Supersized World Cup bracket proves you can’t have too much of a good thing

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A month ago, there was only one issue of wide global interest that you could find anything close to a consensus on – that 48 teams is too many in a World Cup.

“If you want to ruin something, this is the path you should take,” German legend Berti Vogts said back when the decision to expand was announced. That reaction captured the tone.

Two weeks in, we’ve learned something about consensus. It can be overrated.

The 48-team phase of the World Cup is about to end, and it has been glorious. Rather than half the entrants banging on the heads of the other half like a bongo, it’s been consistently surprising and entertaining. Without 48 teams, there would be no Cape Verde, no Scotland vs. Haiti and no South Africa pulling it out right at the end.

If anything, the competitiveness was improved. Take Group D – the U.S. beat Paraguay, who beat Turkey, who beat the U.S. Or Group E – Germany beat Ivory Coast, who beat Ecuador, who beat Germany. That last match, Germany vs. Ecuador, may have been the most compelling of the tournament to that point.

There were plenty of thumpings and a few dreary draws, but that’s not new. As it turns out, what expansion eliminated were the hugely hyped duds between major powers that had previously featured in opening rounds.

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Everybody wants to see Brazil-Spain straight away at a World Cup. Everybody except for Brazil and Spain. Neither wants to give anything away in a non-elimination game against a team they’re likely to face later. Those matches were almost always cagey, half-speed affairs. Now that they’re gone, you don’t miss them. I’ll take my Brazil-Spain in a semi-final, thanks very much.

In this opening round, every match featured at least one team that was absolutely going for it, often both of them. The better ones had no reason to hold anything back, while the lesser ones had nothing to lose.

The other thing that nobody considered about an expansion is that it would create two World Cups. There is the one they’ve just played − the world’s World Cup.

Everybody with a reasonable claim on competence gets a chance. It’s an open table at a world poker championship. You think you can roll with the big boys? Great. Get your bankroll together, get on a plane and get to Las Vegas. Let’s see what you can do.

Most pretenders will be wiped out, but one or two might bluff their way to a final table. It might not even be because they’re good. They might just be lucky. Canada is shaping up as one of those lucky teams. Isn’t that fun?

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Now that everyone’s had their fair shot at it, the actual World Cup can begin. This is the one Vogts et al were worried about losing. They haven’t. They just had to wait a bit for it to start.

If you liked the last World Cup – and you should – you’re about to see it played for keeps. It’s a bit like having a regular season that is all elimination games.

The competition is not balanced. What does U.S.-Bosnia have in common with Brazil-Japan? Nothing, except that they use the same ball. Both teams in the first encounter would probably lose to both teams in the second, but that’s life. You don’t get to pick your opponents.

Another thing that’s becoming clear now is that the old system overprivileged the traditional powers.

Privileged is fine. Everybody earns their seeding through their world ranking, which in turn is earned by winning football matches. But it’s another thing to have the path both smoothed and installed on a downhill gradient.

In previous World Cups, as long as they performed to their minimum standard, the best teams didn’t face anyone in a game that actually mattered until the quarter-finals. Sometimes, the semi-finals.

I’m thinking here of Germany in 2002. Its opponents at that World Cup, in order – Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Cameroon, Paraguay, the U.S. and South Korea. It didn’t face top-tier competition until the final – Brazil. That was the only time during the whole thing that the Germans really turned it on, and they lost.

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Whoever wins this World Cup is going to have to climb over at least a couple of big timers, maybe three. We’ll see how the draw shakes out.

The last argument against expanding the World Cup is time. It takes up too much of it – five weeks instead of the previous four.

Most people are worn out by the amount of sport they’re expected to keep abreast of now. I get it. It isn’t that every regular season is too long (which it is). It’s that there are too many of them. Eventually, it will be possible to stitch together a sort of year-round fandom that only involves watching playoff games.

But there is no such thing as World Cup fatigue. It’s like Olympic fatigue, or vodka martini fatigue – not a thing that can exist.

Every game here matters because every one of them has the potential to be an epochal event somewhere in the world. After his country beat Germany on Thursday, the president of Ecuador declared Friday a national holiday.

When history has the potential to be made every day, is it possible to have too much of it? I suppose so, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve begun to test those limits yet. We’re coming up on halfway through this thing and it feels like it’s just starting – because it is.

All to say, the 48-team debate should be closed. Now prepare yourself for the 64-team debate.

I guess that means we should apologize to FIFA. It turns out that its greed has created some good in the world. It’s given us more of something everybody likes, and even needs.

Maybe FIFA is like Churchill’s definition of democracy – the worst preposterously powerful sports regime in the world, except for all the others.