World Cup qualifying has become a box-ticking exercise – England have only lost four games in 30 years

FIRST it was 13. Then from 1934 to 1978 it was 16.

The World Cup finals was expanded in 1982 to 24 nations and in 1988 it went up again to 32.

Next year’s finals will include 48 teams and, if recent reports are anything to go by, in 2030 it will be up to 64.

At this rate, the only nations missing out will be those you need a microscope to spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

What is it with Fifa tournaments and their alarming capacity to expand faster than Erling Haaland’s goal tally?

Once upon a time, reaching the World Cup was an achievement but now its becoming a participation prize.

Turn up, hum a national anthem and you’re halfway there.

Surely this cannot be good for football.

Yes, there is sense in opening up opportunities to smaller nations to reach the pinnacle of the World Cup finals.

Yes, the romance of a debutant at the finals — such as Jordan will be in 2026 — still stirs the heart. But when the qualification process becomes a formality rather than an achievement, England have only lost four World Cup qualifiers in the last 30 years.

FOUR! That isn’t competition, it’s administration.

Qualifiers rarely, if ever, produce raw excitement and are now purely a means to an end. They no longer thrill, they plod.

Villa Park’s first England international in 20 years saw thousands of fans drifting away long before the final whistle in the tediously dull win over Andorra. That is what Fifa have reduced it to… a box-ticking exercise disguised as a sporting contest.

And yet Fifa’s appetite grows.

The Club World Cup this summer dragged on longer than HS2 has been under construction, or at least it felt like it.

Now, the World Cup finals which will stretch from June 11 to July 19.

That’s more than five weeks and 104 matches, which is 40 more than in Qatar three years ago.

Never in the field of human competition have so many played so much, when once so few was enough.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino insists that expansion is about spreading the gospel of football. Believe that and you probably still believe in the tooth fairy.

The truth is more cynical. More teams, more games, more sponsorship, more money. Always money.

But there is a cost. Not just to the prestige of the tournament, which risks becoming bloated and devalued, but to the players who have to carry it.

They are already telling us — loudly — that there is too much football and too little rest.

Nobody listens. Their pleas are falling on very deaf ears.

And so, here we are. A World Cup that once felt special, rare, a pinnacle, is on its way to becoming just another content dump on an already crowded calendar.

If the 2030 edition really does contain 64 nations, more than a quarter of Fifa’s 211 members, what remains of the magic?

Football is nothing without the players, and yet Fifa behave as though it is nothing without a fixture list.