Gianni Infantino, the new president of FIFA, recently announced that he has got a plan to expand the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams. There are two possible new formats. One of them still involves a 32 country group stage but there would be a special play-in round at the start of the tournament. The other possible format includes an expanded group stage with more games than ever. These new reforms would not be implemented until the 2026 World Cup, which as of right now has a legit possibility of being in the United States.

Either way, Gianni is clearly looking to make his mark on the FIFA presidency by making the process of qualifying for the World Cup more accessible for the fringe nations of Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and others - most of these countries are developing nations on the brink of finding success in the global game.

With this talk of expansion, comes controversy. Most notably from the Europeans, who host most of the soccer talk shows on this side of the Atlantic. Almost all that I have listened to, from the World Football Podcast to ESPNFC (just to name a few) don't like the idea of an expanded World Cup because it would "dilute" the tournament and give births to nations who "don't deserve it".

I beg to differ.

What the "eurosnobs" tend to forget is that the countries that would benefit from this new reform field quality teams that have only narrowly missed out on World Cups in the past. These countries include the mighty China who as a nation are just starting to take the game seriously, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and Canada - just to name a handfull.

This new World Cup format would give these nations an actual legitimate shot at making the big tournament and maybe compete for it (like Iceland and Wales did in this year's Euro's). This would also have spillover effects in these given countries who will begin get excited about growing soccer even more, as fans finally get the chance to compete against the giants of the soccer world.

This World Cup reform would be a monumental shift for the global game because it would give multiple unknown soccer countries the opportunity to prove themselves against the world's best and continue to help foster the shifting balance of the power in the global game away from Europe - and hopefully, one day, bringing a World Cup to a new soccer power outside of Europe and South America.