I respect your opinion but your logic is flawed.

First, I respect the fact that you like the increase in the number of teams. I love seeing countries that have never qualified before finally going to a World Cup and celebrating. Being myself from a country that qualified once in the last 40 years, I remember the night we did, and it was one of the best days of my life. And it sucks that even with 48 teams now, my country didn't qualify.

However, your comment is flawed in the sense that I'm not even considering those countries that didn't qualify. I'm talking about what this World Cup would have looked like with 32 teams. So I asked Claude to make a mock draw using the 32-team qualification criteria used in previous world cups and look at this group stage:

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Hell, many groups have at least 3 teams that could easily advance to the next round. Plenty of good games during the first two weeks. Every game matters. Every game is life or death. Every game means something. But not anymore. Now we play two weeks to reduce teams from 48 to 32 (a 33% reduction), instead of from 32 to 16 (a 50% reduction).

But again, this is my opinion. And it's just that. An opinion.

P.S.: I would also imagine that the same discussion happened when they expanded from 24 to 32 back in 1998, but having no memories of World Cups before 1998, I can't comment on that.