A 48 team World Cup in 2026 - How has the World Cup format changed since 1930?

World Cup Goal by Pele in Sweden

1958 – SWEDEN – 16 TEAMS – 35 MATCHES

The failures of the format from the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland were soon built upon for the 1958 World Cup.

The format was only slightly with every team now playing three matches in the group stage, before the top two from each group would qualify for the knockout stage. However, this meant that three of the groups had teams in joint second looking to proceed to the next stage, with the final group also requiring a play-off to clarify which team qualified in first place.

To separate who would who qualify ahead of one other, the use of goal average was exercised.

However, Sweden pushed for the play-off matches to help boost their revenue from the tournament, arguing that they shouldn’t change the rules of the tournament when it was already underway. Instead, the goal average was used to separate first from second place in Group Two, with France finishing ahead of Yugoslavia because of this ruling. This was then followed by a knockout stage, beginning at the quarter finals.