With the next men’s World Cup set to expand to 48 teams, enjoy this one last tournament of structural perfection.
There’s a decent chance that when the men’s World Cup makes its way to North America in 2026, with its field expanded from 32 to 48 teams, locals will be introduced to a bit of suddenly relevant old soccer lore. The famed “Disgrace of Gijón” remains a 90-minute cautionary tale of how significantly tournament scheduling and structure can impact results.
Gijón is a coastal city in northwest Spain, and the disgrace was perpetrated there during the 1982 World Cup.