Qatar punched above their weight in 2019. But it doesn't take anything from their achievement. That being said, all asian teams will be clear odds favorites to finish bottom of their groups at the world cup (just talking about the odds, not what will actually happen inside the pitch afterwards).
We'll see. I feel we'll have for the first time six Asian teams at the World Cup. You would expect that one of them get out of their group. I go as far as it would be humilating for Asian football if no team makes the knockout stage in an Asian World Cup. Remember when it was hosted by South Africa at least Ghana made it out of the group and was only inches away from a semi-finals appearance. Looking back at all the 32 teams World Cup it should be AFC's goal to do at least as good as CAF.
Qatar will actually be more of a home advantage to the North African teams than teams like Japan, S. Korea, Australia, even Iran. Algeria has a number of players playing in Qatar. South Africa wasn't much of an advantage for the CAF teams as it was winter, and colder in much of the country than most places in Europe at the time.
The odds are determined by fan perceptions and betting trends, which in turn are hugely influenced by past World Cup performances, including in particular the last one, Given that Japan came very close to eliminating Belgium in the R16, if they qualify, they might get better odds than you suggest. Same, to a lesser extent, for S.Korea (who beat Germany 2:0 even if they had already been eliminated and only helped eliminate the WC champs) and Iran (who ended with 4 points and came short by just a few inches from advancing when Taremi hit the side of the net on a golden chance deep into stoppage time against Portugal), Even Saudi Arabia, the only AFC side to stink during the tournament, ended their campaign on a high note beating Mo Salah's Egypt. So I am not sure the betting odds will be as you suggest necessarily.
Unless politically things shift and Qatar suddenly becomes a full-fledged member of the anti-Iran coalition in the region (which could then make it an inhospitable environment for Iranian players and fans), for now a winter World Cup in Qatar is as close as Iran will come to enjoy home-field advantage as it can hope. There are a dozen Iranian players, including a few on the national team, who play in Qatar. Iran's national team and Iranian clubs often camp in Qatar and have played numerous games there. And Qatar is close enough for Iranian fans to attend in droves, even if our sanctions hit economy will make such attendance prohibitively expensive for most. As for the weather, Qatar in the winter offers better playing conditions than the typically much colder and snowy conditions in Tehran.
Maybe not. We've played our home games in Qatar so far and from all reports the stadium was pretty good (the air conditioning for the September game brought conditions to a comfortable level and the playing surface was top quality). The temperatures aren't super hot in December although I wouldn't call them cold. Playing some extra games there has probably helped us logistically as the players and managerial staff know what to expect. Our results in west Asia have been better recently than they were previously, so I don't think Qatar will be a big disadvantage to us (provided we make it there of course). Obviously its not home, but I don't think the conditions will be something we don't expect.
Yeah I was wrong about Qatar and Iran, but my point stands that Qatar will be more of a home advantage to the North African teams than teams like Japan, Korea, Australia. In todays game the location of the tournament is becoming less relevant anyways. We saw Germany winning in Brazil. The real advantages lie in climate and temperature, and to a lesser extent the familiarity of cultural surroundings. What I am saying is a team might be more motivated knowing they are in the middle east. With muslim and arab culture being at the forefront. I see this being more of an advantage, even if minimal to teams like Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, than Korea, Japan, Australia. The fact that Australia has played a few home games there will not trump the extra inner desire for Arab teams to succeed in an Arab nation, and the fact that the Arab teams will likely be heavily supported. Bottom line Qatar is more like North Africa than it is East Asia or the Pacific. So even though its technically "an Asian World cup" its really more of a middle east one.
Exactly, any Arab team will have huge support here, not so much other AFC teams. Honestly, I think there will be a lot of fans that just go for the big names / teams (Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo, etc.), but any Arab team will get a lot of local support.
While I think we will see enough Iranian fans if Iran qualifies not to need support from Qataris, I am a bit curious who the Qataris were rooting for when Iran played Portugal or Spain in WC18? (I assume Arab solidarity trumped any AFC/ME solidarity and the average Qatari strongly rooted for Morocco against Iran, which for those not up to speed on these things, is Persian and not Arab).
Certainly teams from the Middle East and Muslim world will enjoy good support but if the World Cup were in Morocco, for example, I don't think the locals would support Saudi Arabia in particular. In general, there are many different tribes in North Africa. The majority do not see themselves as Arabs in the first place. I think teams like Senegal and Nigeria would be at least as well supported as Saudi Arabia in Morocco. By the way, the North African teams are in very good shape. Algeria and Morocco will qualify. Tunisia and Egypt also have a good chance of making it.
Well this is where I was when Iran played Spain in 2018 so wouldn't know what was going on here in Qatar. But you have to remember Qatar's population is only 10-15% Qatari, with people from the Indian subcontinent + other mostly western Arab states making up the majority of the population here. Even when the Gulf Cup was played here two years ago and the blockade was in full force, there still wasn't any real nastiness from the fans when those teams or their anthems played. I think the fans here would probably support Iran given the religious connections
Without getting too much into politics, my impression had always been that religious Iranians were more so pan-Islamists than some sort of sectarian chauvinists. I don't know if this sentiment is fully reciprocated, but among diaspora Muslims at least, the anti-Western sentiment seems to trump sectarian feelings and mainstream Muslim spaces are generally quite sympathetic to Iran. Only the most extreme fringe elements of Sunni Muslims seem to dislike Iran.
Just to put an example, I'm quite sure betting odds would favor Morocco against Iran if they were to play again next year. Despite Iran won last time. Rather than matches from 4 years ago, I think current form of teams and individual potential of the players are the most decisive factors. Of course, if Morocco is a disaster at the next AFCON that would change.
There's no such thing as "will qualify" in African soccer. Though I agree that Morocco and particularly Algeria are in very good shape. Algeria is on a 32 game unbeaten run. But they could meet any of Ghana, Ivory Coast, or Egypt in the playoffs, and those teams are certainly capable of knocking either of those 2 out. Ivory Coast was the only team Algeria couldn't beat in 90 minutes at the last afcon and took them to penalties. We have a whole afcon tournament to go before the playoffs, so a lot can change, and a lot usually does change in African soccer.
If Morocco and Iran both qualify, and if both end up in the same group, we can assess whether the betting odds will be as you suggest. But we don't need as many if to assess the accuracy of your earlier comment which I was responding to, namely that all the AFC teams will be "clear odds favorites to finish bottom of their groups". Regardless of whether that turns out to be true, which I highly doubt, I am also confident that what you said won't be borne out by betting odds once the draw has taken place. In fact, if you were as familiar as I am with betting odds for the AFC teams before each World Cup tournament, you would quickly discover a strong correlation between the past tournament performance and a very weak one with regard to current form. Thus, for instance: -- the AFC had a good tournament in 2010 (Japan and S. Korea advancing to R16, Australia coming very close) despite poor odds given because of the AFC's poor showing in 2006. Consequently, for WC14, S.Korea was favored by bookies over Algeria (which in fact thrashed S.Korea) and Japan was given decent odds too, with the AFC generally overrated by bookies compared to its actual dismal results in WC14. The dismal results in WC14, in turn. led the AFC to be significantly underrated by bookies before WC18 compared to its actual results in WC18. And it has generally been that way even if you look further back: whenever the AFC has had a good preceding World Cup (e.g. WC94, 2002, 2010, 2018), its betting odds for the subsequent tournament have been good and the reverse has been true as well.
This is so true, it is all down to who you draw in the final round, and your luck in those fixtures. I want to ask as someone seemingly from the region, do you personally like the way Africa does its qualifiers, or would you prefer to see some more on par with what AFC does. I think the AFC final round format would work well in Africa with 2 groups of 6, top 2 qualify and 3rd places playoff for the remaining spot. The eliminated teams could compete to qualify for the next AFCON also like they have in AFC now. But that doesn't seem to be in the plans at all for CAF.
I'm not African but I've always thought it was a strange system and not that fair. Strange things can happen in a 2-leg match up. You'd think CAF would want their best sides representing them at WCs and having a system like AFC or even CONCACAF and CONMEBOL seems like the best way to do that. Usually the best teams will end up going thru or at least it's the one who earn it over a longer period. However, it does seem like their best teams do end up going through to the WC. I'm sure there's been exceptions though.
Of course the AFC format would be much better. CAF has the worst format of all confederations in terms of making sure your best teams qualify. As you say it's basically up to your draw, and all depends on 2 matches. It's a crap shoot. It's horrible. It also doest help that the FIFA rankings are so off. But with the expansion in 2026 it will all be irrelevant next edition. I can only pray my team qualifies for the final 32 team edition.
There have been plenty of times the best teams didn't go through. 2006 was the best, or worst example. You had a group with CIV, Cameroon, and Egypt all playing for one spot. That's a group with the 2006 afcon champion, 2006 afcon runner up and afcon quarterfinalist. I dont know how on earth that happened. Then you had Nigeria and Senegal crap the bed against Angola and Togo respectively. Nigeria lost out on head to head, despite having a much higher goals average. I'd say 2010 and 2014 you had the best teams except for Egypt missing in 2010. Senegal could have also replaced Cameroon in 2014. 2018, you could have replaced Tunisia with either Ghana or CIV. I highly doubt we get the best 5 teams this go around.
It's not just the playoff system, it's the winner-takes all, only one team qualifying format that I also have a problem with. It mean that some teams chances are practically over at the halfway point so there are many meaningless games. It also means many teams with little or nothing to play for which can give an advantage to certain opponents. I've always wondered what it'd be like to try the AFC format in Africa, would be much more practical...
I wonder what kind of format they will go for. If you kept the current one, you could send the 9 best group winners to the WC directly and the worst one to the intercontinental playoff, or alternately have a playoff between the two worst group winners to decide the last automatic qualifier.
Knowing that CAF isn't very innovative with these kind of things, that's what's likely to happen. Although for qualifying 9 teams I don't think you'd really need to do much more than that. No need to do overkill. It would be interesting to see how other confederations retool their qualifying. Uefa I couldn't see changing much because they only got an extra few spots. The hex or ocho in concacaf would be pointless overkill, so would the current Asian qualifying.
UEFA doesn't need to change anything except the playoffs. Right now they need two rounds to get to three teams. With three extra spots, they can just go back to the standard home-and-away playoffs. AFC could just advance 16 teams to the final round instead of 12 (basically advance all runners-up instead of eliminating four of them which is kind of Mickey Mouse anyway). Then you have 4 groups of 4 and advance the top two. 4 third-place finishers play off for 1 intercontinental playoff spot. CONCACAF could advance 12 teams to the final round and go to 3 groups of 4 if you want to avoid overkill.
🚨 The draw for the African World Cup playoffs will be held on December 18th in Doha, Qatar, on the same day as the Arab Cup final. The draw will use the December 16th FIFA rankings and all the matches played at the Arab Cup will be counted as friendlies towards the ranking. pic.twitter.com/Tdh6ZTtpCk— Walid Ziani (@bylka613_) October 15, 2021 CAF playoff draw will be held on December 18, so they are not waiting until after AFCON. Arab Cup games will count as friendlies.