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Cape Verde's underdog run is the latest positive tournament expansion story
A regular discussion we've seen across sports is leagues trying to expand their championship tournaments, frequently with the context of heavy pushback from media members and fans. That's happened recently with the NFL playoffs (the latest change there was the jump from 12 to 14 teams beginning in 2020), the MLB playoffs (from 10 to 12 teams beginning in 2022, with an odd 16-team playoff in 2020 thanks to a COVID-shortened season), the NBA playoffs (play-in games for the seventh through 10th teams in each conference beginning in 2021), the College Football Playoff (from four to 12 teams beginning in 2024, likely to expand even further shortly), and the NCAA men's basketball tournament (from 64 or 68 teams counting play-ins to 76 teams beginning next year). And we're currently seeing it in the FIFA World Cup, which went from 32 teams in 2022 to 48 in the ongoing 2026 tournament.
Whenever one of these leagues has expanded their associated championship tournament, there has been significant backlash. Some of that has been from fans, but what's perhaps even more notable is the way numerous media members have often delivered over-the-top critiques of expansion, claiming they're representing fan interests rather than their own. But while there's merit to some skepticism of expansion for expansion's sake, there are obvious benefits to larger championship tournaments as well, perhaps especially in international events where there isn't an equivalent "season" with everyone playing each other. Some of those are financial, but some go beyond that. And Cape Verde's run in this World Cup, capped off with a remarkable game Friday that had them holding serve with reigning World Cup champions Argentina through extra time before eventually falling 3-2, is the perfect example of what benefits tournament expansion can bring if done right.
There are plenty of examples in soccer of underdog teams making matches interesting before eventually conceding a goal and then almost giving up. That wasn't what happened with Cape Verde. While Argentina was the stronger team overall, Cape Verde twice came back to equalize, first in regulation and then again in extra time. And The Athletic had Argentina with eight chances to Cape Verde's three after 90 minutes, but both sides with 11 after extra time, which saw a fantastic final flurry from the Blue Sharks (what a team name!) in an attempt to equalize. This one very easily could have gone either way, and on the day, this team from this tiny country held their own against the reigning World Cup champions, from a nation with more than 90 times their country's population.
It's understandable why some immediately react negatively to talk of tournament expansion. First off, there's the powerful draw of nostalgia: sports fandom often comes with a lot of looking back, and with a lot of deciding that the perfect Platonic form of the sport was what you watched growing up, so anything different than that must be not quite as good. Beyond that, tournament expansion is unquestionably good for league business (until a certain point of overdilution, which we'll get to), with more games to sell broadcasting rights to and in-person tickets to, and some fans and media members immediately position themselves as opposed to anything that smacks of being good business. And maybe the best argument against tournament expansion is that having more teams in the playoffs or championship tournament devalues the regular season and means fewer teams that were the best all season long actually win the postseason title, as there are more opponents and a longer playoff road for them. But all of these arguments overlook the cases where expansion can actually produce an on-field product that many find more appealing.
The Cape Verde story is a great example of that. The West African island archipelago has been independent of Portugal since 1975, but only had 491,000 people as of the 2021 census (versus Argentina's 46 million as of 2022). The Blue Sharks played their first FIFA match in 1978, but didn't qualify for the African Cup of Nations until 2013, and had never qualified for the World Cup before this expanded edition of the tournament. (They did place second in their Confederation of African Football qualifying group for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but only the top teams in each of those groups advanced to the third and final round of qualification for the five berths at stake.) This time around, they claimed one of the nine full slots (plus one interconfederation playoff spot) for Africa by winning their group, which also included Cameroon and Libya. When they got in, they became the smallest country by land mass and the second-smallest by population (behind Iceland) to ever qualify for a FIFA World Cup, until Curaçao beat them in both categories by also qualifying five weeks later. The Cape Verde team had much more success at this tournament than Curaçao (which earned one draw and two losses), though, earning group stage draws against powerhouses Spain and Uruguay (as well as Saudi Arabia) before that climatic match against Argentina.
A big reason why playoffs and tournaments can be so exciting is that the unexpected can come to life. (See Vin Scully's "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!" on Kirk Gibson's 1988 home run.) As Billy Beane (the real one, not the Brad Pitt portrayal) famously said in Moneyball, "My s**t doesn't work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f***ing luck." And that's perhaps even more so the case in tournaments that have or get to a single-elimination point. We've seen that in NCAA basketball in particular with Cinderella runs, including 16-seed UMBC over 1-seeded UVA in 2018 (the first 16-over-1 result in that tournament's history, although another's happened since, with Fairleigh Dickenson beating Purdue in 2023). Longer series tend to level out in favour of the favoured team (although it's notable that hockey, despite seven-game series throughout its playoffs, has had numerous bottom seeds advance to the Stanley Cup Final in the past few decades, perhaps proof of how much one goalie getting ludicrously hot at the right time can impact that sport), while single-game elimination sets up more potential big upsets. But upsets are only noteworthy if they're rare, as they are in that NCAA men's basketball tournament: the all-time record of 16 seeds against 1 seeds is 2-166 after this year's tournament, another sweep for the No. 1s.
And that's really the crucial balance that needs to be struck with expansion. More teams having a chance to compete for a top prize can be great, especially in an international tournament like the World Cup where there isn't really a "this devalues the regular season" argument. There is somewhat of a corresponding "This devalues the confederation qualifying playoffs" case, but those playoffs are less-established and less-watched, and why not see how some of these outsider teams do against world competition rather than regional competition?
Expansion also supports multi-host setups such as what we have at this World Cup, a joint venture between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Three guaranteed host berths out of 48 teams is 6.25 per cent, equal to the two of 32 for joint hosts Japan and South Korea in 2002. But three host spots amongst 32 teams would have been 9.38 per cent. Having the U.S., Mexico, and Canada all in a 32-team field wouldn't have been the end of the world, especially as those first two countries regularly qualify (and Canada qualified in 2022), but a 48-team field is better for multi-host setups going forward, and spreading a tournament like this over multiple countries has significant advantages, helping to share the infrastructure and security burdens.
The problem with tournament expansion comes if it produces a lot of rollover games where low-qualifying sides are thoroughly outclassed. That leads to running-up-the-score debates, but worse, it often leads to lower ratings and reduced ticket demand. (See college football's "buy games" with FBS powerhouses hosting FCS teams for an example of matchups where the upsets are too rare and the games often aren't even highly watched.) So if expansion gets to a point where early-round games are always low-watched walkovers, that's a problem.
But that hasn't really been the case with any of these recent expansions this far. And it certainly hasn't been the case with this World Cup, which has produced great drama and ratings to date. And there were plenty of walkovers in the old setups, including the record of Hungary 10, El Salvador 1 in 1982 (a 24-team tournament). Thus, there don't seem to be a lot of big downsides to this particular expansion to date.
And that's maybe worth considering in the context of reactions to expansion overall. Yes, expansions are about leagues making more money, but that's not inherently bad for fans (indeed, it can come with benefits if it leads to some reinvestment in the product). Yes, expansions make it harder to directly compare current tournaments to past ones, but all these sports have changed massively over time anyways: historical comparisons are still notable, but they should always come with era context, and that's true well beyond expansion. And yes, some expansions may actually go too far and produce a diluted product that leads to less revenue and ratings for constant walkover early stages. But that hasn't really seemed to happen yet with recent expansions, and this World Cup one in particular seems to be working out very well, adding some fun new teams to the mix of traditional powerhouses. The takeaway to date is that while bigger isn't always necessarily better for tournaments, it isn't always necessarily bad either.
