It's a World Round of 16

[20LEGEND]

I didn't suggest to give them another spot, just to get rid of the playoff and so they would have one spot instead of 0.5.

Is this not basically handing New Zealand a guaranteed WC spot? I'm not sure they deserve that on the basis of geographic isolation from any decent footballing nation (and Australia buggering off to the Asian Zone)

[PMLF]

Is this not basically handing New Zealand a guaranteed WC spot? I'm not sure they deserve that on the basis of geographic isolation from any decent footballing nation (and Australia buggering off to the Asian Zone)

They wouldn't really be the only one with a guaranteed spot though, would they?

All confederations have a couple of teams in this situation.

[Rob1981]

Trouble is NZ have ended up in exactly the same position Australia were in 5 years ago. Loads of so-called competitive games only against the tiny island nations and then once every world cup cycle they are somehow supposed to try and raise themselves to play two massive matches in the space of a week. Be better to just merge the Asia and Oceania confeds completely.

[CPS]

It wouldn't, it would have been the USA out.

Crossed wires - thought you meant the Slovenian attack that got charged down.

[PMLF]

Trouble is NZ have ended up in exactly the same position Australia were in 5 years ago. Loads of so-called competitive games only against the tiny island nations and then once every world cup cycle they are somehow supposed to try and raise themselves to play two massive matches in the space of a week. Be better to just merge the Asia and Oceania confeds completely.

Yes, or make this: anything from Pakistan and Central Asia to the West should be made one Confederation and the rest of Asia + Oceania should make another one.

You could even throw the Northern African team to the West Asia confed. and take one spot from Africa and add to this new confed..

But it will probably never happen.

[gunner4eva]

I think the only change that should be made is a spot taken away from Africa and given to South America and that would be perfect for me.

Only African side to get through the group was Ghana and they still havent scored from open play.

[20LEGEND]

They wouldn't really be the only one with a guaranteed spot though, would they?

All confederations have a couple of teams in this situation.

Being guaranteed a spot due to playing New Caladonia and Fiji, is a bit different from being 'guaranteed' qualification despite having to play Paraguay and Uruguay or Turkey and Belgium.

[gunner4eva]

Being guaranteed a spot due to playing New Caladonia and Fiji, is a bit different from being 'guaranteed' qualification despite having to play Paraguay and Uruguay or Turkey and Belgium.

Fiji > Andorra

[jmr]

I wonder if the awful African showing is due to them playing the African Nations this year, thats a ******** of football alot of them have played this season.

[Ruud van Nistelrooy]

Teams from Europe aren't guaranteed a spot at all. Germany, France, Italy, Holland and England have all failed to qualify or had to qualify through the play-offs in recent years.

[Philip Rolfe]

I wonder if the awful African showing is due to them playing the African Nations this year, thats a ******** of football alot of them have played this season.

ACoN has long since been in a World Cup year.

Of course, you may argue that the long term lack of African success at the WC could be due to this.

[jmr]

ACoN has long since been in a World Cup year.

Of course, you may argue that the long term lack of African success at the WC could be due to this.

You have to remember we are asking players like Drogba and co to play alot more games per season nowadays too with the Champions League/Uefa cup etc. Aren't they making it so African Nations cup is not linked to WC qualifying in the future too? So that's more games.

[Cilldara_2000]

As if common sense would come into it.

South America and Europe will lose places as they don't vote for Blatter.

[Puedlfor]

I wouldn't mind seeing more playoffs across continents in World Cup qualifying, and absorbing Oceania into the Asian Federation. That would be better than overreacting to one World Cup by drastically changing the qualifying spots based on one tournament. There's always going to be some ebb and flow - especially amongst the second-tier nations in each group. A team like Chile are really entertaining, and are one of the better sides in the tournament - but in Brazil, who knows what will happen - a couple injuries, and if they don't have good leadership during the next four years they might fade back to mediocrity.

On the other hand, a team like Denmark - who were pretty terrible this time around - might have a few of their younger players make big steps up, and might be a darkhorse to make a run deep into the tournament in 2014. Or their players might flop and they won't even be there. More playoffs would allow the system to be a little more flexible, without drastically overreacting to one tournament.

[Astafjevs]

You have to remember we are asking players like Drogba and co to play alot more games per season nowadays too with the Champions League/Uefa cup etc. Aren't they making it so African Nations cup is not linked to WC qualifying in the future too? So that's more games.

Yes they are. African Cup of Nations is now taking place in odd years. I think the first one of this kind is in 2013, but it means having tournaments back-to-back (one is scheduled for 2012, not sure if they have brought it forward to 2011 though).

[Guest roberto922]

I think it's completely unfair that so many people seem to think it's fair to take the 13th spot from a confederation with (I think) 53 members, and give another confederation that has 10 members a fifth spot, or potentially a fifth plus a playoff spot, it seems ludicrous to me. Bearing in mind that 12 of the top 20 in the world rankings are European. Not to mention that in terms of World Cup success it's only Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina that have ever reached the semi final stage from South America, as opposed to around 19 European teams.

And then if you decide to use the 'South America deserves a spot because it is more successful in the world cup' argument, surely that should mean that North America, Asia or Africa loses a spot? Of those 3 confederations only USA and South Korea have ever reached the last 4, with South Korea doing it on home soil.

[ericcantona7]

absorb Oceania into Asia, split Asia down the middle on the India/China border, East Asia gets three spots, likely to be Australia, Japan, South Korea, West Asia gets one spot likely to be Iran/Saudi Arabia/Oman or even Iraq, and then there's a West Asia vs East Asia playoff between probably China/North Korea and one of the aforementioned. Maybe stick Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia back into Asia, any chance we can give them Israel too? thought not.

Suppose you could put the North African (i.e. Arabic) teams into West Asia and give them more spots, so Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria would be in there, but I'd much rather do it on geography than culture. Otherwise Aus and NZ would play in Europe. Of course due to this I'd stick Suriname and Guyana back into SA, split the continent into two groups of 6?, random (seeded) draw rather than geographically, top 2 in each group qualify, 3rd in each group can have a play off. Means less games and less round trips for players.

North America can stay as it is, not sure they deserve that 3rd spot though, have Costa Rica, Honduras, T+T, Jamaica ever done anything? nevermind a 3rd spot and a play off spot, give the playoff spot to SA to make up their 5th spot.

That'd be a start.

[aggressive minor]

I don't know how much more expansion the WC can take, but how about 8 groups of 5 teams? Would lead to 40 teams, so 8 extra places to spread.

Of course that would mean a bit more chaos and an extra round of games.

[jmr]

That would be awful, if anything the WC needs less teams, not more.

[mlyons]

Why aren't Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana in CONMEBOL, anyway?

[Boltman]

CONCACAF's got better half-time teas?

[mlyons]

How have Switzerland, Denmark and Serbia been embarrassed?

One win, one draw, and four losses against non-UEFA opponents not embarassing?

[PMLF]

Why aren't Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana in CONMEBOL, anyway?

Because they don't want to, and because we don't want them.

Besides the fact they are culturally different (no Iberian-based culture like the rest of SA, their culture is more akin to the Caribbean islands), they are also relatively poor for all these trips they would have to make, and more importantly, they are too rubbish.

[nattai]

I can see Oceania being dealt with one way or another after this World Cup. Whether that means them being given back the half a point they lost, or having their qualification path altered (again), I dont know. But a lot of momentum has built up now over the performance of Oceania sides from the last 2 World Cups and I would expect to see some action as a result. Pressure is already been put on Asia and Bin Hammad to treat Oceania, and specificially New Zealand, fairer.

Otherwise, Asia gets two teams through, when they had none last World Cup. Excellent result. There is no way Asia will be losing out if any reshuffle takes place.

[mlyons]

Because they don't want to, and because we don't want them.

Besides the fact they are culturally different (no Iberian-based culture like the rest of SA, their culture is more akin to the Caribbean islands), they are also relatively poor for all these trips they would have to make, and more importantly, they are too rubbish.

Don't you think that might be one of the reasons there is a reluctance to give CONMEBOL more spots in the WC, though? As long as CONMEBOL keeps out the "poor" nations and only keeps ten nations in the confederation, the math makes it politically difficult to hand them another spot. No matter what the relative quality of the teams involved might be, giving spots to more than half of the CONMEBOL nations while giving spots to fewer than 10% of the nations in the confederation to your north is probably going to be unpalatable to FIFA.

The travel issue seems a bit disingenuous, too. Surely a trip to Buenos Aires isn't any more difficult for a team in Suriname than one to Mexico City or Los Angeles?

[PMLF]

Don't you think that might be one of the reasons there is a reluctance to give CONMEBOL more spots in the WC, though? As long as CONMEBOL keeps out the "poor" nations and only keeps ten nations in the confederation, the math makes it politically difficult to hand them another spot. No matter what the relative quality of the teams involved might be, giving spots to more than half of the CONMEBOL nations while giving spots to fewer than 10% of the nations in the confederation to your north is probably going to be unpalatable to FIFA.

I doubt it would make any difference and adding those teams would turn CONMEBOL into a sort of OFC.

The travel issue seems a bit disingenuous, too. Surely a trip to Buenos Aires isn't any more difficult for a team in Suriname than one to Mexico City or Los Angeles?

But due to how CONCACAF is set up, these teams actually rarely play outside the Caribbean region (unless they go far in their Quals), while they would have to play all the time in South America if they joined CONMEBOL.

[roseboy64]

One win, one draw, and four losses against non-UEFA opponents not embarassing?

Not really.

[roseboy64]

Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana barely get past the first hurdle if at all.

[Jason the Yank]

Crossed wires - thought you meant the Slovenian attack that got charged down.

It could have been. But for Upson (?), it's USA 5 pts, Slovenia 5, England 3.

[Red_Hector]

Just deregionalise the qualifiers, far more epic and no quibbling about who gets one extra spot here or there. The wrongest person in this thread will be the one who tries to counter this with 'travel costs'.

[Jason the Yank]

But due to how CONCACAF is set up, these teams actually rarely play outside the Caribbean region (unless they go far in their Quals), while they would have to play all the time in South America if they joined CONMEBOL.

whs

CONCACAF qualifying is pretty much set up to give the minnows as few games as possible, to ease their travel concerns.

CONCACAF qualifying starts with 3 rounds of two-leg ties. Then a first round group stage with 3 groups of 4. Then a final round with a 6-team round robin.

Actually, Suriname played Montserrat in the first qualifying round...as a single game in Trinidad, because neither had a ground up to snuff under FIFA's rules. Domican Republic-Puerto Rico played a single match in Bahamas for the same reason.

Anguilla's home leg against El Salvador was played in the US for similar reasons.

Looking back, you get some awful scorelines in the early rounds of CONCACAF qualifying. El Salvador beat Anguilla 16-0 (winning 12-0 at home). El Salvador, which is hardly a world beater. Jamaica beat Bahamas 13-0 on aggregate US 9-0 over Barbados, Guatemala 9-1 over St. Lucia, Cuba 8-3 over Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico 9-0 over Belize.

Suriname actually made it to the first group stage, and finished bottom at 0-2-4 with a GD of -15.

[Lermon]

tell you what.

Give Europe 10 spots. Taking 3 spots

but take one off for Africa, the Oceania/Asia play off spot, the North America/South America play off spot.

Thus having 6 spare spots, let's have 6 playoffs featuring 6 European teams, 2 african, a south american, a north america, an Asian and an Oceanian.

So you've got

10 Europe

South America 4

4 Africa

4 Asia

North America 3

Hosts

Playoffs

European v 5th South American team

European v 4th North American team

European v Oceanian team

European v 5th Asian team

European v 5th African team

European v 6th African team

See how many European teams you'd get then.

This World Cup would've been.

Hosts:

South Africa

Europe:

England

Spain

Italy

Denmark

Switzerland

Slovakia

Germany

Serbia

Netherlands

Russia (based on 2nd place table)

Africa:

Cameroon

Nigeria

Ghana

Ivory Coast

N.America:

USA

Mexico

Honduras

S.America:

Brazil

Chile

Paraguay

Argentina

Asia:

South Korea

Japan

North Korea

Australia

Playoffs

Uruguay v Portugal

New Zealand v Slovenia

Oman v Greece

Costa Rica v Ukraine

Egypt v France

Algeria v Bosnia + Herzegovina

Ireland still miss out

seriously how many European teams do you think would qualify? you can mix and match the playoffs if you want, but I reckon you'd get a minimum of 3 European sides through, and probably get 4 a lot of the time.

why not implement this system? gives the opportunity for less european sides if indeed europe has too many spots compared to its quality? or would the 5th best south american side much rather play the 4th best North american rather than the 13th-16th best european, would NZ and Oman rather play each other, would the 5th and 6th best African sides rather play each other than the 13th best European side? of course they all would, and we all know why, the 11th-20th best European sides are generally stronger than the sides that don't make it through the other confederations. Ecuador might have a chance against those European sides tbf, but that's about it, Togo and Angola would get stuffed.

I quite like the idea of the cross-continent playoffs. That will sort of prepare teams for what the world cup is about-playing teams across the world rather just in it's seperate zones etc.

Anyway regarding the ratio kind of thing- doesn't that sort of relate with the sheer number of footballing countries. I mean theres a lot more distinct footballing countries in Europe than North America, South America, Africa or Asia.

Oh agree with the NA thing too-rather that slot went to another South American team perhaps. And the number of African teams could be one too many-but had Egypt qualified instead of Algeria and it would have been far more entertaining.

[mlyons]

whs

CONCACAF qualifying is pretty much set up to give the minnows as few games as possible, to ease their travel concerns.

CONCACAF qualifying starts with 3 rounds of two-leg ties. Then a first round group stage with 3 groups of 4. Then a final round with a 6-team round robin.

Actually, Suriname played Montserrat in the first qualifying round...as a single game in Trinidad, because neither had a ground up to snuff under FIFA's rules. Domican Republic-Puerto Rico played a single match in Bahamas for the same reason.

Anguilla's home leg against El Salvador was played in the US for similar reasons.

Looking back, you get some awful scorelines in the early rounds of CONCACAF qualifying. El Salvador beat Anguilla 16-0 (winning 12-0 at home). El Salvador, which is hardly a world beater. Jamaica beat Bahamas 13-0 on aggregate US 9-0 over Barbados, Guatemala 9-1 over St. Lucia, Cuba 8-3 over Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico 9-0 over Belize.

Suriname actually made it to the first group stage, and finished bottom at 0-2-4 with a GD of -15.

The question is, though, why should CONCACAF be saddled with all the minnows while CONMEBOL sits pretty without any? What if UEFA decided to pawn off all of their minnows onto the Asian confederation and just kept their twenty best teams? Wouldn't that seem strange?

[Emperor J]

I would like to see this happen:

Europe 13 -> 12

S. America 4.5 -> 5

Africa 5 -> 5

Asia 4.5 -> 4.5

N. America 3.5 -> 4

Oceania 0.5 -> 0.5

Host 1 -> 1

I'd probably go with

Europe 13 -> 12.5

S. America 4.5 -> 6 (5 + Brazil as hosts)

Africa 5 -> 4.5

Asia 4.5 -> 4.5

N. America 3.5 -> 4

Oceania 0.5 -> 0.5

Africa-Europe and Asia-Oceania for the playoffs, or all 4 play a mini-league in Brazil before the groups are drawn for the tournament.

[Rafalution]

Just deregionalise the qualifiers, far more epic and no quibbling about who gets one extra spot here or there. The wrongest person in this thread will be the one who tries to counter this with 'travel costs'.

'travel costs' apply, just to fans, not the teams. would be rubbish anyway. half the point about the world cup is its the only time countries from different confederations play each other competitivley (other than the confed cup)

[Dan_Wales_Man]

We can't take more spots off Europe, or Wales will never get a chance

Not that we do now, but you catch my drift.

[Rafalution]

Also, below are two qualification groups, I'd say that there is little between them in terms of talent, if anything the bottom one is slightly higher. The top group gets 3 automatic spots and a play off, the bottom group gets 1 and a playoff place. Yet somehow the amount of UEFA spots is unfair? I don't think so

				Pld	Pts
United States				10	20
Mexico					10	19
Honduras				10	16
Costa Rica				10	16
El Salvador				10	8
Trinidad and Tobago			10	6


				Pld	Pts
Germany				10	26
Russia					10	22
Finland				10	18
Wales					10	12
Azerbaijan				10	5
Liechtenstein				10	2

Yes, people complain that Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and the USA always qualify and don't see how the same happens to the two biggest Euro teams (Germany and Italy).

I'm sure Italy and Germany would be delighted in only having to finish third.

[Emperor J]

Now if you put all of UEFA's teams into 5 groups of 10 teams and they only had to finish 2nd or 3rd to qualify then you might have an accurate comparison. Or in the same way use qualifying rounds to get UEFA qualifying down to 3 groups of 6 for qualifying for 13 spots and see how fair that would seem.

[Coentrao]

Also, below are two qualification groups, I'd say that there is little between them in terms of talent, if anything the bottom one is slightly higher. The top group gets 3 automatic spots and a play off, the bottom group gets 1 and a playoff place. Yet somehow the amount of UEFA spots is unfair? I don't think so

				Pld	Pts
United States				10	20
Mexico					10	19
Honduras				10	16
Costa Rica				10	16
El Salvador				10	8
Trinidad and Tobago			10	6


				Pld	Pts
Germany				10	26
Russia					10	22
Finland				10	18
Wales					10	12
Azerbaijan				10	5
Liechtenstein				10	2

I'm sure Italy and Germany would be delighted in only having to finish third.

It's a bit unfair to compare like that, the first group represents an entire zone, the second group is one group out of the 10 groups that UEFA gets.

It's 3 spots from CONCACAF(plus a play-off) against 13 spots from UEFA, it's not the other confederations fault that the qualifying system in Europe is flawed and makes hard and easy groups to qualify from.

[Rafalution]

It was more an argument against those saying that the big European teams have it to easy (Such as PMLF), though the point still stands to some extent. Most of the uefa groups are that difficult, UEFA doesn't have too many spots, it just has far more countries. 18 of the top 42 are UEFA, 27 of the top 50. I just don't get how somehow the current allocations are unfair.

[Astafjevs]

They're not really. But you'll get people targeting the European spots because of a poor showing in this World Cup, and saying the spots should be reduced. As someone said above, I don't remember too many calls to get rid of South Americans after 2006.

[PMLF]

Also, below are two qualification groups, I'd say that there is little between them in terms of talent, if anything the bottom one is slightly higher. The top group gets 3 automatic spots and a play off, the bottom group gets 1 and a playoff place. Yet somehow the amount of UEFA spots is unfair? I don't think so

				Pld	Pts
United States				10	20
Mexico					10	19
Honduras				10	16
Costa Rica				10	16
El Salvador				10	8
Trinidad and Tobago			10	6


				Pld	Pts
Germany				10	26
Russia					10	22
Finland				10	18
Wales					10	12
Azerbaijan				10	5
Liechtenstein				10	2

I'm sure Italy and Germany would be delighted in only having to finish third.

Bit hard to finish in 3rd position when you only have to play against rubbish teams like those (Russia aside).

But in the end of the day, Europeans have to see that if European lose even 5 spots, they will still have 8, while if South America were to lose 5 spots, we would have none left.

[Guest roberto922]

Wales and Finland > Costa Rica, El Salvador and Trinidad. Easily.

[Astafjevs]

Massively flawed logic in this thread. It's already been turned into South America vs Europe, and it's incredibly boring, with ridiculous comments that don't appear to have had any thought put into them.

[PMLF]

Wales and Finland > Costa Rica, El Salvador and Trinidad. Easily.

I don't know if Wales and Finland are better than Costa Rica although they almost certainly are better than El Salvador and T&T, but you also have to take into account that although Mexico and USA are good teams, they are not at the same level as Germany or Italy yet either, so probably the gap between Germany and Wales is much bigger than the gap between Mexico and some of their opponents.

Massively flawed logic in this thread. It's already been turned into South America vs Europe, and it's incredibly boring, with ridiculous comments that don't appear to have had any thought put into them.

I think the discussion is pretty much between increasing quality vs increasing variety, the former position favors Europe (and South America) while the other position don't.

I prefer the second position, even if it means SA lost a spot or two (although I think that wouldn't really be necessary).

[ericcantona7]

But in the end of the day, Europeans have to see that if European lose even 5 spots, they will still have 8, while if South America were to lose 5 spots, we would have none left.

and what's that got to do with anything? If South America loses half a spot then they still have 4 spots, yet if Oceania loses half a spot they would have none left.

[PMLF]

and what's that got to do with anything? If South America loses half a spot then they still have 4 spots, yet if Oceania loses half a spot they would have none left.

It has to do with the fact people want SA to lose spots, but don't see that if SA lose spots, it won't make a huge difference for the other continents.

The same applies to other continents as well, except to Europe. In any scenario posted here, Europe would still comfortably have more spots than any other continent.

[Guest roberto922]

We have the likes of Wayne Hennessey, Danny Gabbidon, James Collins, Simon Davies, Craig Bellamy, Gareth Bale, Jack Collison and Aaron Ramsey playing regularly in the Premier League, one of the biggest leagues in the world despite what you may think of it, the best league Costa Rica has anyone playing at is Bryan Ruiz for FC Twente, it's not even close imo

EDIT: of course we'd have comfortably more spots, we've got 50 odd members most of whom are of a good quality, we would definitely feel it if places were taken from us

[Astafjevs]

I think the discussion is pretty much between increasing quality vs increasing variety, the former position favors Europe (and South America) while the other position don't.

I prefer the second position, even if it means SA lost a spot or two (although I think that wouldn't really be necessary).

It depends if people are happy to increase variety at the expense of quality, because that is essentially what would happen if FIFA ever go down a path where they change the spots each confederation gets.

Personally, I like it as it is. There's enough variety, but the quality generally remains high. I can guarantee people who want a greater variety would eventually complain when the quality decreases because there's more rubbish at the expense of good teams. If anything, I'd probably give Africa another spot, and take one from Europe, but that's it.

[Heartwork]

Oceania should have one automatic place at least. As it stands I don't think that the standard of football improves enough in Oceania states because they know they've got little chance of qualifying and perhaps don't bother, and whenever a side gets quite competetive they look to move to Asia (like Australia), wouldn't be surprised if New Zealand soon looked to move after an impressive World cup this year.