ZURICH (AP)—FIFA is giving its six continents the same number of qualifying places for the 2014 World Cup as in 2010, but will conduct a draw for the playoff round. FIFA executive committee members Worawi Makudi of Thailand and Michel d’Hooghe of Belgium told The Associated Press on Thursday there was consensus to open the playoff fixtures to a draw. They will feature South America’s fifth-placed team, CONCACAF’s fourth-placed, Asia’s fifth-placed and Oceania’s qualification winner. For 2010, it was prearranged for a South American team to play a CONCACAF side, while Asia pitted a team against Oceania. Africa will have five guaranteed places among the 31 qualifiers advancing to Brazil, while four South American teams will qualify in addition to the host. Europe keeps its 13-team allocation. http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ap-fifa-meeting
Re: FIFA retains World Cup qualifying slots for 2014 Good. Would have been a joke to give CONCACAF more places as rumoured.
Re: FIFA retains World Cup qualifying slots for 2014 This comes as very good news for members of Conmebol.
Re: FIFA retains World Cup qualifying slots for 2014 The second-to-last sentence of the article is a bit misleading. Are they saying 4 guaranteed spots plus the host plus the playoff (ie. CONMEBOL gets 5.5 spots)??
Re: FIFA retains World Cup qualifying slots for 2014 That's what I understood from reading it and the other articles in Spanish that I found. CONMEBOL may have a total of 6 spots in the next WC if the playoff berth qualifies.
The committee also decided on the slots for the 2014 FIFA World Cup™, which will be as follows: AFC 4.5, CAF 5.0, CONCACAF 3.5, CONMEBOL 4.5, OFC 0.5, UEFA 13.0 and one slot the host Brazil. This is the same distribution of slots as for the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups™. For the play-offs relating to the half slots, a draw will determine how the four confederations involved (AFC, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL and OFC) will pair off. Sufficient time will be allowed between the home and away legs of these play-offs. http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/federation/bodies/media/newsid=1392053.html
CAF: 2006: 3w, 3d, 9l = 0.8 points per game 2002: 4w, 6d, 8l = 1.0 points per game 1998: 3w, 6,d, 7l = 0.94 points per game (sent 4 teams to knockout stage) Compare to AFC: 2006: 0.6 PPG 2002: 1.1 PPG 1998: 0.4 PPG (sent 2 teams to knockout stage, both of them were hosts - 2002) IF CAF loses a spot, then AFC should lose it first. In fact, CONCACAF should've lost one after 2006 if this is the level we are setting for removing spots.
CONCACAF is lucky to have 3 1/2 spots. AFC should also lose its 1/2 spot. UEFA gets shafted based on performance on the field of play and dhould be the recipient of those two half spots. Of course, FIFA politics means that UEFA will never gain spots however well in does in finals play.
CAF only got that 5th spot because they didn't want an African side to miss out on 2010 because South Africa had an automatic spot, so they pinched it from UEFA and gave it to CAF. By the standard of play and Africa's generally sucky play in 2010 (aside from Ghana), UEFA should get that spot back. However if you've read Foul! by Andrew Jennings you'll know why it hasn't. Havelange/Blatter have long maintained their power by sucking up to developing nations and giving them places by firstly expanding the WC from 16 to 24 then 32 and by reallocating the places in rather favourable circumstances. Thus why Africa keeps it's 5th spot, because before and especially after 2010 it was a Blatter stronghold and also he needs to fight off Hayatou. In footballing terms UEFA should have had that spot back given the depth it has. AFC is fine with 4.5 places when you consider Iran, South Korea, Japan and Australia play there and all have had decent teams from time to time. Even Saudi Arabia sprang a surprise back in 1994. Uzbekistan and Iraq are no mugs either.
So can we consider that Asia kept all their spots from 2006 (Where no AFC teams made it to second round ) to 2010 for the same reasons. And yes UEFA has a lot of depth but still more than half of the teams dindn't made it to the 2nd round.
Only 3. CAF has never sent more than 1 team to the knockout rounds. And two more in 2010 matching Africa's record in sending teams to round 2 over the last 4 Cups. The criteria IMO should be how good the weak teams are. My order of losing spots is AFC, UEFA, then CAF. However no one else is really putting their hands up (apart from OFC who have sent teams through playoffs in the last two tournaments who have both performed well.)
Because this is an American board that also has a toooon of Mexican fans as posters, CONCACAF always gets crap from the dumbasses here. Anytime anyone looks at the actual, you know, results, it's obvious that Africa and Asia are perpetually overrated. CONCACAF gets more or less what it deserves. Given that 2010 was in SAfrica, I thought Africa's "performance" probably merited them losing a spot. They were at home, and still didn't perform well. If Bob Bradley hadn't started Rico Clark mad: you're still not forgiven, Bob) it would have been putrid. The main thing, I think, is that Africa is very fortunate that their qualification system makes it almost impossible to take a half spot from them. You have to chop them all the way down to 4; you can't, as a practical matter, give them 4 1/2.
I would argue so. That and the fact that being a World Cup it has to have some representation from each continent. Say the world cup places were decided on the FIFA rankings (a bit dodgy but one of the most accessible sources we have for confederational strength) we'd have a World Cup broken down like so: UEFA: 21 CONMEBOL: 4 CAF: 2 CONCACAF: 2 AFC: 3 Which I'm sure everyone other than Europeans would hate. So partly it's politics (both confederational and the jockeying within FIFA) and partly it's just living up to the 'World' part of the World Cup.
I always thought it was fine the way it was for 2010. So i'm glad they decided to keep it like that. There's the possibility to reward confederations by tweaking the playoffs (alternating who plays who), which apparently they're going to do by making it a draw.
No they didn't. CAF always had 5 spots going back to when the WC expanded to 32. The 6th spot which South Africa got is a rotating host spot which goes to Brazil/CONMEBOL next time (so CAF will go back down to 5 total).
I am sorry , but it really looks like a sore loser's excuse. Fact is that CONCACAF teams doen't have a good record at all against African teams in WC.
South Africa, (who couldn't even qualify for the African Cup of Nations) were at home. The other teams weren't. It was cold and the games were at high altitude. If it was played somewhere in West Africa (e.g. Nigeria) then perhaps you could say that at least 4 of the teams would have felt at home. When the World Cup was in Japan & South Korea (2 of Asia's best teams), none of the other Asian sides picked up a single point or even scored a single goal!!!
If you want to look at the teams that are wasting spots : If you were to produce a table of the worst teams at the World Cup since the expansion to 32 teams, with worst at the top, it'd look like this : 1. Saudi Arabia 2002 (AFC) 2. North Korea 2010 (AFC) 3. China 2002 (AFC) 4. Serbia 2006 (UEFA) 5. Costa Rica 2006 (CONCACAF) 6. Togo 2006 (CAF) 7. Slovenia 2002 (UEFA) 8. USA 1998 (CONCACAF) 9. Japan 1998 (AFC) 10. Cameroon 2010 (CAF) I think it's obvious who is sending the majority of poor teams...
South Africa did sort of adopt Ghana as the home team after the group-stage (there were street parties across the country when Ghana beat USA ). You're generally correct though: there are multiple factors that contribute to home advantage and it would be a stretch to say any of the other CAF teams (ie the 4 excluding Ghana and RSA) benefited from any of them.