Welcome everybody to Soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell. This week, as ever, I'm joined by the man himself, Mr. Graham Ruffman,

to talk the expanded World Cup. Graham, are you excited, apprehensive, sort of neutral about this one?

Where are we? I'm certainly ready for our weekly appointment to talk about FIFA's greet, which is...

I mean, that's the thing, right? So that is partially why I wanted to talk about this's greed, which is... I mean, that's the thing, right?

So that is partially why I wanted to talk about this, because it is a little bit self-indulgent. As the World Cup gets closer, I keep getting questions from friends, family, like, I was going to say colleagues, but not really, because colleagues, I think, feel the exact same. Just sort of like, are you really excited about the World Cup? But my answer generally is yes, but I find myself less excited about this World Cup

that I've been. I think a lot of that has to do with current American geopolitics and

calls to boycott and the like. But that aside, at least some of it has to do with the expanded

format. And so what we want to do today is look at why FIFA

decided to expand the format for the World Cup, the legitimate benefits of which there are several,

and then the obvious drawbacks, the obvious other reasons why this was done, and just sort of

get to the bottom of the heart of the matter. Graham, how does that sound for you? Yeah, I think it's a good idea. This was your suggestion, Taylor. And I think it's a good idea to recap how we got here with the expanded format, because we mentioned the expanded World Cup a lot, either on, on 1-1, on this feed, when we're doing the series on the League of Qualified Nations, or on the main feed itself. And so I think it's worth kind of rewinding and going back to how it got to this point and what our actual opinions are

and what the positives and the negatives are of this new format. Now, Graham, you say how it's

expanded over the years. My assumption was that from 1930 on it was just 32 teams and that's how

it's always been. Whatever do you mean? So it actually started off with 13 teams. That nice

round number of 13 teams in 1930. I think qualifying was can you get to the World Cup? If so,

you've qualified. Congratulations.

Yeah, so this actually wasn't in my research, so I'm kind of going off my subconscious

here.

I think England were invited, but turned up.

Actually, I think maybe all the home nations were invited, which might explain why it

was 13 teams, but they saw it as a threat to, until that point, British soccer had been very much the be-all and end-all.

And so they saw this tournament as a threat.

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