If I Was FIFA Dictator

War On Diving. Retroactive yellows for dives missed by the refs. In a FIFA tournament, 2nd yellow for diving (retroactive or not) results in banning from the duration of the tournament. In league play, second yellow results in 2 game suspension and fine. Ridiculous dives (as determined by me of course) results in 2 month suspension of league play.

You want to play soccer, then play soccer. You want to fall down and flop around for no reason, then buy yourself a trampoline.

 

Excellent post! That'd be one of the best things to happen to football/soccer in a long time.

Speaking of Concacaf and Conmebol, how about the top 3 teams from both confederations play a Hexagonal (home and away matches)? The top 3 teams from that Hexagonal qualify for the World Cup. I dunno about an exact format, but something like that.

 

The lower teams still have to travel to face eachother. It's the mid-range and low-level ones who don't have the resources to do this every year.
There is still overhead. The costs of overseeing all these additional countries in a remote part of the world (even in relation to AFC) is not as clear cut as you make it.
I think my point about teams being eliminated 3 years before the tournament is even played completely went by you. That's how it stands now. Add in a 5th round, and they'll probably be getting eliminated within months of the previous World Cup ! That's not an issue for you?
Right now the 4 rounds works well enough... there are 2 head-head rounds (I wish there was only 1) before the first group stage. Adding in a 3rd head-head makes it just sound like we're not even giving these Associations a chance.

So this begs the question again... other than making the world map look prettier... what is the point? What is it you really think benefits world football? What are you hoping to accomplish?

Fair enough.

 

Just stop replying to him. It's not worth it.

 

I'm sorry if you think I've attacked you. That is in no way my intention, but I do occasionally get forceful in debates.
Anyway, fair enough. We are not going to agree... but I can agree to disagree.

 

First off, FIFA dates need to be sorted out better. There are a lot of things going on off FIFA dates and around not-quite-official FIFA dates. A better schedule needs to be figured out... and this would involve sitting down with the planning committees of each Confed and coming up with more efficient ways of doing Quals so there is less stress on international players.

I like what you have to say about Olympics. Full U23 would be a blast, but it's also a problem with IOC itself... since they don't seem convinced than U23 only would market as well.

Naturalization. Things like what Qatar has been doing is out of order.

While I'm on Qatar... corruption is rampant in FIFA. I'm not sure how to attack that problem, but it is a major one.

And while I'm on corruption... club debt. This is mostly a problem in UEFA... but it's getting way out of hand. A salary and maybe even transfer cap needs to be instituted (not as rigid as MLS or even NFL... but just one that prevents the insanity I think we'll be witnessing in the next 5 years.)

I like the idea of combining CONCACAF and CONMENBOL. But I think that would have to be sorted between those two. Still, if I was FIFA director, I would do my best to facilitate that union.

I definitely agree with the war on diving, and think replay could be used to great effect post-match -- not just for diving but also more red cards for inappropriate behavior.
There could also be a replay specialist... the reason this has been unpopular is because of the time it takes but (using a different sport) it seems to be very effective in the Big-10 CFB where they review every decision right as it happens and then inform the officials if there is a bad one.

Racism is still a problem, and right now it seems to involve a lot of red tape. When it's a social problem, you can't just punish teams and expect it to improve. Something more effective needs to be found on this matter.

I'd also like to see some technology make it's way onto the pitch. The goal detection for instance, but it could be interesting to get something for offsides perhaps.

I would just delete FIFA rankings. At the very least remodel them, the .85 multipliers are pretty blatant in their purpose and put a lie to the entire concept. Instead of having 1seeds I would remodel WCQs a bit.

Remodeling WCQs... less guaranteed spots per continent and instead a tournament that determines spots in group stages. This would replace Confederation Cup in the schedule as the pre-WC trial event.

Guaranteed Spots: 16 from continental cups
8 teams from UEFA (continental quarterfinalists)
3 teams from CONMEBOL (continental finalists + 3rd place)
3 teams from CAF (continental finalists + 3rd place)
1 teams from AFC (continental champ)
1 teams from CONCACAF (continental champ)
Seeding: top 8 from ranking in pot A, bottom 8 in ranking in pot B

Then 32 spots for playoffs into 16 spots. This would be a large event preview to the WC itself, and testing each of the WC stadia.
16 from UEFA
4 from CONMEBOL
4 from CONCACAF
4 from AFC
4 from CAF
Playoffs, 8 groups of 4... top of each group in pot C, last in each group in pot D
Groups divided between UEFA takes 2 pots, Americas 1 pot, AFC and CAF 1 pot
*Some of the numbers of confeds could probably be changed around... but you can see I'm largely aiming towards groups of 8 in a way that keeps teams from playing against their own continent (like Japan and Australia in 2006). I think a major criticism of this is that UEFA could potentially have 24 teams in WC proper... but in this way, there can be no complaining about who really deserves to go. I do believe AFC, CAF, and CONCACAF would step up and show their quality.

If we're getting really radical... I'd change penalties to old NASL style. So much more entertaining and less flukey.

 

There's nothing wrong with the qualification system overall as it is now, and the very last thing anyone needs is another totally meaningless tournament.

Sorry to return to this, but the travelling argument is pretty weak. That could be fixed easily by having the early stages of qualification hosted in the better organised countries, such UEFA do for the youth championship qualification.

Well something as to be done, because you can't more or less give New Zealand a definite spot at FIFA youth tournaments and WC play-offs, it's unfair to everyone else in the other confederations. As I said before, splitting AFC to West and East for early stage competition wouldn't be a bad idea.

If CONCACAF and CONMEBOL were to merge, the current league format would have to be maintained - there is NO WAY CONMEBOL would risk there being no Argentina-Brazil games, and every other teams wants to play both of them as well.

What would be more likely is that the top 6 in a combined Americas confed would be given a bye to the league stage - Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, USA - while the rest would play some form of short initial group phase (3 teams?), from which 6 more would qualify to make 12.

 

As I've said before, the problem isn't the major countries traveling. It's the small ones. Your solution doesn't fix that.

Why is it this is unfair to everyone but AFC? How is OFC in any way AFCs' responsibility?
This is where your argument falls apart. It's no more AFCs' fault than CONCACAFs' fault that New Zealand has it easy.

 

Agreed. At the moment some confederations set their continental championship qualifiers on non FIFA dates. Recently in AFC we had a double FIFA qualifier date only used for one round of WCQ matches, follwed up a few weeks later with a round of WCQ's on a friendly date.

I would take football out of the Olympics altogether and replace the current youth tournament system with Under 21's and under 18's.

More use of replays to ensure correct decisions is important. If you want to stamp out diving then the best way to do it is to have some cosequence for those doing it. Retrospectively penalising offenders is the best way. You could also review penalty decisions by video in big matches (we all see the replays and know a dive has happened well before the penalty gets taken so it wouldn't waste time).

Offsides is another one that video could easily be used without wasting time. Just allow play to go on and review it when you get the chance. Either the defence will clear when there is no need for a replay, a goal kick is awarded and there is also no need for a replay, a goal is scored and a replay can be viewed, or a corner is awarded and a replay can be viewed.

The multiplier is stupid. For example, we get less points for defeating Holland in friendly in Holland than a similar ranked European country would, just because we are a member of AFC.

Don't like your format that much but agree 100% with the principle you've espoused.

 

wow! popular thread

 

Yea the divisions between continents wasn't nailed down as well as it should be... but I'd prefer to have a meaningful tournament that eliminates some of the fuzziness in place of a meaningless confed cup.

 

- Merge CONCACAF and CONMEBOL
- Merge AFC and OFC
- Technology to help the referees (goal line, replays etc)
- Seeding all teams for the WC draw, not just the first 8.
- Implement a clear system of awarding WC spots for each confederation.
- Replace the FIFA Ranking with the ELO ratings or find a better system to rank the teams.
- Force Scotland to have a connected league system. No more Scottish teams playing in England for historical reasons and vice versa.
- Force Wales to clean up their league system. No more Welsh teams playing in England for historical reasons and vice versa.
- Force Romania to go to a single division in Liga II and two divisions in Liga III.
- All Ireland League, Benelux League, Alpine League etc.

Because Australia moved to AFC and as FIFA dictator I can do as I please, remember?

Back to traveling and such.
There would be 5 regions: West Asia, East Asia, Central & South Asia, ASEAN and Oceania.

For each continental competition (NT or club) the preliminaries would be played regionally first. Each region would get a number of spots based on previous performance, but with a guaranteed minimum. Where teams can't afford the travel for home and away, play them as a one-venue tournament.

Now, say Oceania get 2 spots for the WC/Asian Cup (i.e. 2 teams advancing to the next round of AFC qualifiers). Most likely, Australia and New Zealand will grab those spots.

 

There's a whole lot of ideas here, and I know to some of what I'm going to say the response is going to be "well, I'm boss and I am just going to make it happen", but at some point any ideas have to be compared against the benchmark of reality if they are going to be anything more than pointless mental masturbation.

First, there are things that are pretty much fine. Such as:
FIFA ranks replaced by Elo-type ranks (shame on Edgar for calling them ELO though, that's really bad). Elo could easily be enhanced by swapping points depending on whether the margin was above or below some "implied benchmark" based on initial ranking differentials. So, say the rankings said team A should beat team B by 3 goals (you can calculate this from Elo), if they won by fewer than X goals (where X would be less than or equal to 3 depending on whether the game was a friendly or whatever) then they would give ranking points to the losing (or drawing or winning) side. This is to avoid the situation (with the current Elo) that if A should be 1 goal better than B and beats them by 1 goal then their rankings diverge (when in essence, the result says they were correct to start).

Better coordination in the calendar (no Japan v Australia in early February).

Reasonable club debt/financial rules - these would be flexible depending on the league/country/level etc involved, but some general guidelines would be better.

There's some other good stuff, but I'm more interested in raining on parades to be honest.

1) A "pre-WC" tournament to determine the last 8-12 spots in the WC might sound sensible, but it is a logistical nightmare. First, you need a tournament, which (because all confeds are involved) needs to be in June because it needs preparation, therefore it needs to be in the June the year before the WC finals. But, the determination of the teams involved needs to be done in the November before that (that is, all the rest of the WC2010 qualification would need to be finalised NOW). The minimum time between a group draw and commencement of play in all the draws for WC and the start of play was around 2.5 months (AFC early rounds), but that was in a situation where a large proportion of each team's matches were at home or at worst in the confed, this would involve (some) teams travelling to the other side of the planet. That takes a lot of time to arrange.
So, Europe would need to cram some method of determining the bulk of it's WC qualifiers in the August-November 2008 period - or start before the EURO. Other confeds have it a bit easier but, by neccessity, ALMOST EVERYONE would need to be done by now.

2) Regional groupings. Again, these seem like a reasonable idea, but you may note that ALL confederations that use to use these types of arrangements in the past have moved away from them (AFC/CONCACAF/CAF) for the reason of Confederation politics. Football (politics) is a game so dirty it is almost unfathomable. Quite simply, dividing the AFC up into little zones with "minimum" qualification criteria will soon see the "minimum of 0 (and some sort of playoff for you losers)" criteria popping up. Look how much we all bicker over Confederational level allocations - and you actually want to multiply the problem?

3) Confed mergers. CONCACAF+CSF and AFC+OFC make obvious sense because they do actually solve some current dilemmas. A Pan-American confed would eliminate both the "half the SA teams getting in is unfair" and the "the US and Mexico are always locks to get in" arguments at a stroke - while AFC+OFC solves the problem of everyone really just wishing the OFC would disappear by making the OFC disappear so everyone can just forget about them like they really want to.
However, I wouldn't expect either to happen. In particular the AFC is already too big and needs to be split. The OFC could be absorbed into an East Asian confederation only if there were a tacit acknowledgement that the sport would be allowed to die in the Pacific Islands. A split in the AFC would be such a monumental cat-fight (so, it would, to be fair, be hilarious viewing for an outsider) in dividing up the qualifying spots.
The more interesting merger would be the Americas. The key would be whether the US would be prepared to risk the loss of what is a pretty straightforward path to all WC events (I don't think the US has ever failed to qualify for a FIFA tournament with at least 3 CONCACAF spots) and the exposure that brings in return for a more challenging (but more rewarding) path. Australia only really threw its lot in with the "harder" route once it because obvious the easier 1 OFC spot route was never going to happen.

4) Video review. On one level this is fine and that's for disciplinary action. Diving, simulation etc after the event, in the main its catching and punishing cheats over and over what they get caught doing in the game.

Confirming goals via goal-line technology is probably also a reasonable enough, especially if we wait until the response can be close enough to the current time. At present, the decision is rarely instantaneous - the referee and linesman will look and gesture and hopefully then make a decision. If something rings in the ref's ear when the ball crosses the line then there is no real difference in time taken. That's great.

But, while everyone points to the really extreme problems (like the goal that wasn't given that goes way over the line etc) the vast majority of cases for review will be ONES THAT WE DON'T ACTUALLY AGREE ON EVEN AFTER WATCHING EVERY FREAKING REPLAY THERE IS. Take the Korea/Saudi game from last month - there was a contentious penalty call which they are still bickering over, and to be honest I can't tell you whether the referee made the right call or not. And, while this may sound dramatic, I worry about what will happen when these contentious calls go against some people. At present, most of them are very quick and, where mistakes are made, they are sort of understandable. But, what will fans do when the officials watch a contentious incident a dozen times and then come up with a decision which (from your vantage point) is hideously wrong, a sign of sure corruption, HOW COULD THEY NOT SEE THAT THAT WAS OFFSIDE YOU CHEATING FREAKING *#*)*&*^&)(*^&*(W^(**^&( )(*&()*^&()*^&(*. (I think you get the idea). People accept (to a point) incompetence (hell, I expect it) but they won't tolerate what they perceive as obvious bias (regardless of whether it is there).

So, there you go. A huge post on why these things generally don't change.

J

 

At least you're willing to admit the fundamental reason everyone outside of AFC thinks this is a good idea.
I think AFC can survive as 1 entity without splitting apart so long as there is no additional strain. Staying together not only avoids the catfight but makes everyone stronger together (separate, they would just turn into clones of CONCACAF with 2-3 guaranteed spots for the same teams every cycle and no competition below that.)

This was a problem with video review for a long time in other sports. But what has worked very well is establishing that on-field calls take precedence over the video. A lot of people think of replay as taking precedence (because it's what they're seeing on tv), so it's important to establish this and have commentators repeat it ad nauseum: the initial decision cannot be overturned unless there is conclusive 100% proof.
I think eventually FIFA will have to recognize replay, but I suspect it will be some years from now and only after one of the major UEFA leagues has perfected the procedures.

 

"World Football Elo Ratings". There, better now?

 

OK, my English is a bit rusty. I don't think I quite understand the "diverge" thing.

Take for instance San Marino vs. Czechia (WCQ). According to Elo, the score should have been 0 - 1. It was 0 - 3 so the teams exchanged 1 point.

It the Czechs would have won 1 - 0 no points would have been exchanged.

Of course, that's an extreme case with the teams at opposite ends of the rankings.

Elo can "tell" you an expected result, but not in all cases the teams will exchange 0 points if that result actually happens.

 

I think your last sentence is what he is getting at.
I believe the divergence ("head in opposite directions") would be if elo predicted a score, that score occured... but the high ranked team gains points and the low ranked team loses points.

For example if San Marino vs Czech ended 0-1 as elo predicted. Then let's say Czech receives points and San Marino loses points.
That would be divergence.

 

Wow,

Really impressive the number of wannabe 'dictators' in a democratic Forum like this ...



Since everybody here tried their hand though, why not me, a modest Latin American apprentice?...

I'd take 2 measures.

My 1st and main one would prohibit any international importation/exportation of players under 21 years-old (unless by extremely high cyphers stipulated by FIFA exactly in order to harshly discourage such practice), one part going to the original club, the other to the country’s confederation, and of course a ‘considerable’ fee to FIFA itself.

If the importer countries/clubs really want to bet on that guy, that they open up their coffers – and generously.

The younger the player (independently of his commercial value) the most expensive would be its transfer.

Nationalized individuals under that age would also be prohibited either to play professional or FIFA-regulated amateur competition – what would also hinder ‘nationalization’ as an alternative pirate strategy.

Those measures would implement the appropriate ripening of those players within their original footballistic environment, making with which they, when imported/exported, arrived to the new environment as fully formed players.

That would not only represent an advantadge to the exporter countries (since their leagues wouldn’t be annual & methodically deprived from their main young talents) as to the importer countries themselves, since it would leave room for their own nationals to develop their football with a good professional perspective ahead of them, without the unrewarding competition with expensive but still immature foreign players still unable to transmit relevant footballistic contribution to the new environment.

What would only contribute to the maintenance of the finantial equilibrium and high quality of the game in the whole world, and not just in a few of its regions.

My 2nd (and sine qua non) measure:

To carefully form a sophisticated army (equipped even with atomic weapons) in order to guarantee measure nº 1 ...

 

As Scotch17 noted this is what I am getting at.

Currently, points always (subject to rounding) are exchanged from the loser to the winner. That is fine in an "absolute" ranking such as a league where problems such as different opponents etc are not an issue. However, the ranking we are talking about here is a "relative" rank, the result is not attempting to just ranking the teams involved, but also the standing of both teams against all the other teams in the world.

The problem with exchanging can be seen in an extreme example. Lets say the Elo ratings say that Spain (with a starting rank value of 100) should beat Turkey (with a starting rank value of 90) by 1 goal (the ranks are made up).

Now let's say the two sides play a series of 10 games, each of which Spain wins 1-0. What should happen is that nothing should change. The ranks were perfect.

What does happen is that after every match Spain's rank rises a little bit (less each time) and Turkey's falls (but by less each time) - that is, the ranks continue to "diverge" from their initially perfect values. I see this as a flaw in the ranking scheme that could be readily overcome.

To do so, instead of changing the Elo ranks based on a simple win-loss-draw criteria, it would be based on margin over the estimated base win. The formula for this would be baed on the gap in ranks (possible with an adjustment for a home team) with a power factor depending on the type of tournament. For a world cup final match it would be 1, for a friendly it might be 0.5 (which would mean you took the square root of the basic margin). This might then be naturally rounded down - so, if for example the formula said team A should win by 1.9 goals, they would not be punished (in ranks) if they won by only 1 (but would gain they won by 2).

There is one other "flaw" in the Elo methodology that is not shared by the FIFA ranks, and that is the problem of "transitivity". In the Euro or WC finals (for example) it doesn't matter to the FIFA ranks what order you play matches, the ranking implications are the same. However, if you play a side after they have just lost (to possibly a fantastic country that they would never be expected to beat) you will get fewer points than if they just beat a really weak side. This could be solved by assuming that all matches in final tournaments occur simultaneously (for ranking purposes) - effectively using the start of tournament rankings throughout.

J

 

I cringe every time there's a post proposing a merger of Concacaf and Conmebol.