Miguel Delaney

It kind of occurred to me, this is taking ages, like 48 teams to go through it all.

But even in very petty ways.

One of the classics of the World Cup is how quickly, especially if you're a kid, how quickly you absorb who's in what group.

That's almost impossible to do now.

There's too much.

And I think it's sort of the same with the initial calendar for the group stage.

There's almost too much to consume.

There's this wall of football.

And that will affect the tournament itself.

Because I was looking at the Argentina squad there, I say.

They've won three tournaments in a row.

You would say they're in fairly good nick.

They topped the South American group so easily.

Messi top score, all of this.

So they look formidable.

But Spain looked formidable before 2014, before a massive crash.

And given the age of that team, and given how little the profile has changed since 2022...

I think the Argentina team would be set for a bad crash, like Spain going out in 2014 in the group stage, like Germany 2018, like Italy 2010, except the system may now save them because it's so big and because there's an asymmetrical 48 teams.

Like we have this, I've always hated this absurdity of kind of third place teams going through, even if Ireland benefited from the past.

It was like 1990 and 94 with the way it went as well.