It’s already the world’s most popular sporting event. It’s already a $5-billion (U.S.) cash cow. So naturally the World Cup of soccer appears on the verge of expansion.

That’s the way of the sports world, where even the biggest perpetually seek to get bigger. On Tuesday it’s expected FIFA will vote to enlarge the World Cup from 32 teams to as many 48 beginning with the 2026 tournament.

What it will do for the soccer is a point that will be hotly debated.

“The quality is going to go down significantly,” Craig Forrest, the Sportsnet analyst and former Canadian international, was saying Monday.

Still, it’s a move that is expected to be good for FIFA’s cash flow, with hundreds of millions in additional revenue projected. And it has potential to be good for Canada, too.

A Canadian team has only qualified for the World Cup once, in 1986, when the tournament was a 24-team affair. A 48-team field would obviously smooth the road to future berths.

While many of the additional tournament slots are expected to be earmarked for teams in Africa and Asia — and while such allocations will surely be made by the power brokers in the blue blazers in due time and wholly above board, as is the sport’s custom — it has been theorized that the CONCACAF region, of which Canada is a member, would also receive more World Cup representation. CONCACAF currently gets three World Cup slots plus a berth in a qualifier for the chance at a fourth. A total of, say, six slots in the newly expanded system would bring Canada welcome hope of future participation.

“If it does go to six, we should be shouting from the treetops that we’re going to be one of those six. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be,” said Bob Lenarduzzi, a member of Canada’s 1986 World Cup team who currently serves as president of the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Whether or not Canada has the stuff to qualify for a World Cup, expanded or not — and it failed in its attempt to make the 2018 tournament back in September — there’s another way in which expansion could come to be seen as a boon to the national soccer cause. The prospect of a bigger tournament figures to limit the field of possible host countries, which in turn has opened the door to the idea of multiple countries sharing hosting duties. Canada, Mexico and the United States have been floated by some as a viable triumvirate. And certainly Canada’s soccer overseers have long expressed interest in putting on at least a portion of the festivities.

After FIFA makes controversial stops in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, there are those who see North America as a safe potential landing spot. And maybe it doesn’t hurt that CONCACAF’s president since May, Victor Montagliani, doubles as president of the Canadian Soccer Association.

“We look to be a contender to bid,” Peter Motopoli, the CSA’s general secretary, said Monday. “We’ve hosted every World Cup there is (including the 2015 women’s World Cup and various age-group World Cups) except the men’s World Cup. . . So there’s no shortage of people who are interested in men’s, women’s, youth or senior soccer in our country. We’ve proved it. We have the attendance records. We’ve shown we’re great organizers . . . We’re a great country for hosting soccer competitions.”

Whether or not an expanded World Cup would make for a great soccer competition — well, that’s a sore point in some quarters. Some observers cite the recent expansion of the UEFA European championship as a cautionary tale. That tournament’s jump from a field of 16 teams to 24 didn’t go well in some eyes.

“The tournament was terrible,” Forrest said. “No disrespect to Portugal, but the Euro was, for the most part, unwatchable. Very few good games. Very few attack-minded games.”

One of the problems, said Forrest, was the expanded tournament format that allowed teams to play more conservatively. Eventual champion Portugal, for instance, was able to advance to the knockout round with three draws (and zero wins) in the group stage. Forrest said a 48-team World Cup would produce a diluted product that would include “16 or 20 teams where most of those players playing for those countries would never be able to play at the top level.”

So while Forrest acknowledged expansion would be good for Canada’s chances to compete, “it would not be good for quality. That’s for sure.”

Forrest isn’t alone in his take. Those opposed to expansion include Reinhard Grindel, the president of Germany’s soccer federation and Terry Butcher, a former England captain, who has called the proposal “ludicrous.”

“You are tinkering with something you needn’t tinker with,” Butcher said.

Lenarduzzi, for his part, dismissed most of the anti-expansion arguments as a product of the “arrogance” of purists chronically opposed to change. While some critics have voiced concerns over an increased workload for elite players who are already overscheduled, Lenarduzzi pointed out that the proposed expansion will see tournament finalists play seven games over 32 days, same as in the 32-team era. Meanwhile sixteen more countries — including maybe, possibly, finally Canada — will have a game-changing stake in the action.

Lenarduzzi laughed on Monday at the memory of Canada’s winless, goalless run at 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

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“Our last game was against Russia and it was on the CBC at the time, and we got pre-empted by Sesame Street,” he said. “It was great that we were there. But it didn’t exactly capture the imagination of the country.”

Thirty years later, the country’s imagination has since been transformed.

“Every World Cup that goes by, I think to myself, ‘Wow. It seems to be becoming more popular (in Canada).’ Like, people who don’t even follow soccer are standing in doorways and watching on televisions at bars. And then I think, ‘What if we were there? What if Canada had a team?’ ” Lenarduzzi said. “When we talk about what’s going to help grow the sport? Well, if you’re a part of the World Cup, that’s going to help grow the sport very significantly.”