Both England and Slovenia imposed themselves over Algeria, so the outcome of their result was intrascendent. England needed those points to impose itself over another Uefa Team (this is exactly the same as the case of Netherlands in regards to Denmark, where both Uefa teams imposed themselves over Cameroon). Take away either one of both (England and Slovenia), and you would still have an Uefa team over a team from Caf. Oh, unless you once again want to change the issue over which you are suposed to be discussing.
No. You never know who would be the non-UEFA team. Fact is that 3 out of 5 points were from inter-confederation warfare.
Begium didn't play an international tournament since world cup 02. last euro in 2000, last world cup in 2002 and they are already qualified for round 16 of world cup after 2 matches. try to think about....
I think the bottomline is whether you want quality over wide representation or not. I agree that the best would be a mixed system. Grant a few slots per region and let there be intercontinental instances to decide the rest. It seems FIFA is leaning towards including as many and diverse countries (markets) as possible. This goes against quality. Is bad enough that the last champion does not get it´s slot any more. Tradition matters. If aliens contacted us, we would have a world cup organized in the moon within a year. That´s all that matters to Sepp & co.
You mean you would have Panama, Jamaica, Senegal or Egypt rather than Spain in the WC? That´s one tournament I would avoid as the plague.
Umm ... 2nd tier UEFA sides have actually accomplished something in world cups before ... Turkey, Bulgaria come to mind as recent semifinalists. Sweden, Romania, Ireland, Ukraine all come to mind as teams that have advanced out of their groups in recent World Cups. What have the 2nd tier Asian/African/North American sides ever done when they have gotten their chances? Angola, Morocco, Togo, Jamaica, Trinidad, China, Algeria, North Korea, New Zealand, Iraq, Iran, UAE, Egypt, Tunisia, Canada ... none of those teams did anything in the WC when they got their chance. And that's exactly the kind of teams you're inviting if you give those confederations more spots. In fact the only 2nd tier teams from those confederations that ever did anything with their chance was Saudi Arabia in '94 and Senegal in '02 ...
It's more likely that they will expand the World Cup and give the extra spots to non-UEFA teams, though many Euros seem to hate that idea too. But it would at least preserve the spots that UEFA now has. Should CONCACAF and CAF hold serve in the final round of games that will be a record 6 knockout spots out of 16 going to non-UEFA and CONMEBOL nations which starts to erode the argument against expanding the tournament. Two of which will be first timers in the knockouts showing that there is potential for 2nd tier teams to impress. I think that this conversation will be much more informed once the group stage is over. Moreover, realistically there will be an expansion rather than a realignment.
You made this statement before some teams had even played their second games. Far too early. You need to look back retrospecitvely, not predict the future. When the tournament is done, we can see which confederations achieved and which ones failed. It's highly likely that the QF onwards will be dominated by Europe and S.America, therefore vindicating the allocations. If it isn't dominated by those teams, then so what? Could be a one off. It would need to happen several times. UEFA gets most allocations because there's so many countries and half of them are very good teams. Sweden, Turkey, Montenegro, Bulgaria could compete in the groups and even teams like Israel and serbia can be good. If you want to judge solely on this WC and solely up to this point, then AFC should lose a spot, no?
2002 was the best CAF AFC and CONCACAF tournament each having one representative each in the QF which was followed by utter domination of UEFA in 2006 Even this tournament could be more of the same even if all the UEFA members who are in trouble (Croatia Switzerland, Russia) don't qualify in the R16. Mexico would play Netherlands, Colombia - Italy/Uruguay, France - Nigeria/Iran and Algeria - Germany If we count Brazil - Chile and Argentina - Ecuador we could end with the usual suspects in the QF with one of CIV- Costa Rica and USA/Ghana - Belgium giving a little color to the QF
Actually, there is a lot of truth to it. Euro championship doesn't include any minnows, such as Australia, Iran, Korea, Algeria, Cameroon. Yes, we do have an occasional Greece there, but Greece actually won the whole thing in 2004.
16 teams meant every group was highly competitive. Now it's going to be 24 teams which will dilute it slightly. I suppose though it SHOULD be harder to qualify for a WC than a EURO. Right now it's almost the same.
Funny, given that Greece have been worse than all of those countries. Makes me wonder if those countries have the quality to win the Euro?
Average points per team per game of the confederations from 2002-2010. (Source http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/r&a-wr/52/00/97/fs-590_10e_wrpoints.pdf) CONMEBOL: 1,88 UEFA: 1,86 CONCACAF: 1,11 AFC: 1,02 CAF:1,02 OFC: 0,5 It´s about time CAF hands a spot to CONCACAF imo.
They were in quarterfinals two years ago. Seriously speaking, though. Greece have never been very good yet for one golden month they got the results needed to win the Euro. Greece in 2004 is not a shining example of how competitive Europe is. It's an outlier. Through the years they have not shown much better than Honduras, Bolivia, or other countries. Countries like Costa Rica and Cameroon have regularly achieved higher levels than the typical Greek side. This world cup, for anyone that has eyes to see, is showing a remarkable pressure from second tier countries. Algeria, Chile, Costa Rica, Ghana, USA have played toe to toe with more established countries. The Asian region has not had a happy world cup but I'm under no illusions that we've seen the last of Japan and South Korea. The game is rising everywhere. In particular, Eastern Europe is going into games thinking that being a UEFA country is good enough to win a game. They are sadly mistaken.
And lost all three group games as defending champions in 2008... Algeria's played one good game since 1982. I certainly agree on the rest. There is a certain irony that we've been waiting 25 years for an "African breakthrough", whereas it's CONCACAF that can claim that at present.
Does such a statistic really make sense considering that there are lots of innercontinental matches in there that bring the average down? When Spain and Holland face each other then how are they both supposed to get 3 points? The group phase in 2014 sees 5 inner-European matches and there will likely be a few more before the tournament is over
And why would that matter? Getting out of the group has as much to do with own ability, as with seeding and draws. Ghana as the best non UEFA/Conmebole team could crash out of the tournament with 1 point and Spain would've gotten out of most groups but got paired with on fire Chile and Netherlands. Last time Italy and France didn't make it, this time it's Spain, Portugal and England - watching them fail is 10 times more entertaining than the possibility of seeing Panama or Honduras reach the RO16. Reducing UEFA teams also means, it's less likely that a bigger UEFA team gets knocked out in the first place, because it reduces the likelihood of teams like Spain/Netherlands in the same group. BTW: What makes you think all CONCACAF teams would vote in favour for an additional WC spot? There are only 3 or 4 teams who would benefit from that and they don't have enough clout to broker for the votes of the rest, Suriname has better things to do than ensuring Honduras has an easier route into the WC.