Not to put too fine a point on it, the U.S.'s margin for error just got a lot bigger: In the intercontinental playoffs draw, CONCACAF's #4 will play against Oceania for a berth. That will be the winner of the New Zealand v Solomon Island playoff. Asia #5 will play Conmebol #5. A bit of a dodged bullet for whoever comes in #4 (hopefully NOT the U.S., but if need be, quite doable) https://www.espn.com/soccer/fifa-wo...co-learn-possible-world-cup-playoff-opponents (Sorry if this is in the wrong spot) (And I won't say more, except that we see YET AGAIN why UEFA's qualifying scheme is a broken mess. )
It's a huge sigh of relief for everybody in the top 3 and that's all due to Panama's incredible form. It may also bring about some tranquility in Mexico. A lot of the media have been pushing for a new coach.
Be aware that not only Panama will push hard for the last two windows, Costa Rica and Jamaica are coming closer if they get some results in the next window… it is still up in the air even when probabilities are quite low.
To be honest, I have no idea who they are planning to do the pots, but usually it is a combination of the top seven FIFA rankings plus maybe some component related to past World Cup performances. if memory serves, they were going to do all the pots by ranking+whatever, not just the first one. I would guess both the US and Mexico end up I. Pot 2, although UEFA’s boneheadedness has eliminated either #6 or #8, so that makes cracking the top pit a little more likely, though we will probably see Denmark or Sweden or something have the inside track rather than the US or Mexico. I doubt we will ever see a CONCACAF seed no matter how good they are
Check out this thread...... https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/the-wc-2022-seeding-discussion-thread.2116865/
I would presume FIFA would just change the seeding rules if both Italy and Portugal fail to qualify. Haven’t they done that before to avoid giving the US or Mexico a seed?
Great news for concacaf. A huge relief for us fans compared to 4 years ago. And I'm happy for Canada and Panama too For asia it's a bad news because they host the world cup but either japan or australia (who have both qualified for the last 4+ world cups and both been asian champs in the last decade) will have to face a monster team from south america like chile or uruguay Italy and Portugal have each been euro champs in the last 2 tournaments. Plus Portugal won a national league in 2019. italy with such a beautiful attacking modern style or Portugal with Ronaldo. one will miss the world cup and that's a shame But it's good news for those other euro teams. Maybe Scotland or wales can qualify for the world cup?
The last time they simply went with FIFA rankings, and they said that they will stick to that in the future. We'll see if they stick to that. (There might be a bit of wiggle room for FIFA in that I don't think they specified which date they would use for FIFA ranking, so I suppose they could choose to make the cutoff date whichever is most favorable to their intended result.)
starting a prematch immediately following a match when the next is a month way is a stretch, but understandable since we are all nuts. for a break of a couple of months is even a stretch for us nuts. but a prematch for like 6 months away that we may or may not even be involved in is just abusive to the word "prematch". this thread as a whole should see straight red.
That's going to be really interesting to see what happens between these two teams down the stretch. They both have a mix of very winnable and very difficult matches remaining. It will be huge when they play each other once more in Australia.
I doubt we can make it high enough for pot 1 anyways. It’s just about trying to get into Pot 2, assuming they use the same system as last time. And FIFA didn’t really have an issue with Mexico being in Pot 2 in 2018.
And it's now confirmed that this game will be a one-off in Qatar: FIFA confirms Qatar🇶🇦 as the playoff venue. No surprise. Also, Oceania still hasn't confirmed schedule for its WCQs. Was considering March tournament in Qatar.OFC favorite New Zealand🇳🇿 is ranked 110th in the world (Concacaf comparisons are Trinidad and Guatemala).— Brian Straus (@BrianStraus) November 26, 2021
Yep. We're going to hear the perennial "UEFA is so hard, Portugal or Italy cant qualify, we need to take berths away from CONCACAF" that we've been hearing for 40 years, but then they completely fail to notice that UEFA plays the fewest matches of any confederation and because they uniquely (save Conmebol) refuse to have qualifiers, most of those are truly meaningless France v LIchtenstein matches which tell you nothing about the relative strengths of teams. Then they have this one of playoff system which is a coinflip of a mess. The result is good European teams stay home, while far inferior ones go through, largely because it's a crapshoot. Maybe if UEFA were not so completely incompetent in designing their qualifying tournament, they'd have an argument, but mostly I am done listening to their nonsense.
Hence my "I'm not sure if this is in the right place" Mods, feel free to move, change the tag, what have you.
Mexico is absolutely a pot 2 team, and arguably the U.S. also. Mexico basically ALWAYS makes it out of their group, while the U.S. mostly does.
Fun fact, In the 2006 WC group of Portugal, Mexico, Iran, and Angola, Mexico was the pot 1 team, not Portugal.
I suspect I'm misunderstanding part of your post here. What does 18-match qualification in CONMEBOL, where all teams play a home-and-home round robin, have in common with UEFA qualification?
I think you are. It wasn’t an attack on conmebol. Merely an acknowledgment of fact that they don’t have preliminary rounds to knock out weaker teams…like every other confederation save Uefa….which they badly need to implement
I don't see any need for CONMEBOL to change what they've always done. There are only 10 teams in the confederation. With UEFA, I can understand that Leichtenstein and Andorra maybe aren't great competition, but I'm not seeing how concentrating the pool by eliminating some of the weakest teams helps the Italys and Portugals any. Hopefully @Guinho will respond to clarify.
I mean UEFA should have just had 4 pots instead of 2. In such a scenario, it would have been impossible for Portugal and Italy to have been drawn into the same playoff path.
It is a qualifying tournament without a qualifying phase, which CONMEBOL can do because it has so few countries. Even so, it almost double the number of games per side of the UEFA tournament. Somehow Brazil can play 18 matches but France and England cant? it is a clear example of a tournament where the best teams generally win out. We don’t see Argentina staying home to allow Bolivia to go through because of one fluky result and a strange coin flip or draw
I see your point, but I don't think it really holds much water. The problem isn't "one fluky result" against Liechtenstein or something. The problem, as @gomichigan24 noted, is that Italy and Portugal are in the same playoff group. Do I understand that you'd like to see much larger groups in UEFA? I suppose if they found a way to drop 5 teams before the "final round" of qualifying then they could do 5 groups of 10 teams and play 18 games like they do in CONMEBOL (which is pretty unwieldy, though I agree it makes up for any fluky results). Or drop 7 teams and do 6 groups of 8 with 14 games (more manageable). Either way, you've got teams left over and the need for some playoff (assuming they stick with 13 teams from UEFA). Actually, forget I said anything. It won't matter because this is the last WC with 32 teams. Everything is going to change dramatically, and Italy and Portugal will have to be decidedly bad to NOT qualify in the future.
Sure. Qualifying is essentially a trials process where you are seeking to identify the best teams which happens mostly when teams of relatively similar strength play each other. Statistically speaking those games are more informative than games where the result is obvious at the outset. To help non statisticians to get a better sense, which is better to find out who is better: have Germany and France both play Lichtenstein once and compare the result, or play each other twice? Obviously the latter. a framework like the Ocho or Asia’s process gives you the best odds of correctly identifying the best teams and not accidentally sending an inferior team while leaving a better one home. (CAF’s tournament has the same problem.) Instead of having playoffs at the end where we always see results like the Portugal Italy cock up where one stays home by chance, UEFA should have a qualifying round at the outset among the lower half to 1/3 of the confederation to have group top 8 join 16 mid tier teams in round 2, 8 advance to the final round joining the top 16 teams in, say, 4 groups of 6, top 3 advance, fourth placed teams to intercontinental tournaments. You could even start the minnows round 1 while the hexes play out in the prior round of international dates are a concern. Only if you have a team from round 1 make it to round 3 would you have a high number of games for a single team.