Joachim Löw has his own opinion on the World Cup being expanded to 64 teams! | OneFootball

Joachim Löw has his own opinion on the World Cup being expanded to 64 teams! | OneFootball

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·28 September 2025

Joachim Löw has his own opinion on the World Cup being expanded to 64 teams!

Article image:Joachim Löw has his own opinion on the World Cup being expanded to 64 teams!

The 2014 World Cup champion doesn't like the idea.

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The beautiful game's ultimate spectacle, the FIFA World Cup, is poised for its most dramatic transformation yet. Recent discussions between football's most powerful figures suggest a future where the tournament expands to an unprecedented 64 teams.

This potential leap has not gone unnoticed by one of the sport's most respected voices, former World Cup-winning manager Joachim Löw, who has expressed serious reservations about the direction the game is taking.

Fans want to see, above all, high-level football.

Löw said.

Löw, who masterminded Germany's 2014 triumph, believes that the soul of tournaments like the World Cup and the European Championships lies in the high-stakes, elite-level clashes that capture the world's attention. He argues that this very essence is being diluted.

With the upcoming 2026 World Cup in North America already set to grow from 32 to 48 participants, Löw contends that this initial expansion alone compromises the tournament's quality by reducing the frequency of those marquee matchups.

The push for growth, however, shows no signs of slowing. In a significant meeting in New York, FIFA President Gianni Infantino and CONMEBOL chief Alejandro Domínguez explored the radical proposal of escalating to a 64-team format for the 2030 edition. Should this plan receive the green light, the footballing calendar would be dominated by a mammoth event featuring 128 matches—a staggering figure that doubles the number of games played in any World Cup from 1998 right through to the recent 2022 tournament in Qatar.

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