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Sepp Blatter believes that CONCACAF should get four bids in the 2018 World Cup, citing the confederation's success at last summer's World Cup. He even went at far as telling the CONCACAF Congress this.
Told delegates at CONCACAF Congress: "CONCACAF should, in my view, have 4 slots at next #WorldCup (if 32 teams)". See last year's results.
— Joseph S Blatter (@SeppBlatter) April 16, 2015
In previous World Cups, CONCACAF had 3.5 spots, with three teams automatically qualifying for the tournament and a fourth having to win a inter-confederation playoff to make it. Costa Rica made the quarterfinals of the 2014 World Cup, while the United States and Mexico both made it out of their groups.
There are a few things to remember when looking at this, though:
1. Blatter doesn't have control over this. While he is the FIFA president, he doesn't determine how many teams from each confederation get into the World Cup. All he has is influence, which is considerable.
2. Blatter has said that he's told people things before, only for those people to come out and say that Blatter never said such a thing, or at least not in the manner that Blatter portrayed it to the public.
3. Blatter is running for FIFA president again and needs to garner support and votes. The Caribbean votes in particular have not pledged their support for the incumbent so he needs to do what he can to get them on his side. This would certainly be it, but he could always change course after he is re-elected.
Will CONCACAF really get four bids to the 2018 World Cup? Who knows. It's FIFA election season.
And as much as we'd like to see CONCACAF get an extra spot, their fourth team, Honduras, got beat around pretty badly at last summer's World Cup. Does the confederation really ever have a fourth team that can compete at the World Cup level?