Since FIFA loves their seeding system, why don't they use it to determine the spot allocation? After the WC 2006 final, do something like this: Use the FIFA Rankings from Aug 2004, Aug 2005 and Aug 2006 (to include the results of the Germany '06 final match). The top team gets 205 points, the bottom one gets 1 point. Add points for all 3 rankings, divide by 3. Do the FIFA performance thing. 32 points for the WC champ, 31 for the runner-up... 8 points for the bottom 8 teams. Use 2002 and 2006 results. (1:2). Multiply by 205, divide by 32 (to have the same importance as the rankings) Add the 2 totals. South Africa is host so we're interested in top 31 (32-host) teams. Depending on how many teams you've got in the top 31, that's how many spots you'll have for South Africa 2010. Giving each team 8 points for WC 2006 performance and using the January 2006 FIFA Rankings: AFC -> 4 CAF -> 4 + host CONCACAF -> 3 CONMEBOL -> 5 UEFA -> 15
Andy TAUS and almango, Thanks for the history lessons on the OFC. Nothing really surprising if you think about it. Everyone in it for themselves and all... It's not all that dissimilar from what we're dealing with in Concacaf: tyrany of the majority. Basically, we have a lot more tiny countries than big ones. Yet they get the same votes as the big countries and hold them to ransom. Thus, the Jack Warner disaster. If you look through my old posts, you'll find I suggested or support pretty much the same proposals as were mentioned. 1. OFC as a sub-confederation of AFC, to avoid long travel for small nations. Regional OFC winner joins AFC qualifying in final group (2 groups of 5 now instead of 4). 2. Concacaf and Conmebol merged in a Confederation of the Americas.
That would work if it was tweaked to include population. I'm sorry but there is no way a confederation of 10 teams (CONMEBOL) should be sending more [or as many] teams to the World Cup than a confederation of 52 teams (CAF). That is why the Olympics is so competative, and why teams outside of Europe and South America do better, because they have equal representation. UEFA and CAF each have 52 members. In the World Cup UEFA gets to send almost 3 times as many teams though. In the Olympics they both send the same amount of teams... and CAF has won 2 of the last 3 Olympics... UEFA, zero of the past 3, coincidence? I don't think so... I mean, I am not saying UEFA and CAF should each send 8 teams to the World Cup (well, maybe that wouldn't be that bad), but if there is going to be a formula, it should consider population AND number of top teams.
CAF hasn't proven they deserve that many teams in the WC though. This isn't the olympics. Most teams don't send A squads to the olympics either, but they sure as hell send A squads to the World Cup. If a couple of African teams do well in 2006, and make it to the round of 16, sure give them 5 + the host. I just don't believe they will. Ivory Coast and Ghana are overhyped and are in tough groups. Tunisia could be the best hope, but most likely won't advance. Togo has the easiest group most likely and could shock France like Senegal did, but don't think it will happen on European soil. Angola won't do much either. However, South American teams constantly prove themselves in world competition. Brazil and Argentina are givens, but Paraguay may sneak into the second round as well, although it will be tough. I'm not going into details as others already have, but CAF teams needs to step up and prove they deserve more spots.
I don't like the idea of quotas on principle, so my stating position is against including population in the formula. On the practical side, let's consider 10 and 25 to 1 allocations (allocation rounded) Code: [b]Confed 10:1 25:1[/b] AFC 4.5 1.75 CAF 5 2 CONCACAF 3.5 1.5 CONMEBOL 1 0.5 OFC 1 0.5 UEFA 5 2 Total 20 8.25 "Left" 12 23.75 Clearly the 10 to 1 method will yield poor results, CONMEBOL will end up with 3-4 teams, while CONCACAF will get 6. The 25 to 1 case, will yield something like (we only look at the top 23-24 teams now): Code: [b]Confed[/b] AFC 1.75 + 2 = 3.75 CAF 2 + 1.25 = 3.25 CONCACAF 1.5 + 3 = 4.5 CONMEBOL 0.5 + 3.5 = 4 OFC 0.5 + 0 = 0.5 UEFA 2 + 14 = 16 Edgar, can you please show the top 24 teams in your list to see how far my estimation is. If I'm anywhere near right, you can see that including population will hurt CAF & AFC since their teams have a hard time breaking the top 16 and teams that get into the top 24 don't stay there for long (often due to intra-confederation rival). Now, if you shift a spot from CONCACAF to CAF, I think we have something reasonable. But I would be the first to say that it was reached due to the wrong reasons. Based on past WC results and 2006 allocations (I don't want to see drastic changes, I would go with) Code: [b]Confed[/b] AFC + OFC 4 CAF 5 (one will go to South Africa) CONCACAF 3.5 CONMEBOL 4.5 UEFA 15 If CONCACAF teams don't perform well in the 2006 WC (as many expect) it might be right to cut them back to 3. If that happens, and CONMEBOL gets 3 of 4 teams to the second round, it might be a good idea to give CONMEBOL the 5th spot. Regardless if you like or hate UEFA, there are several UEFA teams who would be legitimate candidates for the 2nd round seating on the sidelines. Look at it another way, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium and Turkey were all in the second round in 2002 and are staying home this time. All 4 were expected to make the 2nd last time and they did. If these four team were in the 2006 WC we would expect them to make the 2nd round again (with the possible exception of Belgium). Senegal is the only other team to make the 2nd round in 2002 and miss 2006 and I don't think that many people expected them to make the second round last time. If they made it this time they wouldn't be expect to advance from groups C, D or E; they would be a legitimate candidate in groups G & H.
Code: 1 Brazil 307.500 CONMEBOL 2 Spain 294.625 UEFA 3 Germany 292.698 UEFA 4 England 290.156 UEFA 5 USA 285.219 CONCACAF 6 Mexico 280.479 CONCACAF 7 South Korea 277.427 AFC 8 Japan 274.083 AFC 9 Italy 267.271 UEFA 10 Sweden 265.875 UEFA 11 Turkey 259.063 UEFA 12 Argentina 256.052 CONMEBOL 13 France 251.583 UEFA 14 Portugal 248.719 UEFA 15 Paraguay 247.135 CONMEBOL 16 Denmark 239.448 UEFA 17 Croatia 237.719 UEFA 18 Czechia 236.500 UEFA 19 Netherlands 236.167 UEFA 20 Costa Rica 235.719 CONCACAF 21 Poland 232.583 UEFA 22 Ireland 231.844 UEFA 23 Saudi Arabia 228.583 AFC 24 Senegal 227.188 CAF
They have the copa america for Brazil/Argentina. Or do you think there are no rivalries in places like Europe with many small groups and the big teams kept apart? Brazil and Argentina don't need to play each other every week. They usually send the reserves out to qualifiers anyway.
All these arguments could be solved by inviting Brazil and Argentina to the European Championships and scrapping the World Cup altogether.
Given Edgar's numbers (thanks, Rep on the way) and using a 25:1 "population" allocation we get Code: [b]Confed[/b] AFC 1.75 + 3 = 4.75 CAF 2 + 0.75 = 2.75 CONCACAF 1.5 + 3 = 4.5 CONMEBOL 0.5 + 3 = 3.5 OFC 0.5 + 0 = 0.5 UEFA 2 + 14 = 16 IMO, AFC is over represented (I didn't estimate Saudi Arabia to be so high). CAF is under represented (what happened to Nigeria?) even more then the original estimate I think that everyone will agree that CONCACACAF (at 4.5) is over represented and CONMEBOL (at 3.5) is under represented OFC and UEFA are reasonable (both might be a tad over represented) The more I look at it, the less I like the idea of allocating spots based on the number of associations in a confederation (and I didn't even like the idea to start with).
31st place. Code: 25 Tunisia 225.583 CAF 26 Ecuador 222.719 CONMEBOL 27 Iran 220.833 AFC 28 Cameroon 202.885 CAF 29 Uruguay 202.417 CONMEBOL 30 Belgium 200.573 UEFA 31 Nigeria 198.750 CAF 32 Switzerland 198.500 UEFA 33 Russia 195.219 UEFA 34 Serbia and Montenegro 193.500 UEFA 35 Cote d'Ivoire 190.167 CAF 36 Greece 190.000 UEFA 37 Australia 186.167 AFC 38 Ukraine 186.167 UEFA 39 Trinidad and Tobago 182.833 CONCACAF 40 South Africa 182.552 CAF 41 Colombia 180.667 CONMEBOL 42 Ghana 176.833 CAF 43 Egypt 175.333 CAF 44 Romania 174.667 UEFA 45 Morocco 172.000 CAF 46 Slovenia 169.750 UEFA 47 Angola 169.167 CAF 48 Norway 169.000 UEFA 49 Togo 166.833 CAF 50 China PR 163.750 AFC 51 Bulgaria 163.667 UEFA 52 Finland 160.000 UEFA 53 Jamaica 160.000 CONCACAF 54 Honduras 159.667 CONCACAF Of course, these rankings would change significantly after the WC, because winning the WC would give the winner an extra 153.75 points. Not to mention the change in the August 2006 rankings.
The only thing I will say is that I do think Concacaf keeping their 3.5 spots highly depends on the performance of T&T and Costa Rica. I think they had Jamaica or Honduras in mind when they decided to go with 3.5 last time round. On paper I don't think T&T or Bahrain belong and both were very close. Bahrain nearly qualified without winning a match in something like 9 matchs. Thats scary.
Will 2 round of 16s (or better) and one close 3rd do? (Yet Africa wants more spots when they can't even get two of them through to the next round.)
CONCACACAF is tricky. You have two heavyweights, one other good team, then there's a real dropoff. So do the teams on the other side of that dropoff deserve a half spot? I would say yes, but with a qualification. I would take all the teams that get a half spot from their confederations, rank them by the FIFA rankings, then have the highest ranking play the lowest etc. So for 2006 we would have (by FIFA ranking): Uruguay playing T&T and Australia playing Bahrain. That way at least you would get all the better (higher ranked) teams a chance to qualify. So why would I do this and not something else like take the half spot away from CONCACAF and give it to Europe or Africa? Because politically that would be difficult and politics is an important factor. I presume that after this WC there will be a dividing up of the half spots again. A final thing. I don't think the half spots should be based on a confederation getting so many teams into he second round as 1) every confederation that hosts the WC gets an advantage and 2) we are talking about the spots for more marginal teams who are, on balance, probably less likely to make the second round regardless of what confederation they are in.
My point is there's a double standard. You can't base whether a confederation deserves to gain or lose on the fringe entirely by the fringe. If T&T goes pointless, people are going to screaming to take away the 1/2 allocation. Yet, when Africa or Asia field multiple sides that stink up the competition, no one says anything. Why? Because they're better teams? Sure doesn't play out that way on the field...
One little remark. The playoff games were played in November 2005 (12/16) Using the October 2005 rankings: Uruguay (17) playing Bahrain (55) T&T (53) playing Australia (54)
I've had another think about this, after reading through other options, and this would now be my solution for 2010 and future: 1. combine OFC with AFC and CONCACAF with CONMEBOL to create APC (Asia and Pacific Conference) and PAC (Pan American Conference) This would make 4 confeds of decent sizes - a lot more equal than now. 2. Take the amount of spots they get now - giving: UEFA: 14 CAF: 5 PAC: 8 AFC: 5 TOTAL: 32 3. For each team that finishes last in a group their confed loses a spot, for arguments sake say 2 teams from each confed leaving UEFA: 12 CAF: 3 PAC: 6 AFCP: 3 TOTAL: 24 4. Each confed now gets 1 auto place (just in case all African teams finish last - they still need a spot for host), this now gives: UEFA: 13 CAF: 4 PAC: 7 AFC: 4 TOTAL: 28 5. Finaly the last 4 spots are determined by intercontinental playoffs: UEFAvCAF UEFAvAFC PACvAFC PACvCAF giving us our 32 teams This way teams are rewarded for finishing 3rd in a group instead of 4th, and each confed would still get at least one "close" team- or more depending on playoffs.
Absurd: Mexican results against Europe in their last four world cups:Mexico '86, (banned from Italia '90), USA '94 (D.C. and Orlando), France '98, Korea/Japan '02: Mexico '86: Mexico 2 Belgium 1 Mexico 2 Bulgaria 0 Mexico 0 West Germany 0 (Mexico loses to runner ups on penalties) USA '94 Norway 1 Mexico 0 Mexico 2 Ireland 1 Mexico 1 Italy 1 (Mexico loses to runner ups on penalties) France '98 Mexico 2 Belgium 2 Mexico 1 Holland 1 Germany 2 Mexico 1 Japan/Korea '02 Mexico 1 Croatia 0 Mexico 1 Italy 1 Mexico has lost in the run of play only twice to european squads over their past four World Cup appearances across 11 different games. In those games in regulation they've won 4 times (Croatia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland), their losses were to Norway and Germany, and they drew Italy twice, as well as Belgium and Holland. I'm a US fan, and more often than not I loathe Mexico (do not appreciate their fans treatment of the US national team in games played here and in Mexico, or their players treatment of American players when they lose), however even I am not so thoroughly blinded to reality that I'd make as silly an argument as your's legbreaker. I'll chalk up your take to a simple unwillingness to actually research Mexico's performances over the past several World Cup's, because any degree of research would underline the fact that Mexico uniformally does well on the road in World Cups against the best UEFA brings to the competitions as well as at home. There is a reason they've only been defeated once at Azteca (and that was in a period of time when there was serious upheval on the roster and a coach was getting sh!tcanned).