{"id":65534,"date":"2025-05-10T04:50:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T04:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=65534"},"modified":"2025-05-10T04:50:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T04:50:30","slug":"fifa-boosts-womens-world-cup-to-48-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/10\/fifa-boosts-womens-world-cup-to-48-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA Boosts Women\u2019s World Cup to 48 Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Njoku Chijioke<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>FIFA has approved a bold expansion of the Women\u2019s World Cup, increasing the number of participating teams from 32 to 48 starting with the 2031 edition.<\/p>\n<p>The move, confirmed by a unanimous FIFA Council vote, will see the global showpiece grow to 104 matches under a new 12 group format. The tournament will also run for an extra week.<\/p>\n<p>FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the decision goes beyond numbers. \u201cIt is a strong step toward deepening the roots of women\u2019s football across the globe,\u201d he stated, highlighting the record breaking success of the 2023 tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The expansion is expected to open more doors for emerging football nations and accelerate investment in the women\u2019s game, as FIFA continues to push for wider inclusion and competitiveness on the global stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Njoku Chijioke FIFA has approved a bold expansion of the Women\u2019s World Cup, increasing the number of participating teams from 32 to 48 starting with the 2031 edition. The move, confirmed by a unanimous FIFA Council vote, will see the global showpiece grow to 104 matches under a new 12 group format. The tournament [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":65535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-65534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65536,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65534\/revisions\/65536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}