Ooh - I remember that. Fortunately I was on vacation but I remember many of my friends being furious.... to be honest, they've upped their game quite a bit since then... they even give people their assigned seats now. But that is one piece of advice, do arrive at the stadium early.
Has anyone heard any update on the intercontinental playoffs? Since there's no worldwide prelim draw like in previous editions, and now with 4 months between the end of continental WCQ and the playoffs as opposed to the normal 1, there's nothing stopping FIFA from simply waiting until December 2021 to do the playoff draw. If anything, since this will be the last time the playoffs are in the current format, FIFA could just innovate and have the four teams play a round-robin in Qatar in March 2022. The South American side may object to missing out on revenue from their home game, but everyone else would be thrilled to have their WCQ chances not boil down to whether they drew the Conmebol short straw.
The CONMEBOL playoff team should play a UEFA team. Has there ever been that matchup for a World Cup slot? Edit: Answering my own question-1978 World Cup qualifying Bolivia-Hungary (won by Hungary), and 1974 qualifying Chile-USSR (won by Chile in a walkover when the Soviets refused to play in Chile's National Stadium because of its role in the Pinochet coup two months earlier).
Combining your idea with Paul Calixte’s, why not just give UEFA 13.5 and CAF 4.5 so everyone has one playoff spot and just have a 6-team mini-tournament for the last three WC spots? Then we can stop this whole debate about who gets what confed in the playoffs. Find some way to squeeze three matches into the March 2022 window, and you could have 2 groups of 3. Group winners qualify. Runners-up playoff for the final spot. If you do a draw based on FIFA rankings, you would probably get something like this (just picking some random but realistic teams): Group A: Uruguay, Egypt, New Zealand Group B: Ireland, Jamaica, Uzbekistan Obviously there’s still some luck of the draw element involved, but you’re playing two or three matches against two or three different teams instead of twice against the same team.
My problem with that approach is you would very likely have both the CONMEBOL and UEFA teams qualify, meaning one less slot for the other confederations I would rather UEFA and CONMEBOL go head to head, with one being eliminated. Of course, this will matter less after 2022, because with 48 qualifiers beginning in 2026, all the confeds will likely be adequately represented.
You may think that is the case, but I'm betting that we will be having arguments about representation as soon as 2026 is over for the 2030 world cup.
When it was 4 teams going into the continental playoffs, I always thought it would have been cool to have a little 4-team mini-round robin between those teams to see who qualifies. You could have rotated the host team to each confederation (ie one year, South America host it, next Asia, etc.) or just had it in a neutral site or the host nation of the WC itself. For instance, last year you would have had Peru, Australia, New Zealand and Honduras in the playoff... the year before would have been Jordan, Mexico, NZ, Uruguay and before that Bahrain, NZ, Urugay, Costa Rica and etc.....
https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/...s-to-take-centre-stage-in-south-america-and-a is titled "FIFA World Cup 2022 qualifiers: draws to take centre stage in South America and Africa." CONMEBOL will make their schedule on Tuesday 17 December. CAF will do their Group Stage draw on Tuesday 21 January. It says "With 136 out of 900 FIFA World Cup 2022™ qualifying matches having already been played." 136 includes when Macau forfeited for not going to Sri Lanka. AFC: 46 teams Round 1: 6 two leg series to eliminate 6 teams and leave 40 teams: 12 games Round 2: 8 groups of 5 with 20 games per group: 160 games Round 3: 2 groups of 6 with 30 games per group: 60 games Round 4: Two leg series between third place teams: 2 games Total: 234 games CAF: 54 teams Round 1: 14 two leg series to eliminate 14 teams and leave 40 teams: 28 games Round 2: 10 groups of 4 with 12 games per group: 120 games Round 3: 5 two leg series to qualify 5 teams and eliminate 5 teams: 10 games Total: 158 games Concacaf: 35 teams and two paths Hexagonal for the Top 6: 30 games Bottom 29- 5 groups of 4 with 12 games per group: 60 games Bottom 29: 3 groups of 3 with 6 games per group: 18 games 8 group winners Quarterfinals: 4 two leg series: 8 games 8 group winners Semifinals: 2 two leg series: 4 games 8 group winners Final: 1 two leg series: 2 games Playoff between Hexagonal fourth place and 8 group winners Final winner: 1 two leg series: 2 games Total: 124 games CONMEBOL's 1 group of 10: 90 games UEFA: 55 teams 5 groups of 6 with 30 games per group: 150 games 5 groups of 5 with 20 games per group: 100 games 10 second place teams and 2 teams from the Nations League will be made into 3 brackets of 4, with Semifinals and Final done in 1 game with a home team with 3 games per bracket: 9 games Total: 259 games Interconfederational Playoffs: 2 two leg series: 4 games Total without OFC: 234+158+124+90+259+4 = 869 Based on that, OFC should have 31 games. Last cycle they had 32 games. Round 2 was the OFC Nations Cup, which reduced the amount of WCQ teams from 8 to 6. I included the Group Stage but excluded the Semifinals and Final because they were irrelevant to qualification.
31 game might be scheduled this way: I read somewhere they want all teams to take part in finals. So, 11 teams in three groups (4+4+3). That's 15 matches. Eight teams progress. That's another four QF matches. Winners progress to semis (as you mention, that it irrelevant for quals) and to WCQ final stage where they play each other twice in a four-team group. That's another six matches. Winner progress to ICP. 15 + 4 + 12 = 31
One reason play-offs should not be groups. Also single elimination games are more exciting than play-offs, and easier to follow.
Influx of club fans a '22 World Cup testing ground for Qatar: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/20/influx-of-club-fans-a-22-world-cup-testing-ground-/
I'll give you rep for that possibility. It would be more fair than making 4 teams (automatically the same teams each time, not based on the FIFA Rankings) compete in a group to have 1 of them join the other 7.
https://www.fifa.com/news/2020-diary-olympics-u17wwc-u20wwc says the OFC Nations Cup will be from 6-20 June. Considering that the format hasn't been announced, OFC probably won't play WCQs before then. If OFC wants to play WCQs in March they need to make a format and draw. If dinamo_zagreb's guess is correct, seven OFC teams will be eliminated in June. 23 AFC teams will be eliminated in March or June. Of the 40 teams playing, 4 have been eliminated, 12 will advance, 1 is Qatar who will not play in the next round, and 23 will be eliminated in this round. Of the 211 FIFA members, 187 are alive, so it will be down to 157 by June.
I saw on another forum that they will use 2016 OFC cup format (4 teams in prelim tournament followed by 8-team finals) and that NZL will be represented by mostly U23 players to use the opportunity as a 2020 Olympics warm-up (no pressure on the team as there is no more Confed Cup).
P.S. But they (OFC heads) want to have all its members to start the WCQ in same round/stage (they want to overhaul each competition actually with Nations League planned).
The draw for the preliminary competition in UEFA will be held on Sunday 29 November. https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleagu ... 33814.html
So... ...with how things are developing in the middle east and abroad... ...and how Qatar and Iran seem to be bed buddies politically... ...any opinions? (I know they are saying everything is okay at FIFA and in Qatar. Noting to see here, blah, blah, blah.)
Nothing is going to happen with Iran. The US killed a prominent representative of the Islamic regime (which I'm okay with). Iran is obviously pissed. They attacked the US base in Iraq (after giving forewarning) for domestic propaganda purposes. The shooting of the Ukrainian plane is more problematic (ironically most of those killed were Iranian or presumably of Iranian descent - there were a lot of people listed as Canadians in the casualty count), but I believe that it was accidental. I don't like the Islamic Republic, but they had no incentive to shoot down a civilian plane, much less one from a random European country and where most of those on board were their own people. Iran is rational. Say what you want about their ideology (and I have a lot to say about that, believe me), but they have somehow kept power for four decades now. They obviously understand what they need to do to survive. And despite all the fearmongering from Iran sympathizers about John Bolton, neocons, blah blah blah, we're now three years into the Trump administration and only in the last few weeks have we finally seen this very calculated escalation. There will be no war. The World Cup will be played in Qatar as planned (for better or worse). Alright. Now let's all go back to complaining about Qatar's bribes and how this World Cup was supposed to be played in the US.
Back to the football, here's the post I made in the Africa forum a few days ago about the CAF WC qualifiers:
I am not going to argue against any of this or the political side of things I will say that we already have countries within the area that hate Qatar and have enforced a blockade of their travel, airspace and other resources. Now we have flights being warned not to even go to the area and change their routes, especially flights from the USA. The USA even had their U23 training camp cancelled and sent everyone home. And that is just for a measly youth camp. With the centuries of instability in the region I think there is a 50-50 shot things will get worse, not better (and definitely not safer). But we shall see. Everyone as of right now at FIFA is saying everything is rainbows and lollipops in the region.
Not sure about this. Facts are Trump has used less military force than any first term president since the Jimmy Carter administration. But whatever, This is a non politics thread.