{"id":306619,"date":"2017-03-31T06:45:06","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T06:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=306619"},"modified":"2017-03-31T06:45:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T06:45:06","slug":"fifa-reveals-allocation-for-48-team-tournament-for-2026-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=306619","title":{"rendered":"Fifa reveals allocation for 48-team tournament for 2026 World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sp-story-body__introduction\">Fifa is proposing a six-nation play-off tournament to decide the last two slots at the 48-team World Cup in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Football&#8217;s world governing body has revealed its plans for how the 48 places will be allocated, with 16 Europeans teams set to qualify.<\/p>\n<p>The proposals &#8211; approved by Fifa&#8217;s president and his counterparts at the six confederations &#8211; are expected to be ratified by the Fifa Council on 9 May.<\/p>\n<p>Fifa members voted in January to expand the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams.<\/p>\n<p>Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said he was &#8220;satisfied&#8221; with the proposals and that European nations would be &#8220;fairly represented&#8221;.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"sp-story-body__cross-head\">How have the slots been allocated?<\/h4>\n<p>All six confederations will have at least one team in the expanded tournament, with no inter-confederation play-offs prior to the play-off tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The World Cup hosts will still qualify automatically, with their slot taken from their confederation&#8217;s quota.<\/p>\n<p>The recommended places for each confederation are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Africa &#8211; 9 (up from 5)<\/li>\n<li>Asia &#8211; 8 (up from 4 or 5)<\/li>\n<li>Europe &#8211; 16 (up from 13)<\/li>\n<li>North, Central America and Caribbean &#8211; 6 (up from 3 or 4)<\/li>\n<li>Oceania &#8211; 1 (from 0 or 1)<\/li>\n<li>South America &#8211; 6 (up from 4 or 5)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4 class=\"sp-story-body__cross-head\">How will the play-off tournament work?<\/h4>\n<p>Should the proposals be ratified, as expected, it will consist of one team from each confederation except Uefa, with the final team taken from the confederation of the host country.<\/p>\n<p>Two teams will be seeded based on their Fifa ranking, and then face the winners of two knockout games involving the four unseeded teams, with the prize a place in the World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>The play-off will be played in the World Cup&#8217;s host country, with November 2025 suggested as a possible date for the 2026 qualifying play-off.<\/p>\n<p>It will also double as a test event for the main tournament.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifa is proposing a six-nation play-off tournament to decide the last two slots at the 48-team World Cup in 2026. Football&#8217;s world governing body has revealed its plans for how the 48 places will be allocated, with 16 Europeans teams set to qualify. The proposals &#8211; approved by Fifa&#8217;s president and his counterparts at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[5736,3,338],"class_list":["post-306619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-ghana-news","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}