WC spots and Play-offs

[BrennanFan]

Watching the WC, it seems to me that after the “top tier”, the teams are getting closer in quality. It doesn’t seem right anymore that Europe gets all those spots. Aside from that, im thinking, to even out the fairness in who goes to the WC and taking into account the good teams not there that should be, the play-off ties should be expanded to a mini international tournament. What do you guys think about this:

Automatic Spots
Hosts 1
Euro 8
Asia 4
Africa 5
South America 4
Concacaf 4 (scrap the semifinal round and go with 2 Hexs)
Oceana 0

Playoff Spots
Euro 4
Asia 1
Af 2
S.Am 2
Conc 1
Oc 2
Random draw into 3 groups of 4 played in neutral locations, top 2 advancing to the WC.

[youllneverwalkalone]

I think Grizzly shared this exact thought in another thread.

[Elias]

Besides that you can't play a thousand qualifiers, okay so Europe gets 8 spots. England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands and Czech lets say. That still leaves Croatia, Serbia, Sweden, Greece, Turkey, Swizterland, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, among others. My point is that any of these secondary European teams would beat the 4rth/5th/6th place teams from Africa, Asia, or the Americas.

And the real issue, Tunisia-Saudi Arabia today had about what, 10 000 people at the game? Europeans are the ones who have the money and interest in travelling to the games, not to mention it's where all the tv money is.

Even from Canada's perspective, if we are not good enough for 4rth in CONCACAF, we don't deserve to be at the World Cup.

[Cheeta]

32 teams is just too many. The long and short of it is there are likely a good six sides who're far too deep in over their heads. Sure, 32 is a nice workable number, but it does water down the 1st round somewhat in certain groups. Can't see the tourny moving away from it though.

I think the idea of play off spots and a mini-tourny is grand. Not neccesarily on neutral ground, but I could certainly live with that, and not neccesarily drawn into random groups. The three top seeds being allocated into seperate groups seems pretty fair.

Seeding being determined by FIFA rankings (sort of makes them important now doesn't it?) and you could have the tourny during the summer when most of the leagues are shut down. A mini-WC for the partys concearned. Would be great fun, very interesting and a pre-amble to the actual big show, the World Cup.

[Cheeta]

32 teams is just too many. The long and short of it is there are likely a good six sides who're far too deep in over their heads. Sure, 32 is a nice workable number, but it does water down the 1st round somewhat in certain groups. Can't see the tourny moving away from it though.

I think the idea of play off spots and a mini-tourny is grand. Not neccesarily on neutral ground, but I could certainly live with that, and not neccesarily drawn into random groups. The three top seeds being allocated into seperate groups seems pretty fair.

Seeding being determined by FIFA rankings (sort of makes them important now doesn't it?) and you could have the tourny during the summer when most of the leagues are shut down. A mini-WC for the partys concearned. Would be great fun, very interesting and a pre-amble to the actual big show, the World Cup.

[Grizzly]

quote:Originally posted by Elias

Besides that you can't play a thousand qualifiers, okay so Europe gets 8 spots. England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands and Czech lets say. That still leaves Croatia, Serbia, Sweden, Greece, Turkey, Swizterland, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, among others. My point is that any of these secondary European teams would beat the 4rth/5th/6th place teams from Africa, Asia, or the Americas.


Absolutely false. We saw no evidence of this in the last World Cup (I think Slovenia was the last placed team) and we have seen no evidence of it so far in this World Cup. A couple of the top European teams have played well, the former Yugos played well and lost and the rest were total crap. We didn't deserve to be there but there are several other teams in the WC who also didn't deserve to be there. If Europe is so good they could prove it in a playoff.

[argh1]

quote:Originally posted by Cheeta

32 teams is just too many. The long and short of it is there are likely a good six sides who're far too deep in over their heads. Sure, 32 is a nice workable number, but it does water down the 1st round somewhat in certain groups.........

I find this WC for some reason. 32 teams is way too many. I find in the Group stage I'm actually picking one or two games to record instead of "all the games I can". Whether it's because soccer has become so available in the last four years or whatever....I dunno.
But I'll agree 32 teams is too many, it seems to take the intentsity out of games in these early stages. It's almost like for me the World Cup won't get really started 'till the knock-out stages. So we can say thanks for showing up to alot of teams. We've only just got into 2nd games after 5 days with one more to go, so we're looking at another .....week and a half to the end of the Group stage.......
Wow I never thought I'd lose interest because there's too much soccer on TV through out the season. Maybe there is too much of a good thing. But there you have it. [B)]

[Daniel]

Well 24 sucks with the whole "best 3rd place teams" and we can't go back to 16. 32 is workable and some teams that got there easily have trouble while some teams you don't expect do well.

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by BrennanFan

Watching the WC, it seems to me that after the “top tier”, the teams are getting closer in quality. It doesn’t seem right anymore that Europe gets all those spots. Aside from that, im thinking, to even out the fairness in who goes to the WC and taking into account the good teams not there that should be, the play-off ties should be expanded to a mini international tournament. What do you guys think about this:

Automatic Spots
Hosts 1
Euro 8
Asia 4
Africa 5
South America 4
Concacaf 4 (scrap the semifinal round and go with 2 Hexs)
Oceana 0

Playoff Spots
Euro 4
Asia 1
Af 2
S.Am 2
Conc 1
Oc 2
Random draw into 3 groups of 4 played in neutral locations, top 2 advancing to the WC.



Two playoff spots for Oceania? [V] So its gonna be New Zealand and... uhhh... Solomon Islands clashing with Spain, Czech Republic, etc.

Also, its still early to be saying things like "Well a CONCACAF team hung-in there against two top UEFA sides therefore... blah blah". Lets see how many CONCACAF, AFC and CAF teams are actually around for the round of 16 or quarterfinals. Afterall, Sunderland can play Chelsea close head-to-head but that doesn't mean sh!te. What matters is the big picture, and at the moment that picture shows one CONCACAF team getting to the second-round (thanks to being part of the easiest group in this WC). [8)]

[BrennanFan]

The oceania spots are based on pity, have a heart man! Anyways, i was just thinking that 14 Euro teams was too high considering other teams are not there which are at that level. Id rather see Cameroon, Nigeria, Uruguay, Colombia, (and Canada) over Poland, Switzerland, and even teams like Serbia and Ukraine or Croatia.

[speedmonk42]

With 32 teams, you also develop the game. Reduce it too much and we would have have the England T&T tie we had today, which is a good thing.

All the '3rd' rate countries around the world are improving. The game is improving. If you reduce the chance of getting in to nothing, then the development would slow/stop.....

[sj]

that fifth playoff spot is crucial to the development of smaller soccer nations even if they dont make it to the big show it still
extent the preparation time and amount of games that can only be good for any national team development.
and with tv rights and gate money chances are those federation would have extra money to further improve their soccer programs.
the main reason Africa has improved the quality of theirs teams is because they had more teams that had free passage to the big show, this is the confederation that had the highest walkover for yrs
even in the African cup and the Togo saga is a farce to the soccer comunity.
if the other confederations were given the same opportunity they would have improved too.
since 74 Africa did not have to play a playoff game.

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by BrennanFan

The oceania spots are based on pity, have a heart man! Anyways, i was just thinking that 14 Euro teams was too high considering other teams are not there which are at that level. Id rather see Cameroon, Nigeria, Uruguay, Colombia, (and Canada) over Poland, Switzerland, and even teams like Serbia and Ukraine or Croatia.


Well, unfortunately teams like Cameroon, Nigeria, Uruguay, Colombia, and Canada all had their fair chances to participate in WC'06. But (with the possible exception of Cameroon who lost-out against a tough Cote d'Ivoire side) they crapped-out against teams that, quite frankly, Switzerland, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine and Croatia would beat quite easily. [8)]

[SPS]

Honestly, some of the arguments here are ridiculous. Comparing Ukraine to Colombia? Come on now. One bad game and they're not to be at the world cup? Raise your hand if you saw 2 seconds of their qualifying campaign..

Lets see, they beat out the Euro Champs, the WC semi finalists and a 2-time WC quarter finalist and they don't deserve to be in Germany??

Further the team that thumped Ukraine:

Serbia topped them in qualifying so they earned their spot

Arguments against Poland and Croatia are at least admissible as they benefited from weak Q-groups coupled with a sketchy 2nd place calculation (second place teams from other groups had points subtracted from totals due to 7 teams in q-group), but to say that Europe deserves less spots at the expense of CONCACAF is ludicrous. Yes our region is improving, though its still about 20% as deep as UEFA thus our spot allocation is accurate.

To discuss the merits of 5 CAF qualifiers requires the reader to address the nations that did not qualify and their past results (Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria et al) prior to making assumptions about that continent's footballing strength.

[Elias]

2002 World Cup
Quarters = 4 Euros + Brazil, Korea, Senegal and USA
Rnd of 16 = 9 Euros + 2 SA + 1 Africa + 2 Asia + 2 NA

1998 World Cup
Quarters = 6 Euros + 2 SA
Rnd of 16 = 10 Euros + 4 SA + Mexico + Nigeria

1994 World Cup
Quarters = 7 Euros + Brazil
Rnd of 16 = 10 Euros + 2 SA + 2 NA + Nigeria + Saudi Arabia

1990 World Cup
Quarters = 6 Euros + Argentina + Cameroon
Rnd of 16 = 10 Euros + 4 SA + Costa Rica + Cameroon


So, the last 4 World Cups:

Quarters = 23 Euros + 5 SA + 1 NA + 1 Asia + 2 Africa
- Europe has claimed 72% of the quarterfinal spots. Even if they have more teams, 14 teams from 32 = 44%, so they are doing much better.

Rnd of 16 = 39 Euros + 12 SA + 6 NA + 4 Africa + 3 Asia
- Europe has claimed 61% of the spots.