Re: France or Portugal? @Dr. Gamera: It's totally impossible that Uruguay or Cameroon or Cote d'Ivore become seeded.
Re: France or Portugal? I think you are interpreting some numbers in a very unique way to say the least.
Thats not a horrible draw. I would like our chances to advance if we got that group. Mexico looks like it would have a rough draw with England, Switzerland and Uruguay.
Re: France or Portugal? He's talking about the FIFA Ranking - i.e. Cameroon or some other team to climb between Portugal and France, thus getting more points for Portugal.
Re: France or Portugal? No, I don't. Maybe you can show me a case where a UEFA president helped his national team during a FIFA competition.
How would the seeding picture change if FIFA required seeded teams to win their WC qualifying group? This cycle, such a rule would eliminate teams like France, Portugal, Mexico and Argentina - even allowing CONMEBOL a second seeding slot {Paraguay, this cycle}.
It would be interesting for them to just use the FIFA Ranking to seed the top 7 teams. I don't think anyone could necessarily argue it. It would be convenient that Argentina has managed to jump up to the top 7, and Russia fell out. If Edgar wasn't tracking this so closely, it'd be tempting to say 'conspiracy' Looking forward to the November projection.
Er, how does this proposed rule deny a seed to 4th-place Argentina but give a seed to 3rd-place Paraguay?
just going on the fifa rankings would be absurd, as those rankings are deeply flawed. The system they use now is good with 50% of the points being from how well u performed in the last 2 WC's and 50% fifa rankings.
The way I see it, France would have to drop below Russia in the next FIFA rankings in order for Portugal to tie with France. It still angers me that Mexico is ahead of the US in terms of seeding points*. *This assumes the seeding points are calculated the same as they were in 2006.
IIRC that was the previous WC (2002) seeding "methodology", whereas the just passed WC (2006) seeding "methodology" only had 1 past WC performance as its 50% WC weighting. Also the 50% FIFA bottle-top rankings had their span of duration reduced from 8 to 4 years at the same time.
Well, if we hadn't gotten bounced out at group in '06 they wouldn't be. And it wouldn't matter anyway, Mexico won't be seeded, and neither will USA. I do think they should go 4 pots, regardless of confederation, and seed them prior to the draw, then place the confederation restrictions. Something like this: Pot 1 (seed): South Africa, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, Argentina, France Pot 2: Portugal, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Paraguay, Mexico, USA, Ghana Pot 3: Chile, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Denmark, Greece, Australia, Serbia, Korea Rep Pot 4: Slovakia, Algeria, Tunisia, Japan, North Korea, Honduras, Bahrain/NZ, Uruguay/Honduras. If Uruguay wins, they go to pot 3, and drop Korea down. It's not like there aren't going to be tough groups this way, but if we love "Groups of Death" so much, why not use them in qualifying?
ive always advocated this, these pots look much more even to me, FIFA needs to get their head out of their a$$ and use such a system, we can still have it so not more than one confed(besides euros) are not in the same group.
Actually, I'd say they're less flawed than the way they used last time. As pointed out by scaryice here. I wonder what we'd get if we used just the most recent ranking as 50% of the formula and the last 2 WCs for the other half.
This may have been covered before but in 2006 Brazil (as holders) were given top seed in Group F (before the draw). Will this be the case with Italy this year?
Well, if Edgar's projection ends up right, I have a hard time believing FIFA would use just the rankings. But there are a few games to be played between now and then that will have a major influence on how things end up.
Using Edgar's November projections, these would be the seedings, assuming France and Portugal win. Some of the Africa qualifiers are still in doubt, and New Zealand just needs to win at home to beat out Bahrain, but only the France and Portugal results have an effect on the top 7. Code: [FONT=Courier New]Seed Country Region Total WC FIFA 1 Brazil CSF 59.33 29.33 30.00 2 Germany UEFA 59.33 30.33 29.00 3 Italy UEFA 56.67 27.33 29.33 4 Spain UEFA 56.33 25.33 31.00 5 England UEFA 50.33 26.33 24.00 6 France UEFA 48.67 23.33 25.33 7 Argentina CSF 48.67 21.00 27.67 ----------------------------------------- 8 Portugal UEFA 47.33 22.33 25.00 9 Netherlands UEFA 43.00 14.67 28.33 10 Mexico CCCAF 37.33 19.33 18.00 11 Ukraine UEFA 35.33 16.67 18.67 12 USA CCCAF 34.33 13.67 20.67 13 Switzerland UEFA 31.33 15.33 16.00 14 Paraguay CSF 29.67 11.67 18.00 15 Russia UEFA 26.67 3.00 23.67 16 Ghana CAF 25.33 13.33 12.00 17 Japan AFC 23.33 13.33 10.00 18 Korea Republic AFC 23.33 15.67 7.67 19 Cameroon CAF 22.67 3.00 19.67 20 Australia AFC 22.00 11.33 10.67 21 Cote d'Ivoire CAF 21.33 6.00 15.33 22 Serbia UEFA 20.33 5.33 15.00 23 Denmark UEFA 19.67 7.67 12.00 24 Uruguay CSF 19.00 2.67 16.33 25 Tunisia CAF 14.67 8.67 6.00 26 Chile CSF 11.33 0.00 11.33 27 Honduras CCCAF 7.33 0.00 7.33 28 Slovakia UEFA 7.00 0.00 7.00 29 South Africa CAF 5.67 3.00 2.67 30 Algeria CAF 4.67 0.00 4.67 31 Bahrain AFC 2.33 0.00 2.33 32 Korea DPR AFC 1.33 0.00 1.33 [/FONT]
Just to clarify, however, suppose France advances on away goals (or penalty kicks) with two draws, thereby ending up with about 1053 FIFA ranking points. (Or perhaps even with a win and a loss, thereby ending up with about 1088 FIFA ranking points.) Suppose Portugal advances with wins in both games of the two-game playoff, thereby ending up with 1181 FIFA ranking points. Now the results of some other teams start to become very interesting, as ranking two teams behind Portugal and above France results in a tie in the seeding formula, and ranking three or more teams behind Portugal and above France gives Portugal the edge in the seeding formula. Teams that could qualify to the World Cup and finish with between 1053 and 1181 FIFA ranking points include Germany, Argentina, England, Russia, and Greece.
They're just making this up as they go along, that's the bottom line. That's why they haven't decided how they're going to do this yet. I personally have the feeling that if it's between Portugal and Holland, Holland will be seeded as the Dutch bring more fans and that way they can allocate a bigger stadium.