Review: Do you think the AFC no longer has the "Big Five"?

What about Uzbekistan?

 

Japan, australia, iran, and korea are currently the top four team. But teams like saudi, iraq, qatar, oman, uae, uzbekistan are not that far off

 

The Aussies, Japanese and South Koreans that is all. There is NO big four.

 

Dont include Aussies in the list. They are an expat to AFC community ..If giving fair decision , SK, Japan and Iran make up the top three/four with KSA still the hot teams in Asia. Depending on how KSA gives its potential in Asian Cup , we have a good chance to be on the top four again.

 

Only include Japan and South Korea here in my opinion, with Japan as outstanding number one.

 

Seriously there was never a so called big 5. There was always only the Big 4.
And its pretty obvious for everyone which teams are part of the Big 4.
Only inferior people claim to be something they are not. Respect and honor can not be claimed but it
can only be earned.

 

The big teams are the ones who have been to every world cup in the 21st century.

 

I think there is still a big four ... the Asian Cup showed that some teams can cause upsets, but really there were only 4 teams in the Cup that had a realistic chance of winning it.

Uzbekistan seem to have fallen off the pace a little, well not keeping up with the big teams. And other teams, China and UAE seem to be catching up.

Saudi Arabia haven't really been a "big" team for some years now ... considering how well their club teams do you would expect a little better from their national team.

I still think come the World Cup qualifiers though anything can happen, and you will get some teams pushing for higher honours. Be interesting to see how China goes in qualifying this time. Similarly I would imagine Saudi Arabia would be looking for a better show too ... Oman, Jordan, Bahrain, UAE, Iraq all seem to ahead of them of late in regards to qualifying.

 

The big 4 comprises of Australia, south Korea, Japan and Iraq with uae, Saudi Arabia and China not far behind. Uzbekistan, iran fighting for 8th-9th

 

Within a single post you have proved your ignorance regarding Asian football.

 

He's just trolling by switching Iran and Iraq with each other in his post. Though, he would still need to bump Uzbekistan and Iraq over Saudi Arabia and China.

 

Aussie's going to be fighting for qualification with Solomon Island's again soon Mr Sidknee.

 

No chance. I've heard that if Australia were to get kicked out they'd have to break 1 of 4 rules (which we haven't) and 75% of the Asian nations would need to vote in favour of kicking us out.

Top four Asian nations from what I've seen in this tournament: Australia, Korea Republic, Japan and Iran. No particular order. There is a bit of a gap after that.

 

Just kidding dude in reply to that guy who said Iran are the 9th best team in Asia. Even though Iran has seen no benefit from Australia being in AFC (clubs or countries never played together) I still want Australia to stay.

I also think some part of this backlash from Gulf countries is because Australians have for a long time been pushing for AFC to split into east and west, so this is a way of Arabs telling Australia to "know your place" so to speak.

 

I can't remember the Australian media or our football federation ever pushing for Asia to split. Some fans may have mentioned it like I have because of two reasons - to give Oceania better competition AND/OR if the people in charge of the AFC (mainly from the west) become corrupt/biased. Personally, I'd rather see the OFC join the AFC and I haven't noticed any corruption/bias against East Asian nations so there is no need for a split.

 

Of course the official FA can't come out and say it publicly as that would look bad on them. But I have heard it multiple times from Australians and in Australian media. A recent example from a month or so ago:

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/should-asia-be-split-in-two-20150102-12gqca.html

 

The reason is the OFC. We are looking for solutions to a problem. The OFC cannot continue to exist in its current formation. It needs to become part of the AFC - as I've said already.

 

So you want to sacrifice the development of West Asian nations just to help OFC? What is the point? All the countries in the OFC are like 500,000 population or smaller. New Zealand with a population under 5 million don't even care about football. There are like 10 different sports more popular there, even bowls is more popular! The only decent player in the whole OFC is Winston Reid and that is because he was raised in Denmark.

If OFC joins Asia that will just result in more filler waste of time matches.

My proposal is that the poor teams in AFC and OFC join together in a sub-confederation and play it out. That way you will have countries like Papau New Guinea, India and such playing each other. This will leave the better teams to play each other in AFC. That way competition is raised in AFC and once countries in the sub-confederation show a decent amount of improvement (if it ever happens) they can move up and join AFC.

 

Who said this could only happen by sacrificing the development of the West Asian nations? More filler waste of time matches? You realise that the top nations in Asia don't play these bottom nations until the bottom nations have had their preliminary qualifiers and only the best actually join the top Asian nations in qualifying. Nothing at the top of the food chain changes.

What bringing the OFC into the AFC would do is provide the bottom Asian nations with some much needed competition. The only way they will get better is to have more matches, not less. We'd get a 0.5 spot for the WC which would mean that West Asian nations could have a higher chance of qualifying. Instead of just having Australia, Korea Republic, Japan and Iran qualify, we could have another country like the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq and Uzbekistan from the West or China and DPR Korea (plus NZ) from the East.

 

Asia is already too big as it is, no way can the OFC be introduced into it and it still stays as one Confederation.

You really don't think there are any waste of time matches in Asia? In the past couple of years Iran has played qualification matches against the likes of Thailand, Lebanon, Indonesia, Maldives and so on. These matches are nothing but a complete waste of time. In fact in these last few years before the Asian Cup the only AFC matches that Iran has played that I have been happy with have been against Korea and Uzbekistan. This type of thing is what is stifling development in Asia. The top Asian teams wasting their time and resources playing against the likes of Maldives.

There is something wrong in the AFC when Australia has been a member for nearly 10 years and still no match between you guys and Iran. We also have not had a match against Japan since 2005. That is 2 of the 3 other top Asian teams that Iran hasn't played in a decade at least. How are we supposed to improve if we don't play against the best?

 

Too big? What defines too big and too small? That is a matter of opinion.

Every match has a purpose. If you think existing matches are a waste of time then that is a current AFC problem. Having OFC countries in the AFC won't affect the middle to end stages of qualifying. The only part of qualifying that will change is the preliminary round which the big nations will never participate in. So if you aren't happy with the current format, that is something that the AFC needs to look at restructuring.

Speaking of restructuring, aren't the next WCQ qualifiers acting as AC2019 qualifiers too? I read something about it a few weeks ago. I may be misinformed.

 

What defines too big and small is distance you have to travel for matches. It is the same reason the Asian Champions League is split into east and west until the final. Adding the rest of Oceania would simply increase travel time and would not be feasible.

The current AFC is full of problems, qualifications and schedule is only a part of it.

Yes I heard the same thing about the next qualifiers, apparently the first few rounds will be for both.