2006 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup - Major Changes To Format

Major Changes To Format

After the 2005 World Cup, beach soccer continued to grow and spread worldwide at a fast rate. Therefore FIFA established the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup qualifiers, to try to allow more nations to play in the World Cup, as well as getting more national teams involved in the sport. FIFA also increased the number of participating teams in the World Cup from 12 to a record-high 16 teams. This also meant that nations would no longer be invited to play in the World Cup but would have to qualify.

With the establishment of the qualifying rounds, FIFA decided to standardise each World Cup, meaning that from this World Cup onwards, each confederation would have the same number of teams participating in each World Cup and that the 16 teams would be split up into four groups of four teams, with the top two teams moving on to the quarter finals.