So who might be in the sweet sixteen?

[ursula]

I'm just musing about the proposed new WC/ANC qualification procedure, (http://www.sabcnews.com/sport/soccer/0,1009,49276,00.html) where there will be a final group round of five groups of six teams with the inner going to the 06WC and the next two joining them in the 06 ANC. In the group round, 16 teams will be seeded to be joined by other teams who need to go through a home-and-home round. So who might be the 16 teams? According to the November 02 FIFA rankings it's these teams in order:

Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Congo DR, Zambia, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Angola. the next four teams (i.e. those most likely to crack the top 16) are Kenya, Togo, Liberia, and Malawi.

So if I try to group these teams by their seed, I might get:

Group A
Cameroon
Ivory Coast
Congo DR
Group B
Senegal
Ghana
Zambia
Group C
Nigeria
Zimbabwe
Algeria
Group D
South Africa
Tunisia
Mali
Group E
Morocco
Egypt
Burkina Faso
Angola


Of course, CAF may just do a random distribution like they have in the past, but the above mini-groups are interesting: The last two groups are the most interesting. Group E with three northern teams, especially Egypt and Morocco again. In Group D, South Africa doesn't travel all that well to the north of the continent as well as having two teams who played in the WC in Japorea. group C looks to be a cakewalk for Nigeria, but we can always count on them to make things interesting- I'd say that Zimbabwe of course just has to come in forth place as by divine right it seems they can't advance to any continental finals.

[bigsmooth]

These groupings are bizarre to me, as is this whole system. Clearly, they're not based on geography or regional proximity (ex. South Africa in a group with Tunisia and Mali, for God's sakes). So what we have are five groups, four with three teams and one with four? Why not just have four groups with four teams each if 16 is the number you're starting with? There's nothing sacrosanct about the way these groups are paired that makes it inherently superior to a pairing of four groups/four teams per group and then sorting out the field from there.
"Interesting" it is, but I would add "confusing" and perhaps "irrational" to the list of words to describe this methodology. But then again, that's why the bigwigs in CAF get paid big bucks to organize international soccer tourneys and I'm just a working stiff in D.C.

[ursula]

Ha! Sorry, Big- the groups above were designed by me and bizarre they are. i got them by 1) taking the top 16 teams in the FIFA rankings, and 2) assigned the top five teams to each of the five groups, then 3) took the second five and assigned them in reverse order (so the first ranked team (Cameroon) is paired with the 10th (Ivory Coast), the second (Senegal) with the ninth (Ghana) and so on, then 4) took teams ranked 11 to 15 and assigned them in normal order again (the 11th ranked team, Congo DR, is in group A, the 12th ranked team, Zambia, is in group B, etc).

I realize that this makes for bizarre groups and I fully expect CAF to come up with an even more bizarre seeding system: Something like they will take the top five teams, put them into the five groups then take all the other teams and have a random drawing. This is a similar way that they did it last time and we sure got groups that were very uneven in terms of strength: For example, Senegal had a much harder time of qualifying for the past WC than South Africa did.

At any rate, I hope I just didn't make things more confusing. Maybe I'll come back later to try and group the teams along geographical lines. I'm just a working stiff in Portland!


P.S. In looking at the FIFA rankings (which I rarely do) the one thing that struck me the most was that they have Zimbabwe as the eighth best team in Africa! Pretty high ranking for a team that never has qualified for the CAF finals if you ask me...