The Ladies’s World Cup will improve to 48 groups in 2031 when the USA is anticipated to host the event, FIFA confirmed Friday.
FIFA has wished to develop the ladies’s event from 32 groups to match the boys’s World Cup which has 48 groups for the primary time subsequent yr, when the U.S. will co-host with Canada and Mexico.
The choice follows one month after FIFA president Gianni Infantino mentioned it had only one candidate bidding for every of the 2031 and 2035 ladies’s tournaments — the U.S. adopted by the UK. FIFA is anticipated to verify these two hosts subsequent yr.
Brazil will host a 32-team Ladies’s World Cup in 2027.
FIFA mentioned the larger, 104-game event with 48 groups “will considerably broaden illustration, providing extra nations and gamers entry to elite competitors and accelerating funding in ladies’s soccer worldwide.”
The Ladies’s World Cup had simply 16 groups as not too long ago because the 2011 version in Germany, 24 groups at every of the subsequent two tournaments in Canada and France, then 32 groups for the primary time in 2023 co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
The 2023 version defied issues the event had grown too quick, would have too many overmatched groups and too many lop-sided outcomes.
In 2019, the defending champion U.S. crew beat Thailand 13-0 of their opening group-stage recreation.
In 2023, the most important win was the Netherlands beating Thailand 7-0, and the event “set a brand new customary for world competitiveness,” Infantino mentioned Friday in a press release, as a result of “groups from all confederations gained at the very least one recreation and groups from 5 confederations reached the knockout stage.”
Reporting by The Related Press.
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