Heavyweight in European terms can be defined as either of 1. A team that has made more than one Euro or World Cup in the last 10 years 2. A team that made the semi finals of a Euro or World Cup in the last 20 years. My own definition of a European heavyweight is "Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and maybe France. Can't see 3 of these in a group any time soon.
The original poster of that comment might have been talking about heavyweights within a confederation. Like Japan or S-Korea are Asian heavyweights. On an international stage there are imo only 8 heavyweights. All the topseeds at last year's WC besides the host plus France.
Possibly, but I think its more likely he meant 3 teams that you would have thought were good chances of qualifying and that would make a good account of themselves if they did. The second tier of UEFA changes that much that its always likely when you use previous results to seed that some rapidly improving teams will be 3rd seeds, and some sides on the slide will be second seeds. There is usually at least one group with what most would regard as weaker second and third seed teams and one with strong second and 3rd seed teams, much like the World Cup itself.
The last two tournaments (ie Euro 2008 and WC 2010), England (ranked 6 by ELO, 6 by FIFA) have been in groups with Croatia (ranked 7 by ELO, ranked 8 by FIFA) twice, and once with Ukraine (ranked 20 by ELO, ranked 33 by FIFA) once with Russia (ranked 17 by ELO, ranked 13 by FIFA). Those single groups contained more quality teams than the whole or qualifying for CONCACAF or AFC. Yet AFC have 4.5 spots, CONCACAF 3.5. That group gets 1.5 spots. In the last WC qualifying it was possible for a group to be drawn containing Spain, England, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia (who all qualified) and Montenegro (ranked 40 by ELO, ranked 25 by FIFA and currently topping their Euro 2012 group). Under the proposed system you could quite easily have a group of Spain, France, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Norway, Bosnia, Belarus, Iceland competing for 2 spots..
One change to ensure slightly fairer groups would be using the UEFA national coefficient instead of the FIFA ranking when creating seeding pots. For example the FIFA ranking can change from month to month even when no matches are played. So choosing a different month can already heavily affect the seeding pots. The UEFA coefficient doesn't have this problem. Another flaw of the FIFA ranking is the fact that a team which qualifies for the WC/EURO can end up worse than a team which didn't qualify when they lose all their group matches. UEFA coefficient rewards a fixed number of bonus points when playing final tournament matches.
Ukraine were WC quarter-finalists in 2006 which was further than any team outside UEFA and CONMEBOL. Russia were semi-finalists in Euro 2008. Both are teams you'd fancy to qualify every time if they were based in another confederation. In UEFA they are just decent teams. It's easy to dismiss teams like this when your own team gets to qualify automatically for every tournament.
I thought I'd attempt to put in perspective how bad the CONCACAF WC qualifying format is. As you know, the quarterfinal stage is a group-stage where only the top team advances. That means a team ranked as high as #7 in CONCACAF will be placed with probably one other challenging opponent in a group of 4 where only 1 team advances (for example, you could have Canada and Guatemala in the same group). This is roughly the equivalent of a team like Czech Rep/Ukraine/Turkey/Ireland being drawn with one challenging opponent in the same quarterfinal group if UEFA used the same dumb system (with at least one of them guaranteed to be going home 3 years (!!) before Brazil'14 ). Just some food for thought.
No, it does happen. We always see groups like that. Just look at Euro '12 qualifying... on one hand you have a very tough group with Norway, Denmark, and Portugal. But then on the other hand you have a group with basically just England (and then just Montenegro and Switzerland as their "main" competition!)... or even worse, the group with Greece, Croatia, and Israel as its top teams...
And? That was a fluke if I ever saw one, doesn't mean they're good. There's a reason they didn't get out of the group stage.
The best way to settle arguments over how many spots each confederation deserves would be to have more playoff between confederations. For example, you could start by having the four non-UEFA playoff teams playoff against UEFA countries instead of each other. Take the eight UEFA playoff teams and the four non-UEFA teams, put them all in one pot, and stipulate that the non-UEFA teams cannot be paired against each other. That would settle a few arguments...
Fluke or not, the record books will forever indicate: FT Switzerland 1 - 0 Spain There are no excuses in the World Cup. Spain lost the match. Also, Spain is first team ever that won the World Cup having lost a match.
Oh before 82... I see... I don't look at anything before 1982... those were pretend world cups in my opinion.
Weak trolling attempt. Do you think I care? The record books will also forever indicate that Spain won the World Cup in 2010, which is what matters to me. And no Spain is not the first team ever that won the World Cup having lost a match, you should check your facts before spewing BS and then worsening it saying "I don't consider those World Cups".
So here's an idea...instead of FIFA allocating places so precisely, how about subjecting more places to the playoffs. Guaranteed places (24 total): UEFA - 12 South America -3 Africa - 3 Asia - 3 CONCACAF - 3 Entries into playoffs (16 places, with the 8 winners qualifying for the World Cup): Three per federation + 1 spot for Oceania This would make every federation a shot at more places that they currently have, while at the same time forcing them to earn those places on the field, thus placating everyone who says that federation A has too many places and federation B not enough. If you had applied this retroactively to 2010, you would have theorectically had Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, North Korea, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Trinidad & Tobago, Ukraine, Slovenia, Bosnia, and three African teams playing off for the final eight spots.
Let's just get rid of the confederations altogether. There's what? 204 teams in qualification this cycle? Split them into 21 groups. That's 15 groups of 10 and six groups of nine. The host qualifies automatically. 21 group winners advance to the World Cup. 20 best second-place squads play off for the final 10 spots.
Way too many games and the big clubs would never go for it. 15 groups of ten ? home and away ? thats 18 competitive Internationals right there. A very poor idea.