But honestly: what teams would have been ahead of us if those 3 failed to qualify? The list is very, very small. They could have gone by the most recent FIFA rankings, in which case Greece and Cameroon would have been ahead of the US.
Just to be clear, what I'm defending isn't the desperate, futile hope of getting a seed. I hated this thread title when it came out and said so, b/c by then it was an absolute impossibility for us to be seeded. What I'm trying to point out is that at some point during the summer, it wasn't that remote of a possibility b/c of Argentina, France and Portugal AND the fact that nobody anticipated them using FIFA rankings as the sole determinant factor of seeding. Using the 2006 model, when you took out Arg/Fra/Port... we were w/in reach of a seed.
Right. I bet that if the US had won, say, three or four of the eleven games they drew or tied last year they would be seeded. But soccer is hard, especially when you're playing good teams.