The truth is that too many terrible teams are already qualifying for the World Cup while strong teams stay home.
The reason that European soccer federations hate this is because they are trying to push back against the expansion of the national team calendar since the clubs are paying the players, the national teams just take advantage and might return you an injured player.
Most soccer fans also do not care even one bit about friendly national games or stuff like Confed Cup.
I don't always agree with you, but on this topic I do.
In the USA our spectator culture is different because club football was not established until modern times and it still has not taken off with a lot of American fans who are keen to root for USA but not a MLS club. still MLS has a long way to go. the American international fixtures year round were historically more important to our players and fans alike before MLS and even now. and still we have a reputation around the world that we call our top players too often when they may need recovery. that has changed somewhat in recent times thanks to MLS. but this is a battle that all countries face with their top players. they have to be smart with how they utilize their top players with the ultimate goal of having them peak in the world cup not in friendlies or qualifying campaigns(as USA has been known to do). Perhaps the MLS expansion, albeit slow, is a reflection of the world cup expanding its boundaries from just Europe and South of the Rio Grande.
I think EUFA as far as world cup qualifying goes is rather set. the same teams qualify and there is some turnover among the bottom because of the way they split up the groups. I am not an expert. obviously there are some good teams that do not qualify. last go around Ukraine and I think Russia both had teams that would have most certainly qualified in other regions, but there are still some minnows as well in Europe on the international stage. just not as many compared to other international federations. Understandably the top clubs do not want to see all of their players now playing in grueling tournaments. Garreth Bale and Pierre Abaumayang are two examples. Or even ronaldo.. their international sides need them to carry them all the time. And this begs the question to how they will play the 2022 world cup in the winter time with likely every 1st and 2 tier European based player set to play in the World Cup?
I think expansion has its pros and cons. Pro is soccer can spread slowly over time, con is that we get poor matches and more club teams risk losing top players to injury. 32 teams was good for me.
