Kanchelskis: The large number of teams in the 2026 World Cup will harm quality

Former Russia national team forward Andrey Kanchelskis shared his thoughts about the 2026 World Cup. This was reported by Zamin.uz.

In an interview with the publication "Euro-Football.Ru," he spoke about the increase in the number of teams in the tournament. This was reported by euro-football.ru.

Kanchelskis emphasized that increasing the number of teams to 48 in the World Cup could negatively affect the quality of the competition. According to him, in such a scenario, strong national teams like Spain or Germany are likely to defeat relatively weaker opponents such as Curaçao by a large margin.

However, such matches may not be very interesting for spectators. Additionally, the increase in the number of participants reduces the intrigue and the share of unexpected results in the tournament.

It is worth noting that the 2026 World Cup will be held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The tournament will take place from June 11 to July 19 and will feature 48 national teams for the first time.

This tournament will have the largest number of participants in the history of the World Cup.