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FIFA has abandoned plans championed by its president to expand the 2022 World Cup to include 48 teams, concluding that it could not host the larger tournament in Qatar or come up with a solution to share the event with the tiny gulf emirate’s neighbors.
The expansion proposal, proposed and pressed by FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, might have proved to be a popular one if presented for a vote by FIFA’s member associations at the organization’s annual congress next month in Paris. But an ongoing political and economic blockade of Qatar by some of its neighbors, most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, created intractable practical obstacles that could not be overcome.