Thread for Developing a Statistical System for Determining WC Allocations

[desertfox2]

First of all, I just want to say that being a huge World Cup fan, I have enjoyed reading all of your posts photar74. You know what you are talking about, and bring some interesting thoughts to this site about the allocation of spots and the different forms of qualification for future WC's.

For a long time I too have been trying to think up some kind of format that could be used to allocate the spots in a certain way to all 6 confederations. Now, with politics aside (which realistically is never the case), I agree that past performances in World Cup qualifying and World Cup Finals play should be considered in considering which confederations "deserve" spots. As far as continental tournaments and the Con. cup is concerned, it's tough to decide whether or not they should be included. The only two continental championships that could be included are the European tournament and maybe the African Cup of Nations. That's it. I don't believe that the Gold Cup, or Copa America, or any other one should be included. However, if you were to take continental tournaments into consideration, you would have to take all of them to be fair. I think the Con. Cup should be included, but I'm still not sure about that. I don't think friendlies should be included, because like you said, it's just too random.

Now, I've tried to do all the statistics behind everything like you have been doing, but it usually doesn't make anything easier for me. So without any real statistical format, this is what I believe the allocations should be for the 2006 World Cup:

CONMEBOL: 4 1/2
OFC: 1/2
AFC: 3 1/2
UEFA: 14 1/2 + host
CONCACAF: 3 1/2
CAF: 4 1/2

However, this is what I think will happen:

CONMEBOL: 4
OFC: 1
AFC: 4 1/2
UEFA: 13 1/2 + host
CONCACAF: 3
CAF: 5

As for an actual Qualifying Round format, I have thought about each region and what kind of format they should have. It would look something like this:
(BTW, this is using the probable allocation of spots that I have listed for the 2006 WC)

CONMEBOL:
- Break up the 10 teams into 2 groups of five.
- The top 2 teams in each group will qualify for the World Cup.

Note: I like this format better than the original format for the #1 reason of reducing the amount of matches. Players in South America are constantly complaining about playing too many qualifying matches as many times it conflicts with club matches. Reducing the amount of qualifying round matches from 18 to 8 in this region would dramatically help out these players. Also, I don't believe in too large of a group as teams realize they cannot qualify mathematically too early and are left with many meaningless matches (i.e. Venezuela and Chile in 2002 qualifying).

OFC:
- Have 2 groups of 3 for preliminaries. The winner of each group would advance to Round 2.
- Those 2 winners would be put into 2 groups of 3 containing Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and probably Tahiti. The 2 winners advance to the championship.
- Championship would be a home-and-home series. Winner would qualify for the World Cup.

Note: This is basically like the 1998 Qualifying Round format for this region. I like this format better than the one they had in 2002 qualifying, becuase then we avoid those 22-0 and 31-0 thrashing of minnows. It's a simple format with probably less matches for the top teams in the region.

AFC:
- Have the top 2 seeded teams get a bye into Round 2 (maybe Japan and South Korea).
- Have the other 40 (a guess) play in 20 home-and-home series based on seeding.
- 22 teams are then broken down into 4 groups of 4 teams in each and 2 group with 3 in each. The top 2 teams in the groups of 4 would advance to Round 3, and the 2 winners in the groups of 3 would also advance to Round 3.
- The final 10 teams would be broken down into 2 groups of 5, with the top two teams in each group qualifying for the World Cup. The 2 third place teams would play each other in a playoff, and the winner would then have to playoff with a European side to qualify for the World Cup.

Note: This is still not the greatest format, but it's something. It's sort of like the 2002 qualifying round format, except in the beginning 20 teams would be eliminated quickly. This isn't that great, but I'm still thinking of something better.

UEFA:
- Keep the same type of format.

Note: Now, I didn't get lazy with this one, I just can't seem to think of a better format than the one they had for 2002 qualifying to be honest. Now yes, teams will get a bad draw (i.e. Holland in 2002 qualifying), but with about 50 teams in the region it's difficult to think up anything else.

CONCACAF:
- Have Carribean brackets of some kind, and at the end of it have only 3-5 make it.
- Have Central American teams play 3 home-and-home series to decide who moves on from them.
- At the end of all the preliminaries, 12 teams will remain which will be the Semi-Final Round.
The 12 teams will be broken down into 3 groups of 4. But unlike 2002 qualifying, the top 2 teams in each group would advance AND the 2 best third place teams as well, making 8 teams in the Final Round group.
- The top 3 teams in the Final Round would qualify.

Note: I like your octogonal idea for a Final Round, however, I'm not sure it should be used if CONCACAF still is getting only 3 spots. Other than that not much else should change as I like the current format.

CAF:
- same as 2002 qualifying.

Note: I know this won't happen, as they have already stated that they will use the 2006 African Cup of Nations as qualifying for 2006 (which I believe is totally wrong, but I'm not going to start on that). I just feel that the 2002 qualifying format was fine.

Well, if your still reading this post, I thank you lol. I know that much of the stuff that I or anyone else says here is just speculation, but it's interesting to see what people think. Keep posting!

[argentine soccer fan]

Originally posted by condor11

actually only brazil always qualifies
argentina has missed some wc

Yeah, that is true. It has even happened during my lifetime. Those damn Peruvians knocked us out in 1970.

[jwinters]

In reference to Nobby's proposal . . . Originally posted by photar74

I enjoyed your system, although I feel that measuring confederation strength only by its weaker teams in WC group play focuses too much on one aspect of a confederation. As perhaps the most glaring example, why should UEFA lose a spot for France finishing 28th, and not gain any when they won the title?
As I have posted a similar system (here and on r.s.s.) I have thought about this question perhaps more than Nobby has. My feeling is this: the reason why you want to focus on failure rather than success is because the teams that are on the outside looking in are more likely to be like the worst teams in their confederations, rather than the best.

I mean, chances are that Honduras was not going to make the final eight. Or that Ukraine was going to play Brazil in the final game. Had they been invited rather than, say, China, they would have most likely performed like the worst of CONCACAF or UEFA rather than the best.

So that's why you look at last place teams--they tell you (on average) more about who you aren't letting in.

An aside: Back in 1998, the UEFA-phile cry was, Hey, our teams make up six of the last eight, so we bloody well ought to have 24 spots. Of course, that's nonsense; it's like arguing that since CONMEBOL got 1 of the last 2, they deserved 16 spots. But it also igores the fact that as you take successively deeper slices into the depth of world soccer (on a nation-by-nation basis) you find that talent is more evenly distributed across confederations.

I think your number crunching in pursuit of determining "confederation depth" is admirable, but ultimately misguided. You are trying to judge probable World Cup success of teams that didn't make the show based on a set of complicated calculations. Even were this possible, the results turn out to be far from transparent and as unlikely to squelch debate. Nobby and I are simply trying to punish confederations that send crap teams and reward confeds that don't send crap teams. And it's incredibly transparent. Why dock UEFA a spot? Because of France, Slovenia and Portugal. (Or is it Poland?)

[Note: My prefered system docks a spot for each last place team and then adds one each to CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, two each to UEFA and CAF, one and a half AFC and a half to OFC.]

In time, confederations that want to maximize their WC spots will do a better job of setting up their qualification schemes. Unseeded systems like UEFA's and CAF's will bbe replaced with multi-level, seeded systems like CONCACAF's.

[Dandal]

Originally posted by jwinters
In time, confederations that want to maximize their WC spots will do a better job of setting up their qualification schemes. Unseeded systems like UEFA's and CAF's will bbe replaced with multi-level, seeded systems like CONCACAF's.
Actually, UEFA qualifications are seeded and CAF's is at least multi-level.

Caf has a first level, the preliminary. This is where Nigeria plays Eritrea and Cameroon plays Somalia. That way they get rid of 50 per cent of the countries. I don't know if they use a seeding procedure for the following group play, but i would be surprised if not.

The UEFA qualification groups are based on a seeding system. According to their performance the last Euro and WC qualifications, each team is classified as A, B, C, D or E. Every qualification group consists of one team of each class. In the WC qualification group everyone is talking about - the one with Holland, Portugal and Ireland - Holland was the A team and Ireland the C. I admit that Ireland probably was one of the best C-teams, but even the these teams are often able to qualify. Slovenia is another C-team from the last WC qualifications. And as we've seen in the recent first round of the Euro-04 qualifications, even the D-teams can cause trouble for top seeding teams.

On topic, I think it's fun reading and I like statistics (I write statistical reports for a living, not about football unfortunately). But I really would like to see somebody start from scratch - if we want a statistical system for WC allocations you can't really start from present allocations, that are politically influenced, can you?

[jwinters]

Originally posted by Dandal

Actually, UEFA qualifications are seeded and CAF's is at least multi-level.

Caf has a first level, the preliminary. This is where Nigeria plays Eritrea and Cameroon plays Somalia. That way they get rid of 50 per cent of the countries. I don't know if they use a seeding procedure for the following group play, but i would be surprised if not.

The UEFA qualification groups are based on a seeding system. According to their performance the last Euro and WC qualifications, each team is classified as A, B, C, D or E. Every qualification group consists of one team of each class. In the WC qualification group everyone is talking about - the one with Holland, Portugal and Ireland - Holland was the A team and Ireland the C. I admit that Ireland probably was one of the best C-teams, but even the these teams are often able to qualify. Slovenia is another C-team from the last WC qualifications. And as we've seen in the recent first round of the Euro-04 qualifications, even the D-teams can cause trouble for top seeding teams.

On topic, I think it's fun reading and I like statistics (I write statistical reports for a living, not about football unfortunately). But I really would like to see somebody start from scratch - if we want a statistical system for WC allocations you can't really start from present allocations, that are politically influenced, can you? I actually knew that the CAF system had that first play-off round. But I don't think that's a real substitue for a group play. And I don't think they seed them into the five groups of five.

I think my masic beef with the CAF systetm is that the bottlenecks are pretty severe--perform in your first two games or that's it for four years. And finish first in your group or be eliminated. Given the time lag between WCs and the narrow window for individuals to participate, I'd rather see a more forgiving scheme (say, a first round of four-team groups with the first two going through) even if that means more games.

Likewise, I'd like to see UEFA organize into seven groups (assuming 14 bids) and having the top two go straight through. And probably preliminary rounds (group A: Malta, Andora, Albania and Scotland) to winnow out the weaker sisters.

On your last point, a non-political scheme will eventually be self-correcting. Confederations that keep sending bad teams will, over time, send fewer teams.

[photar74]

Originally posted by Dandal
On topic, I think it's fun reading and I like statistics (I write statistical reports for a living, not about football unfortunately). But I really would like to see somebody start from scratch - if we want a statistical system for WC allocations you can't really start from present allocations, that are politically influenced, can you?
No, you can't. I did everything I could to reduce the numbr of assumptions in my system, but it still didn't work because that was the one I couldn't remove. In the end, I thought I had it down to only three assumptions:

1. Only use interconfederation WCQ and WC Finals matches, as its the only time the confederations play each other all-out.
2. Only use matches from interconfederation playoffs and WC Finals group stages, as these are the only matches in the above set with the same rules regarding wins, losses and draws (Interconfederation playoffs do an have an extra time and penalty kick possibility, but it never happened in the data set).
3. Only use results from the previous two WCs, as these are the only WCs with 32 teams.

These were, I thought, excellent assumptions, and they went a long way to developing a decent system. However, unfortunately, buried underneath these three assumptions was a fourth assumption that damaged the system:

4. WC allocations for France '98 were an accurate measure of confederation strength at the time.

I just don't know how to get rid of this assumption wihtout adding what I feel would be damaged data (aka, non WC matches). Others have posted systems that focus only on the weaker teams in each confederation, but I feel that adds too many assumptions to the system. So the question remains, how does one remove all assumptions while still using all relevant data?

I'm not sure if its possible.

[photar74]

Nowadays I've been thinking that insted of arguing about who "deserves" what, FIFA should find a way to include the total number of teams from each confederation that each confederation feels it deserves. Right now, this number is:

UEFA: 16
CONMEBOL, CAF and AFC: 5 (4.5 for CONMEBOL)
CONCACAF: 4 (3.5)
OFC: 1

That totals 36 teams. It wouldn't actually be all that hard to have a 36 team WC Fianls--just have an eight-team final round of qualifying (for the final four sports) in the host country the March before the WC. Two groups of four, top two from each group move onto the finals in June. That way, every confederation has as many allocations as it feels it deserves, which would be just as good as having as many as each confederation actually deserves. Something like this:

UEFA: Germany + 11 auto and 4 playoff
CAF: 5 auto
AFC: 4 auto, 1 playoff
CONMEBOL: 3 auto, 2 playoff
CONCACAF: 3 auto, 1 playoff
OFC: 1 auto

It still wouldn't completely satisfy everyone, but since it would be a far more lucrative and attractive playoff system (more WC Finals-like) than the current two-legged playoff format, it would come closer satisfying everyone than the current system does.

[photar74]

Actually, maybe that system would just make everyone angry, and as such isn't such a good idea. :)

[Sachin]

Originally posted by photar74
Actually, maybe that system would just make everyone angry, and as such isn't such a good idea. :)

That may be it's best endorsement :)

Sachin

[pololo]

Originally posted by photar74
Nowadays I've been thinking that insted of arguing about who "deserves" what, FIFA should find a way to include the total number of teams from each confederation that each confederation feels it deserves. Right now, this number is:

UEFA: 16
CONMEBOL, CAF and AFC: 5 (4.5 for CONMEBOL)
CONCACAF: 4 (3.5)
OFC: 1

That totals 36 teams. It wouldn't actually be all that hard to have a 36 team WC Fianls--just have an eight-team final round of qualifying (for the final four sports) in the host country the March before the WC. Two groups of four, top two from each group move onto the finals in June. That way, every confederation has as many allocations as it feels it deserves, which would be just as good as having as many as each confederation actually deserves. Something like this:

UEFA: Germany + 11 auto and 4 playoff
CAF: 5 auto
AFC: 4 auto, 1 playoff
CONMEBOL: 3 auto, 2 playoff
CONCACAF: 3 auto, 1 playoff
OFC: 1 auto

It still wouldn't completely satisfy everyone, but since it would be a far more lucrative and attractive playoff system (more WC Finals-like) than the current two-legged playoff format, it would come closer satisfying everyone than the current system does.

Man you overrate CAF so much.
CONMEBOL should have 5 autos and a playoff no question about it.

[photar74]

Originally posted by pololo


Man you overrate CAF so much.
CONMEBOL should have 5 autos and a playoff no question about it.

In that last system, it wasn't a question of rating each confederation accurately. It was a question allowing each confederation to meet its own demands.

Unfortunately, there is no good way for a 36-team Finals to work. If there was, everyone would be happy.

[Bauser]

Originally posted by photar74
Unfortunately, there is no good way for a 36-team Finals to work. If there was, everyone would be happy.

......which brings us back to square one.

32 teams. The important people at FIFA agree in the size of the cake. Now it's all about negotiating the size of the pieces for the six confederations.

There will probably be only minor changes. Asia loses 0.5 slots to CONCACAF or something like that.

[lanman]

Originally posted by pololo


Man you overrate CAF so much.
CONMEBOL should have 5 autos and a playoff no question about it.


Africa has supplied the last two Olympic champions.

On what basis should over 50% of South American qualify for the finals? Do two good sides mean that the rest should benefit from this?

[pololo]

Originally posted by lanman



Africa has supplied the last two Olympic champions.

On what basis should over 50% of South American qualify for the finals? Do two good sides mean that the rest should benefit from this?

And which are the ''good ones''in Africa compare too Argentina,Brazil?

[lanman]

Originally posted by pololo


And which are the ''good ones''in Africa compare too Argentina,Brazil?

I'm not trying to compare African and South American teams, I was just responding to your post.
However, if South America should be given 5.5 places, then UEFA should get over 20 places.

[pololo]

Originally posted by lanman


I'm not trying to compare African and South American teams, I was just responding to your post.
However, if South America should be given 5.5 places, then UEFA should get over 20 places.

And why?
So we can see super European teams like Slovenia,Austria,Yugoslavia,Ukraine.

[Bauser]

Originally posted by pololo
And why?
So we can see super European teams like Slovenia,Austria,Yugoslavia,Ukraine.

Neither Europe or South America are in position to demand more spots after the showing in Korea/Japan. If it hadn't been for some heroic last minute action from Paraguay against an already eliminated Slovenian team, only Brazil would have survived the groupstage in the last World Cup from South America.

[lanman]

Originally posted by pololo


And why?
So we can see super European teams like Slovenia,Austria,Yugoslavia,Ukraine.

If it means seeing the great South American teams such as Chile and Peru, then yes.

[lanman]

Originally posted by Bauser


Neither Europe or South America are in position to demand more spots after the showing in Korea/Japan. If it hadn't been for some heroic last minute action from Paraguay against an already eliminated Slovenian team, only Brazil would have survived the groupstage in the last World Cup from South America.

I don't think any confederation has any great claim for more spots after 2002.
I would say that Asia needs to prove it's worth on another continent. CONCACAF probably has the strongest claim, but it is still not that great.

[Chicago76]

The basis for my statistical system for WC allocation would include the following:

1-Only World Cup matches should be used to determine positions. Only in the WC do teams play with their best against other confederations. WC qualifiers should not be included in any way. The confederations use different calendars and different formats. Some do a better job than others of avoiding qualifiers in the middle of their domestic seasons than others, so comparability here is limited.

2-The primary focus of any system should be to compare teams on the "bubble" of the qualifying. For instance, if Argentina and Brazil both get 9 pts in group play in a World Cup and meet in the final, this should not bolster the notion of CONMEBOL getting 6 or 7 spots. We should be more interested in how teams 3-5 perform for CONMEBOL, because these are the teams that could be taking a place otherwise occupied by Asia #5, UEFA #16, etc. If this results in CONMEBOL or UEFA losing spots and placing their "premier" teams on the qualifying bubble next time around, it is up to those teams to take qualfying more seriously and their respective confederations to come up with a system in which fewer quirky results occur like Holland in the last qualifier. In UEFA's case, why not have some kind of prelimiary group play for the bottom half of teams so that goal difference against minnows doesn't have the potential to hurt a team? UEFA could have 6 groups of 6 with two teams automatically qualifying in each group and playoffs for number threes

3-Intraconfederation games can count or not. Statistically, it will not matter much one way or the other.

4-Politics aside, Asia and Oceania should merge. In any statistical system, if Australia got a full spot and then goes to the next World Cup and finishes with zero pts, the confederation would risk losing the spot. There is too much variation when the outcome of one team decides the fate of an entire confederation. By pooling them with Asia, the degree of variation diminishes.

My system:

Take the bottom half of each confederation and determine the average number of points for each team in group play. In the case of a confederation like UEFA with 15 teams, to get 7.5 teams, take half of the middle team's points.

The results thus far:
UEFA 7.5 Teams 19 points 2.53 avg
CONMEBOL 2.5 Teams 7 points 2.80 avg
CONCACAF 1.5Teams 6 points 4.00 avg
Africa 2.5 Teams 4 points 1.60 avg
Asia 2.0 Teams 0 points 0.00 avg

The confed. with the weakest bottom half (Asia)loses one spot to the confed with the best bottom half (CONCACAF). The next worst confed (Africa) loses 1/2 spot to CONMEBOL. Next WC, Africa # 5 plays CONMEBOL #6 for a spot. UEFA stays the same. All confederations are guaranteed 2 spots minimum. If Asia were to still do the worst with only 2 teams, then the next worst confederation would need to fork over a full spot.

The advantage to such a system is that implicitly, all results historically would be included in addition to the most recent WC. The introduction of another team from a confederation should bring the group back closer to the middle next time, reducing the chance of the same confed. making two consecutive 1 team gains. Likewise, if a confed. loses a spot, they will most likely be more competitive next WC. All confederations should converge toward the middle.