It doesn't look like Senegal is going to have really worry about that at this point (they still have an outside chance of sneaking in though).
I disagree, I like the geographical nature of the remaining seeds. I mean for the non Euro confeds, why go the World Cup and play the same teams you always get to play anyway? It's better, IMO, to do what they're doing. Give a little advantage to the best teams, and then seed the rest geographically so as to allow teams to face opponents they don't usually face.
auf Amerika, I think that we are not getting something across. As was shown of a different thread, FIFA's ranking are almost as good at predicting the teams advancing to round 2 as your fabulous NCAA committee is at picking the teams advancing into round 2.. Almost everyone would agree that FIFA's seeding formula is better than FIFA's ranking. If you include the Hosts as seeded teams in WC 2002, 13 of the 16 teams advanced. The only teams to miss were Argentina, France and Croatia were the only ones to miss and no one would argue that the first two shouldn't have been in the top 8 and Croatia was in a group with two other "top 16". Group C had only one "top 16", the other team advancing to round 2 (Turkey) finished 3rd. The seeding formula is (mostly) transparent and results based. The NCAA committee is secretive and (mostly) opinion based. Why do you like the committee approach better? FIFA stops using the formula after the top seeds. Many/most people will agree that this is unfortunate . However, your proposal is the equivalent of using steam engine for 2006 cars. I hope that soon (2006 WC?) FIFA will seed all 32 teams using predefined formula. This can be done while maintaining the same geographical "diversity" that we had in 1998 and 2002.
You haven't understood a thing I've said. I've said, just like you, that FIFA's formula could be used to allocate the teams, i.e., the formula that FIFA uses to pick the top 8 teams. I've never said use FIFA's rankings. FIFA's rankings suck. Just like you, I would seed all 32 teams. I said it COULD be secretive, but I also said it could also be a pre-determined formula. For it to seriously work it would have to be a pre-determined formula, I understand that. That being said, however, March Madness is selected pretty well I'd say. Duke is always a 1 seed and Coastal Carolina is always a 16 seed, and they use formulas to determine that. What's subjective about the selection process is putting who where based on geography and whatever else they're thinking about, and giving some smaller conferences some exposure, etc. Bottomline, I don't want to watch Saudi Arabia play Costa Rica, and if the teams are seeded in 4 groups of 8, transparently or non-transparently, that won't happen. The way it is done now though means it could happen, just like China-Costa Rica happened. The world deserves better.
so you understand I have good reading comprehension Sweet Beagle Biscuit!! Costa Rica could play Saudi Arabia! That means one first round game out of 48 could suck (even though nobody could accurately predict the outcome of such a game, unlike a Duke-Coastal Carolina matchup)! Let's make sure this never happens!!!!
auf Amerika, I'm not a fan of your system either. FIFA has enough problems with corruption, politics and favoritism. If there's a meeting to arrange pairings everybody is going to be convinced they're rigging things. Even if they're perfectly honest the perception will be there. As it is now when teams get put into tough groups they complain about luck, not bribes....