Russia 2018 World Cup

I actually think that a lot of this is happening, because they do not want the huge economic countries that bring in a lot of revenue, left out of the tournament. The USA or Japan, or Italy, or Brazil, or the like, not coming to the cup, means an incredible loss of revenue, regardless of where the Cup takes place.

UEFA being better organize as a bunch of countries, is much better positioned to see the potential in wideing things, than FIFA, who has been controlled by one person for a long time, and his design and ideas were/are more important than anything. It was one of the that said that they really needed to get Africa involved. And they did. And then they wanted Asia more involved. They did. And this is something that UEFA, knew they could not wait 4 years to get it done ... get all the members together and pool the efforts and ideas and let's see what sticks, is what they did, so that everyone could benefit from it. By comparison, FIFA has been living and stealing off its name for 48/52 years, and no one is any wiser for it.

Ideally, for me, might be to create a round robin affair at the start ... three teams is not enough ... it's just 2 games, but at least the pressure would be on SCORING, rather than a tie, but this hurts the higher level teams a lot more than the lesser teams. One error, and it is disaster for a big name/country. I, do not want to see the great teams and players out of the Cup in the first game, and neither do you.

I would probably say 12 groups of 4, and cut it down to the top 2 for 6 groups of 4, and then bring it down to 12 teams, with the 4 best teams getting a bye. This would be a GREAT idea, since it would force the bigger teams to score to get a better ranking. And in that second round, they would fly to try and get that extra goal, instead of playing for a tie, since they do not have to do anything else, and they can save players, and rest some. 

After that the quarters, semis and final as they already are. But having that second round be a much more important scoring affair, would be much more valuable ... and it might make the game more appealing, instead of the lesser results. 

However, for me, the 0-0 affairs are fine when they have that keeper with 12 saves, and that other keeper with 13 saves ... and you know that on that day, it was a keeper's game ... and that is worth it!