- Unlike the Olympics, skill modifiers won't be much of a thing here. Applying simple requires saying that you want to join, and saying your IC name if it differs from your NS nation name. We have more applicants this way.
- Puppet entries may be something worth considering. Possibly allowing nations to enter one or two puppets. Perhaps a nation has a separatist movement, or an independent territory within a nation(there is no unified British team, four countries have their own, and US territories also have their own teams), or a separate nation entirely.
- Another thing to consider is allowing some nations from allied regions. Some of the regional football cups IRL, like the CONCACAF Gold Cup in North America and Copa America in South America, allow teams from outside the region to participate.
- Another difference from the Olympics is that games are spread out in various stadiums throughout the country, rather than a single host city. The amount of stadiums varies as well. Qatar, which will host thirty-two teams and sixty-four games in 2022, plans to have eight stadiums across five cities. South Korea and Japan, which jointly hosted in 2002, had twenty stadiums across twenty cities, with the same amount of teams. France and South Africa both had ten venues across ten and nine cities respectively. Germany, Brazil, and Russia each had twelve venues, across twelve cities(eleven in Russia). The US, Canada, and Mexico plan to have sixteen stadiums across sixteen cities for their joint bid in 2026, though they will have forty-eight teams and eighty games.
- Each team also has a stadium as its base camp, which is used in training when they aren't playing. Base camps are near airports which can land large aircraft. They are also nearby the rest of the stadiums.
- While still on the topic of stadiums, their distribution across the country. In Russia, for example, despite the country's large size, all games and base camps were west of the Urals, with the exception of Yekaterinburg, and in a single time zone, except Kaliningrad and Yekaterinburg. However, the 2026 joint bid has host cities spread thinly throughout all three host countries and across four time zones.
- Next is the format. Ideally there will be a large amount of applications, requiring qualifying groups(more on that below) and a nice even thirty-two advancing to the main tournament, but perhaps there may be more or less. The men's world cup, with thirty-two teams, has eight groups of four, and the top two advance to the knockout stage. The women's cup has twenty-four teams, split into six groups of four and the top three advance to the knockout. The forty-eight team format in 2026 will have sixteen groups of three, and the top two will advance.
- The NS world cup splits teams into qualifying groups first. It will be a double round robin, with each team playing a home and away game against every other team, before moving to the main tournament. This is scorinated by the host.
- Groups are typically chosen by splitting teams into pots based on ranking. In the thirty-two team example, the top seven and the host go to the first pot, the next eight to the second, et cetera to the fourth. Then a random team from each pot is selected for each group. The host always goes to group A. A similar process is repeated for qualifying groups, with the exception of the host, who gets an automatic entry and does not have to go through that phase. As of now we have no rankings, besides the football tournament from the FCN Olympics. That will be used for rankings.
- When scorinating, unlike the Olympics, every team should have the same skill, and there will be bonuses for RPing and the host.
- Finally, the threads. I chose to combine the planning and bid threads. The rest will be up to the host, but I suggest doing what I did for the FCN Olympics, making a signup/OOC thread, RP/roster thread, and results. The NS world cup has some other stuff, like a thread for referees, which could go under the RP/roster thread.
Wow, I did not intend to write an entire essay about how the entire tournament should work. But thanks for reading the whole thing if you did.
