small nations world cup

[Kaiser]

FIFA is always looking to grow the game, meaning make i more popular and develop more markets. There are many small countries which are too small population wise to ever compete in the world cup, yet try to qualify every 4 years. I think FIFA needs to hold World Cup finals for the small nations There are roughly 200 countries in this world. nearlyu one fifth of them have a population of less than 1 million. FIFA should have a tournament just for them. And possibly have another for nations with a population under 10 million.

[giggs88]

competitions for countries that have failed to qualify for the world cup? :0

[prk166]

Originally posted by Kaiser
FIFA is always looking to grow the game, meaning make i more popular and develop more markets. There are many small countries which are too small population wise to ever compete in the world cup, yet try to qualify every 4 years. I think FIFA needs to hold World Cup finals for the small nations There are roughly 200 countries in this world. nearlyu one fifth of them have a population of less than 1 million. FIFA should have a tournament just for them. And possibly have another for nations with a population under 10 million.

I like it. The trick would be finding a way to make it fit in. And if you go by population, what's the cut off? You could have some relatively good teams like Holland, Belgium, Costa Rica, and others wouldn't pass up trying to qualify for the WC. Maybe it could be played the same summer as the WC with the best 16 small teams that didn't qualify playing it?

[Sykotyk]

Have regular World Cup qualifying. Any country under one million (or ten million), that didn't qualify for the World Cup would be drawn into groups to qualify for the Handicapped World Cup (so to speak).

Smaller countries could forego WC qualifying and simply go with the HWC qualifying if costs may be too much for WC qualifying.

Probably would be better than Bhutan and Motserrat.

Sykotyk

[argentine soccer fan]

How about a world cup only for countries that have over 200 million people? That way we can open markets and grow the game in places like India, China, Indonesia, and so on. :D

[giggs88]

good idea.i cant believe these countries who have such a big population and dontproduce good footballers. its not like no one in india knows about the sport, i have to blame the government for not funding football as good as cricket.

[MichaelR]

If FIFA is interested in developing football globally, a small-nations competition is not a bad idea at all. But it would be hard to sell the TV rights, and the live gate would be only small potatoes. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to be sanctioned. More important things, like Confederations Cup, must be maintained.

There is an all-sports competition that bears resemblance to this idea, though: the Olympic committees of eight European countries compete in the Games of the Small States of Europe, I believe, every four years. The last one was in San Marino in 2001. Iceland and Cyprus are major powers in these Games!

It seems like a good idea to give small countries a venue to raise their level of play and maybe enhance their FIFA ranking. After all, it's for the good of the game. I can see it: Luxembourg v. Trinidad & Tobago in the Small States' Cup. Why not?

[Crowdie]

A proposal very similar to this was tabled by the English Rugby Board for the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Their proposal was to have the World Cup split into two tournaments. The main tournament was for the power countries - Australia, England, France, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, etc with another tournament held at the same time for the lesser powers. This proposal would have given the lesser nations a tournament to win without being thumped by the power countries and meant the power countries didn't have to play lesser powers (making their tournament more intense).

You will notice I use the term "lesser powers" instead of "smaller countries" as countries would have been placed in each tournament by their world ranking rather than their population size.

So this type of concept has been seriously considered by other sporting codes.

Within the soccer world UEFA has the Champions League and the lesser UEFA Cup as another example.

Crowdie.

[Sykotyk]

There's the U-17 World Championship and World Youth Championship,... so why not have competitions based on the criteria of the individual countries, in addition to competitions that are based on the criteria of the individual players?

Sykotyk

[Samarkand]

Originally posted by giggs88
its not like no one in india knows about the sport, i have to blame the government for not funding football as good as cricket.
Crap and bullshit

Most countries only give nominal, if any, money to the national associations. And if governments were to fund national federations, they would then want a say in the running of said federations, which is specifically prohibited by FIFA.

What about the USA? Didn't notice much government spending and they reached the quarter finals of the last WC.

[nicodemus]

Bahrain, Luxembourg, and Lichtenstein would kick the crap out of anybody in the less than 1,000,000 population cup, and Brunei's fans would be the only ones with enough money to attend.

[DominicFromCanada]

Originally posted by nicodemus
Bahrain, Luxembourg, and Lichtenstein would kick the crap out of anybody in the less than 1,000,000 population cup, and Brunei's fans would be the only ones with enough money to attend.

Are you kidding? Iceland would kick their asses ANYTIME! Even Faroe Islands are better than Luxemburg and Liechtenstein!
I certainly forget some countries that are even better (hey, you're talking about countries of 33,000 for Liechtenstein and around 442,000 for Luxemburg!) than ones I mentionned even if I really think Iceland would be a contenders every tournament.

[Kaiser]

I look at our confed. and see some great football countries like T&T and Jamaica and what about Barbados and Martinique? They have very little chance of appearing opn the world stage. They can't realistically compete with USA and Mexico. There are others in other confeds too. A 16 or 8 team comp could be held a month before the full WC or even during. Hold the competition in one of the qualifying nations. The 2 finalists could even be brouhgt in to play right before the full WC final as a warm up for the crowd. I think it could expose some talent to clubs that wouldn't normally find it.

[Kaiser]

156 East Timor 997,853
157 Fiji 868,531
158 Qatar 817,052
159 Cyprus 771,657
160 Reunion 755,171
161 Guyana 702,100
162 Bahrain 667,238
163 Comoros 632,948
164 Equatorial Guinea 510,473
165 Solomon Islands 509,190
166 Djibouti 457,130
167 Luxembourg 456,764
168 Macau S.A.R. 441,487
169 Guadeloupe 440,189
170 Suriname 435,449
171 Martinique 425,966
172 Cape Verde 412,137
173 Malta 400,420
174 Brunei 358,098
175 Maldives 329,684
176 Bahamas, The 297,477
177 Iceland 280,798
178 Barbados 277,264
179 Belize 266,440
180 French Polynesia 262,125
181 Western Sahara 261,794
182 Netherlands Antilles 216,226
183 New Caledonia 210,798
184 Vanuatu 199,414
185 French Guiana 186,917
186 Mayotte 178,437
187 Samoa 178,173
188 Sao Tome and Principe 175,883
189 Guam 163,593
190 Saint Lucia 162,157
191 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 116,812
192 Virgin Islands 108,814
193 Micronesia, Federated States of 108,143
194 Tonga 108,141
195 Kiribati 98,549
196 Jersey 90,156
197 Grenada 89,258
198 Seychelles 80,469
199 Northern Mariana Islands 76,129
200 Man, Isle of 74,261
201 Aruba 70,844
202 Dominica 69,655
203 Andorra 69,150
204 Antigua and Barbuda 67,897
205 Guernsey 64,818
206 Bermuda 64,482
207 American Samoa 57,844
208 Marshall Islands 56,429
209 Greenland 56,385
210 Faroe Islands 46,345
211 Cayman Islands 41,934
212 Saint Kitts and Nevis 38,763
213 Liechtenstein 33,145
214 Monaco 32,130
215 San Marino 28,119
216 Gibraltar 27,776
217 Virgin Islands, British 21,730
218 Cook Islands 21,008
219 Palau 19,717
220 Turks and Caicos Islands 19,350
221 Wallis and Futuna 15,734
222 Anguilla 12,738
223 Nauru 12,570
224 Tuvalu 11,305
225 Montserrat 8,995
226 Saint Helena 7,367
227 Saint Pierre and Miquelon 6,976

Some pretty nice vacation spots in this list.

[BerwynBlazers]

I think in a less then 1,000,000 thousand cup it would be Wales kicking the crap out of everyone.
Of course I see Kaiser just did what I spent the last 20 minutes doing. Of those countries, here are the ones with soccer teams registered with FIFA, Martinique I guess isn't.

American Samoa
Andoora
Antigua & Barbuda
Aruba
Bahamas
Bahrain
Barbados
Belize
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Cape Verde
Cook Islands
Cyprus
Djibouti
Dominica
Equatorial Guinea
Faroes
Fiji
Netherland Antilles
Qatar
St. Kitts & Nevis
St. Lucia
St. Vincent & Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Seychelles
Solomon Islands
Suriname
Tongo
Turks
Grenada
Guam
Guyana
Haiti
Iceland
Liechteinstein
Luxembourg
Macao
Maldives
Malta
Vanuatu
Wales

[BerwynBlazers]

If there was a little 20 team world cup I would be interested in watching it, because I will probably have nothing better to do.

According to the FIFA World Rankings, here is what the top 20 under 1,000,000 teams would be.

Wales
Iceland
Qatar
Cyprus
Haiti
Barbados
Bahrain
St. Lucia
Faroes
St. Kitts
Malta
Grenada
Andorra
Cape Verde
Liechteinstein
Suriname
Fiji
Maldivas
St. Vincent & Grenandines
Antigua & Barbuda

[afgrijselijkheid]

or we could just save a lot of effort and have iceland play wales every year

[BerwynBlazers]

does scotland have under a million people?

[AvidSinger]

Originally posted by giggs88
good idea.i cant believe these countries who have such a big population and dontproduce good footballers. its not like no one in india knows about the sport, i have to blame the government for not funding football as good as cricket. Well, they have their own sports that they're simply more interested in. India is superb at cricket and field hockey. China is among the best in the world in gymnastics, swimming, diving, and a ton of other sports. And so on and so on.

[DominicFromCanada]

Wales??? There are near 3,000,000 people out there!

It would be a 3 teams competition: Iceland, Qatar and Cyprus. Maybe Haiti could upset one of them.