If this crazy biennial World Cup plan gets approved, I would hope that Conmebol makes a 5-vs-5 group qualifier rather than two groups of 5. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were two groups of 4, then the top 3 teams in each group plus Argentina and Brazil qualify to the playoffs.
I have no idea what "5v5 group qualifier" means but the problem with two groups of 5 is that Argentina and Brazil would almost never play each other (in a competitive match). I guess if you divided the 10 teams into 5 pots and have each team play only 1 opponent (home and away) from each pot, including your own pot, you could ensure that Brazil and Argentina play each other twice per qualification round (provided they are the 2 teams in pot 1). That would mean 10 qualifying matches per team with no need for a intra-confederation playoff. But yeah, 10 teams is such a difficult number to work with. Two groups of 5 still means 14 matchdays (including both intra- and inter-confederation playoffs), which is alot if we are talking about a qualification round every 2 years.
I've been assuming that we're talking about 2 groups of 5, but where each team plays the 5 teams in the opposite group. So Argentina would play Brazil, if I've got the right end of the stick.
And if that flies, expect Concacaf to immediately adopt the same format for the same reason (i.e. keeping the Mexico/USA WCQ showdowns).
In order to make it work, groups will need to split these pairs: ARG-BRA, BOL-ECU, BOL-VEN. I would like to see how Conmebol implements those splits via a randomized draw, if any.
You can't have CONMEBOL qualifying without the Clásico del Pacífico between Peru and Chile. The two countries have to get their animosity out of their system somehow and this is preferable to war.
Conmebol might return to its PARvURU ban in group qualifiers, as well. Cannot wait to return to the good old days.
C'mon man. Don't exagerate. Both of our countries at present times share many common interests, and most of the times we prefer to face them unified in friendship and full solidarity, one on regards to the other. War, is only an issue of the past by a few extreme nationalists (in both countries), whom fortunately don't share the opinion of most of the people in our countries. Now, a footballing rivalry, is another completely diferent thing. We may both want to beat the other, but it is not unlikely that whomever wins between our teams, will get a strong support from the fans of the defeated side towards the other when they face competition in tournaments to which they qualify. . . . I'd say there are more chances for a war between USA and Canada, than those that can arise between Peru and Chile.
If anything, the fact that Peru and Chile were able to come to a FTA en route to creating the Pacific Alliance while fighting in court over the maritime border just shows you how mature the relationship has become.
It would presumably be according to FIFA rankings. Just for fun, atm it would look like this: BRA-ARG COL-URU PER-CHI PAR-ECU BOL-VEN Actually, you could get pretty unbalanced groups from that seeding.
...but there'd be a weird balance to it: the easier your group, the harder the games you'll have to play
Compromise proposal of basically bringing back the confederations cup. https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/s...liani-offers-compromise-world-cup-2021-12-02/
Soccer-FIFA vice-president Montagliani offers compromise on World Cup plan: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/s...liani-offers-compromise-world-cup-2021-12-02/ Only 9 more days until Infantino's "summit" on December 20th...
Can anyone confirm the news below which I read elsewhere? According to UEFA vice-president Zbigniew Boniek, from 2024 the 10 CONMEBOL teams will join the UEFA Nations League: 6 teams will be added to League A and the remaining 4 will join League B. Format and details are yet to be determined.
UEFA president Cerefin told reporters today that no concrete proposals or agenda have been distributed ahead of Monday's virtual summit of all FIFA members.
That would be cool! I don't know if that many teams should be in league A from a quality standpoint, but that will sort itself out quickly through relegation/ promotion. Apart from the added flavor it will give to the NL, it will also give us 4 leagues all with about 16 teams (right now it is difficult to reward a Euros spot to the league D champion). It's a shame that they already expanded leagues A and B to 16 teams because it would have been much easier to integrate the CONMEBOL teams if the leagues still had 12 teams each.
That does sort of open the door for the top CONCACAF teams to join with promotion and relegation within region.
Independent study on biennial World Cup reveals negative economic effects for football | Inside UEFA | UEFA.com
I see that a lot of the findings in the study were concerns that were raised by various posters in this thread. For example: - the same group of elite players that are already overburdened with matches would have to play even more matches, while other players would have giant holes in their calendars where they don't play at all. - NTs that don't typically qualify for major tournaments would go through long spells of not playing any competitive matches (this would apply to CONMEBOL teams as well, not just UEFA). But there are even more problems which I don't think we mentioned here (but correct me if I'm wrong). One of these good points is that it would be more difficult for NTs to integrate new players into their squads. Clearly the biennial WC proposal wasn't thought through (often the case when people can't see past the dollar signs).