https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_OFC_Nations_Cup has the format. There will be a group stage with 8 countries in 2 groups of 4 where every country plays every other country twice. Has OFC ever had a double round-robin group stage with multiple groups before? @AllWhitebeliever Can you sticky this topic and unsticky the 2014 qualification topic?
Either way looks great to me. At least those 8 teams will have the opportunity to host WCQ on their own soil
Another 0.5 berths FIFA World Cup for organization's unwanted child. 11 national teams will take part in 42 games long journey to the Intercontinental playoffs, culminating in Fall 2017. IC playoffs winner will take part in 2018 FIFA showpiece. Competition is made of three rounds taking place from August 2015 to November 2016. round 1 31 August to 8 September 2015 Four teams (American Samoa, Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga) will take part in centralized tournament (round-robin), winner progress to round 2. round 2 5 October 2015 to 7 June 2016 Eight teams (round 1 winner, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Vanuatu) will be drawn in two groups of four and will play in round-robin home-away scheme with best two of each group progress to round 3. Round 2 will be drawn on 25 July. round 3 29 August to 15 November 2016 Four teams (winners and runners-up of two groups from round 2) once again square off in home-away round-robin group to determine Intercontinental playoffs participant. Intercontinental playoff is scheduled for October/November 2017. Oceanic team's IC playoff opponent (to be more accurate, confederation that will delegate it's team) will be determined at official draw on 25 July. Each matchday is played in official FIFA window. This time OFC qualifiers will double as OFC Nations Cup, just like last two editions, but with certain differences - no centralized tournament to determine ONC winner (last time what now is round 2 was played on neutral venue - four teams progressed to both ONC semis - played at same neutral venue with Tahiti lifting the trophy - and WCQ last round, what now is round 3) and no Pacific Games will be used as preliminary competition (in 2007, top three teams from PG qualified to what now is round 3 and joined NZ). Three teams will play 3 games, four teams will play 6 games (stage 1 team up to 9) and four will play 12 games (stage 1 team up to 15), same number of games at home and away through 9 to 14 months. This is a plus, surely as more teams will last longer and WC will visit more countries than ever before. Exciting times. What I don't really like is that best team will have one year with zero WCQ games between their last game and IC playoff game. Too much, although one will take part at (much stronger) 2017 FIFA Confederation Cup. They might have arranged ONC slightly different - four WCQ finalists face-off in centralized knock-out tournament (played at one of competing teams) in next FIFA window (September 2016) and later those continue to fight for IC playoff spot in October, November 2016 and March, June 2017. This was (surely) made to lower the chances of another Tahiti at the Confederations Cup as those Pacific teams can stun NZL when they play out of NZL. NZL is an absolute favourite to win continental title and both Confederations Cup and playoff berth, I'll try to follow it as best as I can and I hope more people will join. Posters from Pacific islands are more than welcome as the Forum really lacks guys from that part of the World.
You're correct, but here is how I will phrase it: Three teams will play 3 games Three teams will play 6 games Three teams will play 12 games If the Round 1 winner is eliminated in Round 2, that team will play 9 games and a fourth team will play 12 games. If the Round 1 winner reaches Round 3, that team will play 15 games and a fourth team will play 6 games. Either way, will it be the most WCQ games for one World Cup by an OFC country ever? As for the gap between the end of OFC qualifying and the interconfederational playoff, it has been large in the past but is even larger this time. Last time OFC qualifying was from November 2011 to March 2013, starting and ending later than this time. The four teams that have to play in Round 1 are the same as last time, but Samoa, who is one of those four teams, hasn't been in the bottom four in OFC in the FIFA Rankings at any point after World Cup 2014. If the FIFA Rankings were used, Papua New Guinea would have to play in Round 1. Does anybody know how the Round 1 teams were chosen?
Last time they (OFC) explained that they would take other factors into consideration beside FIFA ranking: population (PNG is by far the biggest OFC member in population terms) football popularity (football is popular there, first OFC club champion from Pacific islands was PNG side Hekari, although with key players being from other Pacific islands; they will host FIFA U17 Women's WC next year) and few other factors. Worth to mention, OFC's president is from Papua New Guinea too. Good for them, I'd say, especially as they would play it way longer than last time when their WC campaign lasted for five days.
OK, over one month to go until round one starts. Most national squads are getting selected for the qualification, no time for experimental selections. Better sticky this thread . . .
Pacific Games football tournament starts today. Many players taking part here will take part in WCQ that start in September. Former All Whites' coach Ricki Herbert, who took NZL to the 2010 WC, leads (hosts) PNG U23 side while current NZL coach, Anthony Hudson, is in charge of NZL U23 team too. Interesting tournament, one group stage followed by two separate knock-out stages - one for olympic games and one for pacific title. NZL can't take part in latter, NCL, TAH, MIC can't take part in former, rest of teams can play in both series. That's a lot of games.
38-0 loss to Fiji. I don't see the point of them playing competitive games. Disgraceful. New Zealand secured Olympic playoff after another win - 1-0 against hosts who face Solomon Islands in last round to qualify to both (Olympic and Pacific) playoffs. If they lose, their tourney is over in this early phase although they did a lot of preparations for this. Fiji and Vanuatu will be in Olympic qualifying too, with Fiji as #1 so they will avoid playing NZL in semis.
How funny is it that now Vanuatu has to go out and try to beat Micronesia by 38 themselves to advance to the Pacific games semi on goal differential? That would be a fun game to watch. It is an interesting (if incredibly weird) set-up for this tournament. I'd kinda like the idea of the group stage leading to 2 different knockout brackets if they weren't qualifying 2/2 teams and 2/3 teams respectively for the Olympic qualifying part. They should really just let the group winners face each other in a single match as far as that goes.
Qualifying competition format was changed! (when?) round 1 stays same round 2 Two groups of four, play each-other once, top three progress; no info on host of this tournament round 3 Two groups of three, home-away round-robin, group winners progress round 4 group winners from round 3 take part in playoff, home-away, winner progress to intercontinental playoffs Text from FIFA.com Oceania In Oceania, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga will contest Round One due to Ranking and sporting reasons. A tournament involving the teams and based on a league system will be played between 5-13 October 2015 in Tonga. The winner of this tournament advances to Round Two with the seven remaining Oceanian nations. These eight teams will be drawn into two groups of four teams with each team playing every other team in their respective group only once. The group winners, runners-up and third placed teams from both groups will advance to Round Three. Although the draw date, location and procedure for Round Three is still to be determined, the six teams who qualify will be placed into two groups of three and will play each other home and away. The winners of these two groups will meet each other in a two-legged match with the winner advancing to the intercontinental play-off.
Addition to what I posted above, round 2 is also a round 1 of OFC Nations Cup - straight after group stage competion we'll be seeing semifinal and final to find out Oceanic champion and 2017 Confederations Cup team. It will be played in some Pacific country, I suppose Fiji (who lost 2012 edition organization) or PNG (OFC president's country). OFC members are against NZL and won't give them rights to host tournament no matter what. Tough times for NZ, I want them to leave OFC. And, to make it even worse, NZ U23 team was disqualified hours before Olympic qualifiers final game for fielding an ineligible player (who normally played for All Whites and for U20 team at recent WC) so Vanuatu played instead. Fiji won 4-3 after penalty shootout and qualified to Rio 2016.
The OFC small members have always been very unsupportive of the biggest nation in the region. Rarely were Australian officials elected to positions of prominence in the organisation, and OFC repeatedly organised qualifying tournaments and Championships outside of the FIFA windows, mainly to make it difficult for Australia. Whilst New Zealand did well in that era now that they are regarded as the big team and copping the same stuff Australia did..
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/y=2015/m=7/news=can-anyone-topple-the-kiwis-2667591.html is titled "Can anyone topple the Kiwis?" Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, and Cook Islands will play in Round 1, which I haven't seen the schedule for yet. Here are the Round 2 groups: Group A: Tahiti, New Caledonia, Round 1 winner, and Papua New Guinea Group B: New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Vanuatu
Group B looks stronger. Tough luck for them (Oceanic team, I am sure it will be NZ) in IC playoffs. They were paired with CONMEBOL side, Kiwis might end up as last edition when they faced Mexico.
But that was a strong Australian squad.... NZL arent at that level I dont think. Will be hard for OFC to qualify unfortunately.
Exactly, Aussie had it's main players in their best ages (25-30) with majority of them playing in Premiership at the time - Kewell, Viduka, Schwarzer, Neill, Moore, Cahill, Emerton (few more, those are ones I remember very well) with few of them (Grella, Bresciano) in Serie A. Great team lead by great coach, they had to qualify.
Simple solution to the OFC problem. Split Asia into East and West with the OFC becoming part of East Asia. I don't know what FIFA are waiting for to be honest.
FIFA cannot interfere in confederation localised politics and make a overruling on AFC, especially when most AFC are dead against including OFC. It was hard enough for AFC to include Australia in the AFC, let alone another 11 OFC countries. Also the top AFC ranked countries are in Eastern Asia and not in Western Asia in recent times. With only a small amount of WC qualification spots available, splitting AFC in half would not fairly distributed the WC qualification spots as evenly. Honestly, AFC is huge as it is as well as the CAF. They both need to broken down to smaller confederations to improve quality. It should be Ok to create new and smaller confederations. Have the new 22 members of Arabs football federation (includes all five UNAF, one COSAFA, one WAFU and three CECAFA members from CAF and then all of the WAFF members from the AFC) as a already made confederation. The 15 members of the West Africa (WAFU) and 8 members of Central Africa (UNIFFAC) can join together make a 23 member confederation. The remaining 9 members of East and Central Africa (CECAFA) (three are in the Arab FF) merge with 14 members (COSAFA) (less one in the Arab FF) of the South Africa to make 23 member confederation. Combine the Central (6 members of CAFA), South (7 members of SAFF), East (10 members of EAFF) and you get a 23 member confederation. and then at last pull the 12 members of the ASEAN with the 11 members of OFC to create an another 23 member confederation. Turn three outdated current confederations into five manageable sized confederations. Resulting 8 manageable sized confederations, opening better international games schedules for the poorest countries, with better focus and less travel time. So each of the new five confederations are at least 22-23 members. Now UEFA have the money with a 54 member confederation but they should really split North, South and East, it makes better economics. CONCACAF has a 41 members and CONMEBOL still on 11 members, there are grounds for them to move the 7 membered Central Americans (UNCAF) to the CONMEBOL and make that strong with 18 members. Leaving CONCACAF with the 31 membered Caribbean (CFU) with the three (Northern America) NAFU members making a manageable 34 membered confederation and a better chance for a Caribbean nation to take out third place without the Central Americans. The Central Americans will get stronger in CONMEBOL and may surprise South Americans. They have as much chance as they were with CONCACAF. So I reckon we need to change to ten reformed confederations from the existing six confederation. Of course I doubt that FIFA would dare to change the confederations
@AllWhitebeliever CONCACAF has members that aren't members of FIFA, but does CONMEBOL have any of those? CONMEBOL has ten countries in World Cup Qualifying: Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela What other country does CONMEBOL have to make 11? How would you propose those five hypothetical regions do World Cup Qualifying? Given that AFC, CAF, and OFC combined have 10 World Cup spots, make a proposal assuming that each of the five regions would get two World Cup spots.