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Meeting on Reforms, FIFA Also Flirts With a 40-Team World Cup

ZURICH — Hours after the police arrested two more high-ranking FIFA officials on corruption charges here, the other leaders of world soccer’s governing body agreed on Thursday to a wide array of governance reforms while also discussing the possibility of expanding the World Cup field to 40 teams from its current 32.

The meeting on Thursday morning of FIFA’s executive committee took place without Alfredo Hawit and Juan Ángel Napout, the two vice presidents who were taken into custody by the Swiss police in an early-morning raid at the luxury hotel Baur Au Lac. The mood, according to several officials who attended the meeting, was muted by the arrests, but the agenda went on as planned and the committee members voted unanimously to send a package of suggested reforms to the FIFA Congress in February.