2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying II [R]

I can already hear it from East Asia: "All the 4 direct qualifiers in 2010 were from East Asia. Why guarantee 2 spots for West Asia?" So you're basically making two separate confederations with regards to WCQ. I don't think it will happen.

 

It definitely won't happen. If teams want more competetive matches they should enter all the Asian tournaments. The Asian Cup is an open tournament, and there are other tournaments for the developing nations as well as regional tournaments. I don't have a problem with a different group setup that is partly regional in the early stages, but the final groups should be an open draw. I don't want to always be playing the same teams for qualification each time.

 

Teams do enter the Asian Cup for instance and then AFC move them out into the Challenge Cup, taking away the games that the devloping nations are crying out for.

If the AFC made a proper go of a qualification round for the Asian Cup, then this would keep the minnows happy. But as it stands, the AFC have taken everything from them.

 

I wasn't aware of that. I thought those nations chose not to enter the Asian Cup. My belief is that the Asian Cup should be open to all AFC member nations to compete in, even if it's an early round only.

 

disagree
India beat Qatar. They conceeded 2 penalty goals against UAE and only 1 in open play. They also played with 9 men for like 60 mins.

 

It should be open.

Forget about AFC trying to change the format of the World Cup qualifiers when they can't get their own comp in order.

With regards to World Cup qualifiers hae group stages earlier for everyone, then we don't need to go back that far. It's happened before, the minnows get beat as seems to be always the case, it's just the few mid ranking nations like Hong Kong who are stuck.

They don't play challenge cup because they are too good. They don't play further into the World Cup qualifiers because they aren't good enough. This is what AFC need to look at. Some minnows are improving to mid ranking status thanks to the Challenge Cup and more competition amongest each other, but the mid rankers have nothing.

 

and people complain about uefa.

 

If someone raises his knee then yes, he commits a foul. If two players collide then that is usually not a a problem.

It doesn't work that way for AFC.

Let's look at CONMEBOL They have just 9 participating NTs. The AFC has 46. We can't afford to have a league structure especially in such a huge continent.

When did India beat Qatar? I couldn't find a record for it.

 

A friendly couple of weeks ago.

 

Here's what I would suggest for AFC:

Round 1: Top 5 get byes, other 38 play each other to eliminate 19
Round 2: 6 groups of 4, Top 2 in each group advance
Round 3: 2 groups of 6
Round 4: Third place teams play each other

This would eliminate one round at the beginning, allow 20% more countries in the first group stage, and the second group stage would require two more games per team but not any additional matchdays since somebody always has off in a group of 5. One problem would be that assuming they advance to Round 4, Japan will automatically have off during the WCQ matchday that's during the Confederations Cup whereas it would be harder to reschedule if everybody was supposed to play every matchday.

 

it was one of those friendlies qatar plays behind closed rooms because they're scared of criticism coming from media apparently.

whenever iran plays qatar away in friendlies, it's behind closed doors as well.

but honestly the ref did screw up majorly. he was way too biased in the whole game for UAE. but a replay is too much to ask for. officiating in AFC is very questionable at times. I will never forget the Qatar-Japan quarter-final in AC 2011. The ref did everything he could for Qatar in terms of giving them easy freekicks and such to win but somehow Japan made it scoring legit goals the ref couldn't disallow.

 

regarding this whole debacle about india-uae. i didnt see the match so cant comment on whether referee was biased or not. it would not surprise me as it wouldnt be the first time.

but on that instance where the ref gave red card to the indian keeper. please guys look at the video again. im not saying he was intentionally trying to hurt the uae player, no one can know for sure what went through the goalkeepers mind. if he wanted to protect himself or what. bu its understandable that the referee would think so. looking at the sequence again i certainly see why the ref would make that call, as it kinda looks he is raising his knee to intentionally hurt the player. but that is just how it appears to me. its suspect. but again, i cant know for sure. its a JUDGEMENT call.

but i dont know about the rewarded penalty though as i am not entirely knowledgeable on the rules.

 

UEFA also has huge number of participating NTs. They spend two years qualifying for European Championships and two years qualifying for World Cups.

We get a grand total of 14 games for 2010 EAFF Championship, 2014 World Cup Q and 2011 Asian Cup Q. And that's because we beat North Korea to qualify for the EAFF in Japan, if not it would have been 11 games only.

 

What else do you want them to do? In Asia we spend two years for Asian Cup qualification and two years for World Cup Qualification. Prolonging qualification won't change anything other than disrupt league structures.

 

For Japan, South Korea, Iran and Australia maybe they do.

For Hong Kong, we get around 10 games for all competitions in a 4 years cycle. Even minnows like San Marino, Andorra and Faroe Islands in UEFA, they get to play 20 competitive games or more in the same 4 years cycle.

There is a FIFA international calendar that every FIFA member is supposed to adhere to, so I don't see how it can disrupt the league structures. On many FIFA match days we are just twiddling our thumbs.

 

Interesting. We (Australia) get to play Asian Cup qualifiers on non FIFA dates. The draw probably cost Oman the chance of qualifying last time as they had the misfortune to play us twice when our No 1 side was available, whilst Kuwait and Indonesia got a match against a home based side and another match against a weakened team.

 

^the games being held right now in Leg 1 and Leg 2 of Asian WCQ in this round are played on None-Fifa dates as well. For example Iran was unable to have Nekounam and Shojaei for these games. This also applies to players playing in other Asian clubs who have their preparation during these games like in Qatar, UAE, etc.

Hopefully this doesn't happen in the next round as not having your full squad could have upsets for the big teams as it gets more competitive. AFC should get its act together and have all the matches on FIFA dates.

 

Set up friendlies?

 

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/news/newsid=1479874/

 

The problem is though that they have a very small selection of sides wishing to play them in a friendly.

For instance, Saudi Arabia wouldn't play them, there's no benefit to Saudi.
The only teams HK could play are the teams that they are trying to get away from.

They want to improve there football, but they can't if they only play a couple of games every cycle against good oposition. Playing Mongolia every friendly match day won't help them.

 

I agree with Angsa's suggestion that the European group stage qualifying format would have been better for smaller nations like Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines, as it gives our countries more competitive games and the chance to improve. You will of course see blowouts in this type of format and members always have the option of not participating if they want to avoid this but every member should be given the opportunity to join the qualifying stage for the Asia Cup and have more games in both WC qualifying and Asia Cup qualifying. Just like a lot of the minnows in Europe have steadily improved by being exposed to stronger teams, this will eventually be the case in Asia as well as teams get better.

 

Your absoulty right Angsa and yourself. And if you look at it, this is the opinion from guys who are closely following nations that aren't given this opportunity.

Members here who follow the nations were Group Stages are a given don't really appear to understand this divide.

What I would say though, is that the World Cup format is fine at the moment. What the AFC need to improve on is their own Asian Cup format. Let's get this sorted first and then take the World Cup qualification to the next stage.

I'm reluctant to go the whole hog and play two competitions with group stages, as I think the very smaller nations would get stuck in the blow out rug and financially get torn to pieces on too many fronts.

Not long back aswell, we did have Group Stages, but hosted in one nation. This might actually be the better way to go back to too begin with. As currently we have Syria playing in Jordan. Palestine playing host to nations who might or might not turn up, what we need is stabiltiy, we need media releases telling us what is happening, not a guessing game, thats what we currently have on most occasions, so until this is resolved, group stages are far into the future.

But what the hell, the AFC concentrate on their ACL tournament for the elite and don't give time for anything else.

 

I agree, but its difficult to fit this in the calendar as it currently stands. Already we are overlapping Asian Cup qualifiers with World Cup qualifiers due to playing the Asian Cup the year after a Wolrd Cup. I know putting the Asian Cup back a year clashes with the Euro, but does that really matter? Currently the host and the top 3 from the previous tournament qualify, but if we instead change this to host and winner, and then seed the best 7 teams from the previous tournament (or some other seeding method like FIFA rankings if desired) we can have a two round group stage, with all nations participating. It could go something like this if all 46 nations enter.

Preliminary group stage (37 teams)

7 groups (5 or 6 teams) top 3 qualify for 2nd stage.

Final group stage (seeded teams come in for this)

7 groups of 4 (7 seeds + 21 1st round qualifiers)

Top 2 from each group qualify for finals tournament along with host and Champion.

This would necessitate a 2 year qualifying process (or close to it) and even though a large number of teams go through to the final stage it gives the lower ranked teams that want competetive matches to improve at least 4/5 matches if the 1st round is a single round robin, and 8/10 if its played home and away.

 

Set up friendlies? Sounds like another gambling trip to Macau for our players to me...

almango's proposal seems okay, so long that EVERYONE takes part. But to my observation many minnows do not bother to enter Asian Cup qualifying because they can get in through the AFC Challenge Cup. Somehow North Korea got in through this way. (I suppose they decided that they did not want any home games to prevent anyone entering their fabulous country.)

First thing you need to do is get rid of AFC Challenge Cup. But I think that's difficult if not impossible because that's what some FAs want for political reasons.