wpdavid
Hall of Fame Member
It wasn't great, but, unlike 1978, there weren't any matches that left you wondering. England could have benefited but we weren't good enough to score 2 against Spain. Brazil should have benefited but they couldn't defend well enough to secure a draw against Italy.The problem with 82 was they decided to increase the number of teams from 16 to 24 to guard against strong European countries (for example England/Italy in 78) knocking each other out in the qualifiers. Having done the increase they thought at the time that knocking out 16 teams after the first stage was too many, but 8 was not enough. So they decided to half the number of teams to 12 with the nonsensical four groups of 3.
I'm trying to remember what happened in 1986 - did the best 3rd place teams make it to the last 16?