Terrible idea. A) It's cost-prohibitive for all but the largest federations. I'd wager that the majority of Carribean, African, Central and Southeast Asian and Oceanic national sides wouldn't even take part in qualifying. You might get 100 or so teams entered into qualifying. B) It ruins many local rivalries. Remember that friendlies aren't as prominent or competitive as they were decades ago. You will limit some major derbies that are only guaranteed in qualifying now. C) Though not cost-prohibitive, it would be time-prohibitive for the larger federations with players at big clubs. Think the giant European clubs are going to want to release players for an extra couple days so they can travel to Papua New Guinea? The idea, referred to above, of having more places subjected to a playoff is something I've long been in favor of adopting. You could have all proper qualification accomplished by June. Then you have the six international matchdays in September, October and November to workout whatever playoff system you want. If you'd rather have smaller playoff tournaments (and not home-and-away) at neutral sites, then proper qualification could run right up through the October matchdays like they always have. I personally think the following could work: 26 qualifying directly under either system 1 - Host 3 - CAF 3 - AFC 3 - CONCACAF 4 - CONMEBOL 12 - UEFA two ideas for the playoff system: 1. 24 qualify into 6 groups of 4, each one played at a neutral site in a different confederation, with the group winners advancing: 4 - CAF 3 - AFC 3 - CONCACAF 4 - CONMEBOL 2 - OFC 8 - UEFA OR 12 qualifying into a random draw for home-and-away ties, as follows.. 2 - CAF 2 - AFC 1 - CONCACAF 2 - CONMEBOL 1 - OFC 4 - UEFA
I think somebody proposed a hybrid qualifying format starting out within confederations and then ending internationally. The defending champion would regain an automatic spot so that 30 teams (a round number) could qualify through qualifiers. Each confederation would be given an amount of teams in the field of final 90 qualifiers. In the third and second to last years before the World Cup such as 2011 and 2012, each confederation would use qualifying to reduce its field to however many spots out of 90 it got. Then in the year before the World Cup such as 2013, 90 teams would be divided into 15 international groups of 6 with the top 2 in each group qualifying. All 90 countries could play on the same 10 matchdays. Confederations could choose to put some teams in the final 90 automatically considering most of UEFA would be invited.
I think they would have to start small. How awesome would it be to have I final 4 qualification mini tourney in a neutral ground for the final 2 spots. Picture this: Uruguay, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Bahrain playing 3 games in some neutral place fighting for 2 spots.
It's time for UEFA to lose a WC spot or three. Ofcourse they send a handful of heavyweights to each WC, plus a few solid 2nd tier teams but then you have teams no better than the African and Asian participants. South America has been stellar the last 3 WCs seeing 13/15 of its participants advance to the 2nd round. South America deserves 6 qualifying spots. I dont think you can justify giving Africa or Asia another automatic spot but neither can you justify giving UEFA nearly half the spots in the tournament. I would put an additional 2 UEFA spots up for grabs in playoff matches: UEFA - 11 CONMEBOL - 6 CAF - 5 AFC - 4 CONCACAF - 3 Oceania vs whoever - 1 CONCACAF vs whoever - 1 Hosts - 1 Unfortunately with the WC being in Russia, and with FIFA controlled by Europeans, I do not foresee a reduction in UEFA's allocation for the upcoming WC.
FIFA is 'controlled" by the African, Asian, Oceania and CONCACAF cartel...the ones talking all the kick-backs from Blatter....
Bullshit. EVERY Asian team finished last in its group. Asia sucks. Africa even had 2 last place teams. Europe only had one. The change I would favor is give CONMEBOL a full slot, and Asia two playoff spots...one against CONCACAF, and one against Oceania. Africa's system is so ********ed up they could never come up with one team for a playoff, so you kind of have to keep them out of the playoffs. Otherwise, you could argue that they should lost a slot. Based on purely sporting merit, probably lose 2 places, but realistically, only one.
Good old superdave, glad to see you haven't learned anything in the last four years. The whole reason the competition was expanded from 24 to 32 teams in the first place was to bring in more teams from weaker confederations and make it more of a representative, global competition. Adding teams meant this could be done specifically NOT on a merit basis, as it allowed increased diversity without taking 'earned' places away from the existing confederations. Conveniently forgetting that and saying that those extra 8 places should now be distributed on a merit basis is shifting of the goalposts in the highest degree. Those places were never intended for the old confederations, and would not even exist if a merit-based approach had been taken in the early 90s. But then I expect no less from you than shoddy arguments and intellectual dishonesty.
A system that observes both the twin objectives of having a World Cup that features something resembling the best 32 teams and where you at the same time get the requisite diversity and involvement from around the globe, would focus on transforming UEFA's allocations from guaranteed spots to playoff spots. 8 guaranteed and 8 playoff spots (each playoff counting as 0.5) for UEFA would equal 12, which would give them the same ratio of teams in the World Cup as they have had teams qualify out of the group stage in the last 2 World Cups. (With 12 allocations, UEFA would have been properly represented in having 6 teams advance in these World Cups and there would be no over representation issue when it comes to the merit side of the equation). However, since UEFA is hosting in 2018, I would change the allocations just slightly as indicated below. As for the rest of the confederations, I would keep pretty much their present allocations since they are at or around the minimum level required to ensure diversity (giving Conmebol one more playoff), but for the rest would translate 1 of their quotas to 2 playoffs each. Thus, Conmebol's allocation would change from 4 plus one playoff to 3 plus 4 playoffs; Concacaf's would change from 3 plus one playoff to 2 plus 3 playoffs; CAF's would change from 5 to 4 plus 2 playoffs; the AFC's would change from 4 plus a playoff to 3 plus 3 playoffs. OFC would still have one playoff. This way, we would have 14 playoffs as follows: (1) AFC #4 v OFC #1 (2) Concacaf #3 v Conmebol #7 (3) CAF #5 v AFC #6 (4) Conmebol #4 v Concacaf #5 (5) UEFA #10 v AFC #5 (6) UEFA #11 v Concacaf #4 (7) UEFA #12 v CAF #6 (8) UEFA #13 v AFC #4 (9) UEFA #14 v Conmebol #5 (10) UEFA #15 v Conmebol #6 (11) UEFA #9 v UEFA #16 (For UEFA, we would use FIFA ranking to determine if they are #10 or #16 etc. For others, the issue could be decided based on their qualifying results or by ranking). With hosts Russia, 10 places decided by intercontinental playoffs and 1 space by intra-UEFA playoff (12 spots), the total would add to 32 given the guaranteed allocations I had mentioned.
In CONCACAF where there is one final group it would be strange if the fifth place team qualified and the third or fourth place team did not qualify, but that could happen in Iranian Monitor's format. With Iranian Monitor's format if AFC kept their qualifying format the same, a team could lose a two leg aggregate without being eliminated or having their opponent be disqualified or withdraw. The two second place teams in AFC's final group stage would play each other, with the winner getting the third spot and the loser joining the two third place teams in the playoffs.
I advocated taking a half slot from Asia and giving it to CONMEBOL. That's a pretty modest change, and it provoked THIS from you? Whatever.
There is consequence to winning and losing and the playoffs are part of the qualifying process. In the format I have proposed, I have tried to pit the higher ranked teams against lower ranked teams. Thus, if you are the 3rd placed team from Concacaf, you meet the 7th place Conmebol side for your ticket, where as the 5th place Concacaf team would have to beat the presumably much stronger #4 team in Conmebol. The 4th place Concacaf side would play against the UEFA's #11 side. Ordinarily, the #4 in Conmebol is tougher than the #11 in UEFA but if not, you could modify the arrangement. The most important thing is to move away as much as possible from guaranteed allocations towards intercontinental playoffs, save for a few guaranteed spots for each confederation to ensure some diversity at the World Cup.