has not made an official decision on such a model, and Infantino stressed in his interview with CazéTV that attention is currently being focused on the first World Cup with 48 participants.
The 2030 World Cup is already special even without a possible expansion. According to FIFA's official announcement, the hosts of the main part of the tournament will be Morocco, Portugal and Spain, while three matches as part of the centenary celebrations will be played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. Such an arrangement connects the European, African and South American dimensions of the competition, but at the same time opens complex questions of travel, player recovery, match scheduling and equal conditions for all participants. The introduction of 64 national teams would further change the balance because a new allocation of places by confederation, a new group and knockout-stage system, and a financial model for the tournament would have to be determined. That is precisely why the proposal, although presented as a one-off gesture for the centenary, is seen as a possible precedent for future editions.
The argument of inclusiveness versus the fear of diluting quality
In recent years, FIFA has often emphasized the global dimension of football and the need for a larger number of associations to gain access to major competitions. According to FIFA's official data, the world organization brings together 211 member associations on six continents, a number that significantly exceeds the circle of countries that regularly appear at the World Cup. From that perspective, expanding the tournament can be presented as an attempt to bring the competition closer to the real geographical breadth of football. Smaller and medium-sized football countries would gain a greater chance for development, sponsor visibility and the experience of playing matches at the highest level. For associations outside the traditional football centers, simply qualifying for the finals often means an acceleration of investment in infrastructure, youth programs and domestic leagues.
Critics, however, warn that the World Cup is not only a festival of participation but the pinnacle of a qualification process that must retain its weight. According to ESPN's report, UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin called the idea of a tournament with 64 national teams bad, while opponents of such expansion argue that the value of qualifiers would be diminished and the average quality of matches weakened. If too many national teams qualify for the final tournament, the qualification cycle could lose tension in some confederations, and the finals themselves could become too bulky to follow. In addition, a larger tournament increases commercial potential, but also the risk that sporting criteria will be pushed aside by economic and political interests. That is why Infantino's statement, although made as a joke, reopens the fundamental question: how much can the World Cup grow before it changes its own identity?
Italy as a symbol of a broader problem
Italy is at the center of the controversy, but the topic is broader than one national team. The fact that even expansion to 48 participants was not enough for the Azzurri to return to the World Cup shows that the failure cannot be explained solely by the strictness of the qualification system. According to FIFA's list of national teams participating in the 2026 tournament, Europe is represented at the finals by, among others, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czechia, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. Italy is not on that list, which means that the problem arose in the sporting process, not in the formal number of European places. UEFA received 16 representatives for 2026, but after the group stage Italy had to enter additional qualifiers, where it stumbled in the decisive match.
Such a situation is particularly painful because Italy, despite missing World Cups, won the European Championship in 2021 in the meantime, which shows that the crisis is neither linear nor simple. The national team is capable of reaching the top in certain cycles, but at the same time it has proven vulnerable in long qualification processes and high-pressure matches. For that reason, expanding the World Cup cannot be a substitute for systemic answers in domestic football. If a national team with such tradition cannot regularly qualify even in an expanded format, the debate necessarily returns to selection, player development, tactical stability and federation management. That is precisely why Infantino's quip resonated more strongly in Italy than it would have in a country without such football history.
Infantino between communication and the politics of football
As FIFA president, Infantino rarely speaks only as a neutral observer. Every statement he makes about the World Cup format carries institutional weight because it comes from the person leading the organization responsible for the rules, hosting, revenues and global strategy of the competition. When he joked at Italy's expense, it was not only a former football administrator from Switzerland speaking, but the head of the organization that decides how many national teams enter the tournament and under which rules. That is why the line between an informal joke and a political message is very thin in this case. In addition, Infantino has for years advocated the expansion of FIFA competitions, including club football, so his words are read in the broader context of increasing the number of matches and the global market.
The statement about a possible 64 national teams therefore cannot be separated from the commercial dimension of the World Cup. A larger tournament means more matches, more television slots, more markets and greater sponsor interest, but also higher organizational costs and stronger pressure on players and clubs. The official format for 2026 has already increased the number of matches from 64 to 104 compared with tournaments with 32 national teams, which shows how much a change in format changes the very structure of the competition. If FIFA were to move to 64 participants in the future, it would have to convincingly explain how it would preserve quality, reduce overload and maintain the clarity of the qualification system. Without such answers, every new idea about expansion will look like a continuation of a process in which the prestige of the tournament is increasingly linked to size and less and less to the rarity of qualification.
A debate that will not disappear after one joke
Infantino's sentence probably will not by itself determine the future format of the World Cup, but it showed how sensitive the topic is. For Italy, it is a reminder of the deepest national-team crisis in modern history; for FIFA, a communication test at the moment when the most extensive World Cup so far is beginning; and for the football public, an occasion for a new debate about where inclusiveness ends and excessive expansion begins. The 2026 tournament will serve as the first real test of the format with 48 national teams, from the quality of matches and audience interest to logistics and player fatigue. Only after that will it be clearer whether the football world has the sporting and organizational room for an even larger competition. Until then, Italy's absence will remain one of the most striking symbols of the new era of the World Cup: even a larger tournament does not guarantee a place to those who do not earn it on the pitch.
Sources:
- Cadena SER – report on Infantino's statement to CazéTV and reactions in Italy (link)
- FIFA – official explanation of the 2026 World Cup format with 48 national teams and 104 matches (link)
- FIFA – official overview of participants, hosts, cities and dates of the 2026 World Cup (link)
- UEFA – official report on the Bosnia and Herzegovina – Italy qualifying play-off match (link)
- UEFA – overview of European qualifying results for the 2026 World Cup (link)
- ESPN / Associated Press – report on CONMEBOL's proposal for a 2030 World Cup with 64 national teams and UEFA criticism (link)
- FIFA – official announcement on the hosts of the 2030 World Cup and the centenary celebration matches (link)
- FIFA – official data on FIFA's 211 member associations (link)