Simple, New Judge.
4 groups of 5, that's 40 games, then 7 knock out games and the other match :-)
If you just make it a simple knockout then some teams will travel half way across the world to lose 100-0 to New Zealand for example and then travel home again. There aren't enough decent teams to warrant having any more.
If you think that is bad, what about Euro 2016: by the time that reaches the last 16 it will have taken 304 matches to eliminate 38 teams over the course of 2 years!