Total Amount Of World Cup 2018 Qualifiers

Discussion in 'FIFA and Tournaments' started by EvanJ, Mar 28, 2016.

  1. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/statistics/index.html says 304 out of 851 games have been played, meaning 547 are left. I looked at the qualifying formats on Wikipedia and got 540 games left which I will list below. Can anybody explain the discrepancy of 7 games?

    AFC: 76
    14 games to end Round 2 (assuming Kuwait doesn't play any more)
    60 games in Round 3 (2 groups of 6 with 30 games each)
    2 games in Round 4 (the playoff between the third place teams)

    OFC: 29
    12 games in Oceania Nations Cup (Round 2) Group Stage (2 groups of 4 where you play each opponent once)
    3 games in Oceania Nations Cup knockout rounds (2 Semifinals and 1 Final, although all of these teams advance in World Cup 2018 Qualifying)
    12 games in Round 3 (2 groups of 3 with 6 games each)
    2 games in Round 4 (the playoff between the group winners)

    CONMEBOL: 65
    13 matchdays with 5 games each

    CONCACAF: 48
    18 Semifinal games (3 matchdays with 6 games each)
    30 Hexagonal games (1 group of 6)

    CAF: 60
    60 Round 3 games (5 groups of 4 with 12 games each)

    UEFA: 258
    250 Group Stage (Round 1) games (7 groups of 6 with 30 games each and 2 groups of 5 with 20 games each)
    8 Playoff (Round 2) games (4 two leg series)

    Interconfederational Playoff: 4
    2 two leg series

    I also added the amount of games played so far to be 309, not 304 like FIFA said. Here's my explanation:

    CONCACAF: 64
    46 games in Rounds 1 through 3 (23 two leg series)
    18 Semifinal games)

    CONMEBOL: 25
    5 matchdays with 5 games each

    OFC: 6
    1 group of 4 where you played every opponent once

    AFC: 148
    12 games in Round 1 (6 two leg series)
    136 games in Round 2 (I added up each team's games played total)

    CAF: 66
    33 two leg series in Rounds 1 and 2

    Obviously UEFA and the interconfederational playoffs haven't started. Can anybody explain this discrepancy?
     
  2. JLSA

    JLSA Member

    Nov 11, 2003
    First, I have 852 games (OceaniaFootball lists a 3rd/4th play-off in PNG so we'll ignore that)

    AFC - Played 148 (12+136) - Left 78 (16+60+2) - I'm pretty sure it is unsafe to exclude Kuwait's matches (and that the article won't have) as nothing is official.
    OFC - Played 6 - Left 29 (12+2+1+12+2) (same as above with the caveat on the 3rd/4th play-off)
    Conmebol - Played 25 - Left 65 (same as above)
    Concacaf - Played 64 (14-20-12-18-0) Left 48 (18-30) (same as above)
    CAF - Played 66 (26+40) - Left 60 (as above)
    UEFA - Played 0 - Left 258 (250+8) (as above)
    Play-offs - Played 0 - Left 4 (as above)
    Total - Played 309 - Left 542

    At a guess the most likely explanation for the discrepancy is:
    1) Don't exclude Kuwait (yet)
    2) They forgot a round of South America (given it's a five game gap, it probably easy to do)

    J
     

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