Not really, you don't 'develop women's football' by having a team lose repeatedly through insane 10-0 scorelines and such, that's demoralizing and does nothing to improve women's football as a whole. In order to develop it, you first have to have weaker teams compete against each other where the balance of play is much fairer and where they can actually grow and improve. The preliminary round offers that possibility.
Good draw for Switzerland. Despite have to play away against Scotland I see Austria as slight favorites to qualify. Portugal/Belgium/Iceland is completely open for me. UEFA team for inter-confederation play-offs should be from pairing one or two.
Amazing draw for the Swiss. Home game against either of the two lowest ranked teams in the draw. All games should be very interesting.
It's far from obvious, on a good day this is a draw similar to how Wales drew Slovenia (a similar team to Bosnia) twice.
I found two different versions for the ranking of the three play-off winners. The Swiss version is that the result after 90 minutes of play-off round 2 is included and the Austrian version is that it`s the result after a possible extra-time. Which one is correct?
UEFA says: To determine the ranking of the play-off winners, the results of the round 2 play-offs (three points are awarded for a win, one for a draw, and none for a defeat; result after extra time is counted but not any penalty shoot-out)
Portugal/Belgium/Iceland is indeed huge: based on last Euro tournament all three teams could deserve a spot at the World Cup. Iceland could look like slightly favourite here, but on the other hand they were in the same group as Belgium at Euro 2022 at they couldn't manage to beat them (to the point that it was Belgium advancing, with their win over Italy). Austria and Switzerland were quite lucky and, in my opinion, should quite easily qualify from the other pairings. How exactly UEFA team for inter-confederation play-offs is chosen?
For the three "victorious" teams, take the 8 group stage games that went into the playoff seeding and add the result of the second playoff game; team with the worst record from their respective 9 games goes to the FIFA playoffs, the other two qualify directly. As such, B&H cannot qualify directly even if they outright win their second playoff match.
This pre-tournament inter-confederation play-offs was presumably introduced as a replacement for the intercontinental cup that acted as a test of the infrastructure in the host nation. The players, most of which play in Europe, will get to experience a Mickey Mouse tournament halfway around the world with most not getting near the actual finals. It’s complete nonsense and really harsh on the players. Imagine travelling to the other side of the world only to very likely get knocked out and miss out on the World Cup. Thanks to this ridiculous system, we already know that one of either Belgium, Iceland or Portugal will miss out on the tournament when at least two of them if not all three arguably deserve a spot at the World Cup.
At least two of them miss the World Cup but it`s because UEFA get only 11+1 spots despite 21 teams in top 32 of World Ranking. So it`s clear that teams from UEFA will not qualify that are better than teams from other confederations that will qualify.
That's part of the problem: By trying to be too equal, you end up pleasing weaker sides from other continents for the sake of diversity.
Point of order: that's only the case on the men's side. There was no such tournament for the women, as their second senior-level worldwide tournament is the Olympics. On the women's side, the test event was the U-20 World Cup. Also, another reason it was introduced was simply to get more inter-confederation matches between mid-ranked teams, especially as people pointed out that the inter-confederation rankings start to lose meaning the further down the rankings you go. Also, as pointed out, the inter-confederation playoffs are not the reason for the slot distribution. Even if the playoffs were scrapped and all three of those spots went to UEFA for a total of 14/32, you'd still be missing four of the nine UEFA group runners-up. Well it is a *World* Cup, after all. You're trying to maximize inter-confederation play - you have the continental championships for intra-confederation games. If one confederation made up half or more of the team pool, that kinda defeats the point. Besides, arguing about whether the 27th-ranked team was cheated out of a spot or not doesn't matter that much when only the top 10 or so teams ever have a realistic shot of actually winning the thing.
I was obviously refering to and thinking about the U-20 World Cup, not the men's Confederations Cup which was scrapped after 2017. That's why a simple playoff system with a home and away leg would have sufficed or at worst a semi-final and final mini-tournament where the winner takes all although one could argue this would be extremely unfair.
I mean, if you're gonna have a mini-tournament, it makes the most sense to have it hosted at a neutral venue, so why not next year's full-tournament host? Whether you have a neutral host or do home-and-away legs, each participating team is gonna travel to another continent exactly once - unless the home-and-away thing needs multiple rounds, which it would with 10 teams vying for 3 spots, so the single neutral host makes way more sense from a travel perspective.
I don't think the glaring difference between a single game at a neutral host halfway around the world and home-and-away legs in Europe where you can still advance even if you lose the first game really needs explaining.
No but you're arguing A) from a Euro-centric view that minimizes the travel of other participating nations, and B) for a format that would require four games instead of two considering the ten-teams-three-spots problem Are home-and-away things more forgiving for higher-ranked sides? Absolutely. Is that always going to be best format? Hell no. (Also - are you arguing for "home-and-away legs in Europe", i.e. between UEFA sides? If so, I think you're conflating the UEFA playoffs with the FIFA playoffs. The UEFA playoffs will surely be in UEFA)
I am in favor of nations (those finished runners-up in groups) competing with each other on their own continents in a two-legged play-off system instead of going to New Zealand or Australia to participate in a mini-tournament where you can get knocked out after a single game. For men's football, playoffs for European teams are always held in Europe whether it be Euro qualifying or World Cup qualifying. No one would dare ask for European (UEFA) playoffs to take place in the host nation because it's stupid and pointless.
Yeah, just checking, because... I still can't tell if you're arguing specifically for UEFA sides or for everyone - or now if you're just arguing against international playoffs at all. Your wording "those finished runners-up in groups" is entirely UEFA-centric since no other confed has picked their playoff teams by them being runners-up in groups. And "competing with each other on their own continents" either means A) not competing against teams from other continents at all, i.e. each confed gets a set amount of berths and that's that, or B) two rounds of international home-and-away legs, which doubles the number of match days need and doubles amount of worldwide travel that teams will need to do Yes, being knocked out with a single game sucks.... But it's the norm for determining spots everywhere except UEFA. I don't see the added value of making the playoffs take longer and cost more.