FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread

[temple]

ASEAN zone is the most weakest football in Asian without any participants team yet during FIFA World Cup edition except Australia move to ASEAN zone last several years, there are not doubt with how enthusiasm for football very high with supporter always full in stadium where their national team playing home.

I hope with slot added for FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States give chance for ASEAN national team get chance participants there and have one or two years time preparing for qualifier stage, I sure between Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam have opportunity will be success on qualifier group stage.

The weakest zone without a doubt it South Asia. We have a bunch of countries that are all ranked below 100 as per FIFA. And the fun fact is that this zone has a population of 2 billion, and has one of the most rapid population growth rates for any part of the globe. In Asia, the football strongholds are the middle-eastern countries (including Iran) and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Australia is more like an outlier which has shown enormous growth over the years. And then we have Central Asia (especially Uzbekistan) which has also shown significant improvement.

I haven't seen much of Uzbekistan yet. I can't even remember whether I saw them play ever, but yes there is a whole different part of the world developing and may soon be participating in major soccer events. It is unexpected that China is so low in the ranking. Usually they are sports focused and they have also been buying European top players for a lot of money since quite a while ago. Also a fun fact is that the women's national soccer team from China was one of the best in the world for a very long time, the men's national soccer team only managed to qualify once for the World Cup final round in the entire history. Who would have thought that?

[KTChampions]

The weakest zone without a doubt it South Asia. We have a bunch of countries that are all ranked below 100 as per FIFA. And the fun fact is that this zone has a population of 2 billion, and has one of the most rapid population growth rates for any part of the globe. In Asia, the football strongholds are the middle-eastern countries (including Iran) and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Australia is more like an outlier which has shown enormous growth over the years. And then we have Central Asia (especially Uzbekistan) which has also shown significant improvement.

It certainly looks very funny (outside of the top four teams are generally so weak that average teams from other regions will probably beat them 7-0 effortlessly). But this is all a consequence of cultural traditions - for example, if you take the game of Go, then the Asian region will be in the top, and all other regions, including Europe and the USA, will be deep below. I don't know if something will change over time or not, but it would be good if football were globalized and not concentrated in Europe.

[Tumanggor]

Did I mention Pakistan in my comment? Did I say there is no interest in football in any Asian country? On the contrary, I noticed how much football has progressed in many Asian countries, and I particularly highlighted Japan, South Korea and China. However, the fact remains that this development is not balanced and equal in all Asian countries, and I stand behind it.
Football is definitely not the number one sport in India, as far as I heard from the interview with their Croatian coach Stimac.

the world cup is a very prestigious event and many people are crazy about it, even the average country in the world is investing heavily in preparation for the 2026 world cup but it's a shame that football is not a popular sport in india but cricket even though they have a large population and it's impossible not to have big football talent there

korea, japan, saudi arabia, australia are countries that have always been representatives of asia because in these countries football is their main focus

[Leviathan.007]

ASEAN zone is the most weakest football in Asian without any participants team yet during FIFA World Cup edition except Australia move to ASEAN zone last several years, there are not doubt with how enthusiasm for football very high with supporter always full in stadium where their national team playing home.

I hope with slot added for FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States give chance for ASEAN national team get chance participants there and have one or two years time preparing for qualifier stage, I sure between Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam have opportunity will be success on qualifier group stage.

The weakest zone without a doubt it South Asia. We have a bunch of countries that are all ranked below 100 as per FIFA. And the fun fact is that this zone has a population of 2 billion, and has one of the most rapid population growth rates for any part of the globe. In Asia, the football strongholds are the middle-eastern countries (including Iran) and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Australia is more like an outlier which has shown enormous growth over the years. And then we have Central Asia (especially Uzbekistan) which has also shown significant improvement.

Taking a quick look at this report from top Asian teams and how they performed during the recent world cups I can say most of the Asian teams even Japan as the first team on the list and first team of Asia mostly failed to pass the staging phase of the world cup and this shows us the gap between Asian teams and Europian teams except for South Korea where they could even be in the semi-final match for once. That's the reason to say increasing the number of teams in the world cup can't be good because there will be more weak teams there.

[gagux123]

Did I mention Pakistan in my comment? Did I say there is no interest in football in any Asian country? On the contrary, I noticed how much football has progressed in many Asian countries, and I particularly highlighted Japan, South Korea and China. However, the fact remains that this development is not balanced and equal in all Asian countries, and I stand behind it.
Football is definitely not the number one sport in India, as far as I heard from the interview with their Croatian coach Stimac.

the world cup is a very prestigious event and many people are crazy about it, even the average country in the world is investing heavily in preparation for the 2026 world cup but it's a shame that football is not a popular sport in india but cricket even though they have a large population and it's impossible not to have big football talent there

korea, japan, saudi arabia, australia are countries that have always been representatives of asia because in these countries football is their main focus

Reading your comment, I also agree with what you said...
These countries are references for ""being on the Asian continent"", but a country that can become a reference and also have an improved technical level of football is China!
Do you believe that China will be able to become some kind of football reference in the world in the future?

Or is this impossible to happen?

[nullama]

~snip~
The weakest zone without a doubt it South Asia. We have a bunch of countries that are all ranked below 100 as per FIFA. And the fun fact is that this zone has a population of 2 billion, and has one of the most rapid population growth rates for any part of the globe. In Asia, the football strongholds are the middle-eastern countries (including Iran) and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Australia is more like an outlier which has shown enormous growth over the years. And then we have Central Asia (especially Uzbekistan) which has also shown significant improvement.

I would argue that the weakest zone is Oceania.

Australia was winning all the time there, and that's why they went to Asia, as a step up.

So, by that logic, Asia would be better than Oceania. All those small islands don't really have amazing squads. New Zealand is probably the best one now by far, and it's still sub-par.

[Strongkored]

Taking a quick look at this report from top Asian teams and how they performed during the recent world cups I can say most of the Asian teams even Japan as the first team on the list and first team of Asia mostly failed to pass the staging phase of the world cup and this shows us the gap between Asian teams and Europian teams except for South Korea where they could even be in the semi-final match for once. That's the reason to say increasing the number of teams in the world cup can't be good because there will be more weak teams there.

I just think the reason why FIFA is also adding World Cup participants besides making football more evenly distributed globally is also the economic factor with more and more countries participating will increase the number of countries that want to buy broadcast rights from existing matches, we know that FIFA is becoming one of the sports organizations that is always aiming for big profits especially the world cup is a valuable tournament, so seeing that there will be more and more weak teams participating in the world cup later is not the concern of FIFA because that is the concern of the participating countries.

[Getmon]

Taking a quick look at this report from top Asian teams and how they performed during the recent world cups I can say most of the Asian teams even Japan as the first team on the list and first team of Asia mostly failed to pass the staging phase of the world cup and this shows us the gap between Asian teams and Europian teams except for South Korea where they could even be in the semi-final match for once. That's the reason to say increasing the number of teams in the world cup can't be good because there will be more weak teams there.

I just think the reason why FIFA is also adding World Cup participants besides making football more evenly distributed globally is also the economic factor with more and more countries participating will increase the number of countries that want to buy broadcast rights from existing matches, we know that FIFA is becoming one of the sports organizations that is always aiming for big profits especially the world cup is a valuable tournament, so seeing that there will be more and more weak teams participating in the world cup later is not the concern of FIFA because that is the concern of the participating countries.

The broadcast rights for the World Cup are purchased by a lot of countries that are not represented. However, it probably costs less than a broadcast right to a participating country. The additional number of participants per region is still unknown to me, but I anticipate that Europe and CONCACAF will receive more. It may be unfair to countries that are stronger than those from other regional confederations, such as Asia, but were unable to qualify for the World Cup. Additionally, more fans are anticipated to attend, which will result in increased revenue for FIFA and the host country.

[Masplanc]

Despite fifa has increased the number of teams that will be participating in the 2026 World competition doesn't mean every national team will be participating in the world cup. Their are competition teams are supposed to play and get qualify that must make them to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.

[KTChampions]

The broadcast rights for the World Cup are purchased by a lot of countries that are not represented. However, it probably costs less than a broadcast right to a participating country. The additional number of participants per region is still unknown to me, but I anticipate that Europe and CONCACAF will receive more. It may be unfair to countries that are stronger than those from other regional confederations, such as Asia, but were unable to qualify for the World Cup. Additionally, more fans are anticipated to attend, which will result in increased revenue for FIFA and the host country.

What is the injustice? Name the countries that are strong enough to get to the World Cup but they don't have enough tickets? I think that you are unlikely to name such teams from the Asian region that would be stronger than the corresponding teams from Europe. The World Cup should be a tournament of the strongest teams in the world, and not a festival of teams that get a ticket only because of geography.

[Leviathan.007]

Taking a quick look at this report from top Asian teams and how they performed during the recent world cups I can say most of the Asian teams even Japan as the first team on the list and first team of Asia mostly failed to pass the staging phase of the world cup and this shows us the gap between Asian teams and Europian teams except for South Korea where they could even be in the semi-final match for once. That's the reason to say increasing the number of teams in the world cup can't be good because there will be more weak teams there.

I just think the reason why FIFA is also adding World Cup participants besides making football more evenly distributed globally is also the economic factor with more and more countries participating will increase the number of countries that want to buy broadcast rights from existing matches, we know that FIFA is becoming one of the sports organizations that is always aiming for big profits especially the world cup is a valuable tournament, so seeing that there will be more and more weak teams participating in the world cup later is not the concern of FIFA because that is the concern of the participating countries.

To me, it seems like FIFA added more national teams mostly because there are many national teams in the world that could never be a part of the world cup in history and that's why they added more teams to let them give a chance to a part of the world cup. but this will surely decrease the quality of the world cup and it can be a reason for many strong teams to have easy games against the teams they couldn't be a part of the world cup normally.

[gagux123]

The broadcast rights for the World Cup are purchased by a lot of countries that are not represented. However, it probably costs less than a broadcast right to a participating country. The additional number of participants per region is still unknown to me, but I anticipate that Europe and CONCACAF will receive more. It may be unfair to countries that are stronger than those from other regional confederations, such as Asia, but were unable to qualify for the World Cup. Additionally, more fans are anticipated to attend, which will result in increased revenue for FIFA and the host country.

What is the injustice? Name the countries that are strong enough to get to the World Cup but they don't have enough tickets? I think that you are unlikely to name such teams from the Asian region that would be stronger than the corresponding teams from Europe. The World Cup should be a tournament of the strongest teams in the world, and not a festival of teams that get a ticket only because of geography.

Not wanting to discredit the other teams, but I also agree with holding a world cup selecting the best teams, in a way, practice football in their country.

Well, an interesting factor that I noticed in this last World Cup, several teams are evolving and standing out in the World Cup, especially in Qatar, in my entire life I would never have imagined that Morocco could reach where it did in the World Cup.

With these various events happening, various teams (weak or strong) are training hard, for a chance to participate in the world cup and surprise everyone!

[KTChampions]

What is the injustice? Name the countries that are strong enough to get to the World Cup but they don't have enough tickets? I think that you are unlikely to name such teams from the Asian region that would be stronger than the corresponding teams from Europe. The World Cup should be a tournament of the strongest teams in the world, and not a festival of teams that get a ticket only because of geography.

Not wanting to discredit the other teams, but I also agree with holding a world cup selecting the best teams, in a way, practice football in their country.

Well, an interesting factor that I noticed in this last World Cup, several teams are evolving and standing out in the World Cup, especially in Qatar, in my entire life I would never have imagined that Morocco could reach where it did in the World Cup.

With these various events happening, various teams (weak or strong) are training hard, for a chance to participate in the world cup and surprise everyone!

By the way, speaking of discrediting... you know, there is such a Champions League tournament? 
The irony is that for a long time many clubs have been participating in it that not only are not champions of their countries, but do not even get into the top three. As a result, this tournament "starts" with the playoffs and most of the group games suck. With the World Cup everything is the same and now it will be even worse.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Taking a quick look at this report from top Asian teams and how they performed during the recent world cups I can say most of the Asian teams even Japan as the first team on the list and first team of Asia mostly failed to pass the staging phase of the world cup and this shows us the gap between Asian teams and Europian teams except for South Korea where they could even be in the semi-final match for once. That's the reason to say increasing the number of teams in the world cup can't be good because there will be more weak teams there.

I just think the reason why FIFA is also adding World Cup participants besides making football more evenly distributed globally is also the economic factor with more and more countries participating will increase the number of countries that want to buy broadcast rights from existing matches, we know that FIFA is becoming one of the sports organizations that is always aiming for big profits especially the world cup is a valuable tournament, so seeing that there will be more and more weak teams participating in the world cup later is not the concern of FIFA because that is the concern of the participating countries.

To me, it seems like FIFA added more national teams mostly because there are many national teams in the world that could never be a part of the world cup in history and that's why they added more teams to let them give a chance to a part of the world cup. but this will surely decrease the quality of the world cup and it can be a reason for many strong teams to have easy games against the teams they couldn't be a part of the world cup normally.

I have a different thought to this matter though, I personally feel that FIFA decided to add more national team to the 2026 world cup solely because the tournament will be hosted in three different countries, and having just a few national teams divided amongst this three countries that would be hosting the world cup simply means that each of these countries might not have enough games to host, this i believe is the reason why FIFA felt the need to add more national team to game, so that each of this countries(Canada, Mexico and USA) will all have a good number of team playing on each.

But then, I still agree with your point though, adding more teams have given opportunities to some teams that have never gotten the chance to play in the world cup before.

[n0ne]

~snip~
The weakest zone without a doubt it South Asia. We have a bunch of countries that are all ranked below 100 as per FIFA. And the fun fact is that this zone has a population of 2 billion, and has one of the most rapid population growth rates for any part of the globe. In Asia, the football strongholds are the middle-eastern countries (including Iran) and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Australia is more like an outlier which has shown enormous growth over the years. And then we have Central Asia (especially Uzbekistan) which has also shown significant improvement.

I would argue that the weakest zone is Oceania.

Australia was winning all the time there, and that's why they went to Asia, as a step up.

So, by that logic, Asia would be better than Oceania. All those small islands don't really have amazing squads. New Zealand is probably the best one now by far, and it's still sub-par.

This list is of the year 2021. Now this could've got big difference. Based on the ranking it looks like the first six teams on the list could easily make its entry as the number of participants have been increased. Based on the updated list there were little changes.



I believed China to have good team based on their competing performance in the Olympics, big the thing is different with football. Most welcome the Arab nations have given much importance to football and they're placed at the lead position.

[STT]

Japan has demographic reasons why its challenged in any improvements, they have one of the oldest average age populations.  Somewhere like India with a majority of the population 30 or below should be able to improve far quicker with the mass of available people in the right age group.   That factor is probably a large part of what drives the eternal economy in footbal; that throws forward stars into world cup level football.  Clubs can buy stars, nations must produce quality at every level down to beginners to advance at their best.

[Sithara007]

Japan has demographic reasons why its challenged in any improvements, they have one of the oldest average age populations.  Somewhere like India with a majority of the population 30 or below should be able to improve far quicker with the mass of available people in the right age group.   That factor is probably a large part of what drives the eternal economy in footbal; that throws forward stars into world cup level football.  Clubs can buy stars, nations must produce quality at every level down to beginners to advance at their best.

We have a tendency to give undue importance to demographics. The current world champions have a population of 45 million, while India and China, with a combined population of 2,800 million failed to even qualify for the FIFA World Cup. In football, it is quality that matters and not the quantity. There are countries such as United States and Saudi Arabia, which are populous as well as rich. But these countries are not considered as superpowers in football. Once again, it proves that population and money can help only up to a certain extent.

Japan has remained as one of the most rapidly ageing countries for the last 2-3 decades. Only very recently the birth rate in some of the other countries (such as South Korea and Taiwan) went down below the level of Japan. All that said, Japan is still a country with 125 million people (3x the population of Argentina). So why the Japanese team is so weak. One reason maybe that the local league is not that strong. But then Argentina also doesn't have a very good local league. Most of their players depend on the UEFA leagues, such as EPL, Serie A, La Liga and Ligue 1. 

[LUCKMCFLY]

Wow, this is really great. Now that 48 teams will be able to participate in the FIFA worldcup it will open up opportunities for other countries as well.
I wonder if India will be able to be one of those countries but I guess it's hard to be able to qualify for the FIFA world cup.
2026 is still far way and we don't know what more additional rules FIFA brings in this time.
Fifa 2022 was truly amazing with Argentina winning a victorious match. Let's what 2026 has in store for us.

In the 2026 World Cup I am sure that there will be at least 2 to 3 teams participating for the first time in a World Cup.

About India, at least the suspension was lifted, and the country can try to qualify, but the road is hard, the Fifa ban showed that there are serious problems in the Indian soccer confederation.
There's 8 spots for Asia for 2026, India is 106th in FIFA Ranking, and only 19th in AFC

In my predictions, the "confirmed" countries that will qualify will be:

Japan
Iran
South Korea
Australia
Saudi Arabia

These 5 countries are in a better level than any others, so there's 3 spots remaining.
For the number of inhabitants that India has, it would be a great deal for FIFA if the country participated in a cup, and it would certainly help to draw attention to soccer in the country, but it is very difficult to qualify.

Well, I hope that these teams can qualify, however I would be careful because in 4 years there may be many changes in the teams of each country, be it for the better or for the worse, I would like to see India in a World Cup, the football of that country intrigues me , it has never been seen in such depth nor do I know their local football very well, but here in the forum there are many people from India who know a lot about football, which means that there is a high level of fans of good football, besides this These types of countries deserve a chance at the World Cup, but they have to play very well to be at the level.

[Hispo]

Japan has demographic reasons why its challenged in any improvements, they have one of the oldest average age populations.  Somewhere like India with a majority of the population 30 or below should be able to improve far quicker with the mass of available people in the right age group.   That factor is probably a large part of what drives the eternal economy in footbal; that throws forward stars into world cup level football.  Clubs can buy stars, nations must produce quality at every level down to beginners to advance at their best.

It would makes sense that the aging population of Japan is not helping them to get closer to the world cup, but besides of that, I think there are also other factors that could be minimizing their possibilities.

If I had to guess, I would say the Japanese culture towards football is very different from what we see in countries that are considered to be the best ones and with the best performances. In Latin America, the football is a passion which starts at a very young age, here you can see children and teens not only watching the matches and following their favorite teams, but also partaking in their own matches, practicing during years and years, not matter whether they come from a middle-class family or a low-class family, they all do it and their training can be intensive.

Those who become professionals are generally the best of the best.

in Japan, I doubt it is like here. So the career path in that country does not pick the best talents among the people.

[Leviathan.007]

Wow, this is really great. Now that 48 teams will be able to participate in the FIFA worldcup it will open up opportunities for other countries as well.
I wonder if India will be able to be one of those countries but I guess it's hard to be able to qualify for the FIFA world cup.
2026 is still far way and we don't know what more additional rules FIFA brings in this time.
Fifa 2022 was truly amazing with Argentina winning a victorious match. Let's what 2026 has in store for us.

In the 2026 World Cup I am sure that there will be at least 2 to 3 teams participating for the first time in a World Cup.

About India, at least the suspension was lifted, and the country can try to qualify, but the road is hard, the Fifa ban showed that there are serious problems in the Indian soccer confederation.
There's 8 spots for Asia for 2026, India is 106th in FIFA Ranking, and only 19th in AFC

In my predictions, the "confirmed" countries that will qualify will be:

Japan
Iran
South Korea
Australia
Saudi Arabia

These 5 countries are in a better level than any others, so there's 3 spots remaining.
For the number of inhabitants that India has, it would be a great deal for FIFA if the country participated in a cup, and it would certainly help to draw attention to soccer in the country, but it is very difficult to qualify.

Still, too soon total about the qualified teams for the next world cup and we can't consider the current situation of the national teams to say whether they will be qualified for the next world cup or not. Regarding Asia usually, we have some teams that will get qualified every year and the team you write about here usually get qualified in any world cup especially Japan, Iran, and South Korea they even try to pass the staging group every time but this time Saudi Arabia invested a lot and I guess they will be qualified before any team.