Sanguine It's a juggling act. Only Bolivia (83) and Venezuela (57) are ranked outside the top 50 by FIFA, so it is a 'high quality' confederation. And the flip side of fewer places, given that broadly Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay will always get there, is that CONMEBOL qualification just becomes the other sides going for one or two spots.
But agree that seven feels one or two too many.
Will be good to see more African teams involved in 2026 - number of qualifiers up to nine in the new format. Hopefully one or two 'new' ones in there. Sudan currently going very well, albeit it is early stages. They were ranked 131 at the start of qualifying but top their group at the halfway stage. And Rwanda (139) beat South Africa to top their group after four games. Comoros going well too, they have beaten Ghana.
Tough to qualify still though, only group winners go to the finals.
I've thought for a while the North American and South American qualifiers should be merged together and that was for a 32 team competition.
There were 35 entrants to this World Cup from North America and ten from South America - so you'd have a 45 team qualification process (notwithstanding hosts) with twelve qualifying spots (including hosts). That would be similar to the European (54), African (53) and Asian (46) qualifying tournaments.
Certainly Mexico and the United States would benefit from playing against better sides on a more regular basis - the smaller North American sides (Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, etc.) and weaker South Americans (Bolivia, Paraguay, Venezuela, etc.) would too.
The only question would be what format would be appropriate. Just as Spain vs Liechtenstein makes little sense from a competitive stand point, Argentina vs St Kitts and Nevis makes no sense. Economically though, the smaller North American sides may benefit from playing bigger sides through broadcast and advertising revenue and that would assist their development as footballing nations.
Asia and North America currently have a system of pre-qualifying, where smaller sides have to qualify to the latter stages before playing against the better sides - that system could work.
Also thought the Oceania qualifiers should be grouped with the Asian ones, which would allow New Zealand to play better sides and the smaller Oceania and Asian sides to compete with each other. The weakness of the Oceania area is why Australia left.
) so they cannot qualify on March 20th or March 25th.