Hi everyone, Now that Qatar 2022 is behind us, I'd like to invite us all to the following exercise. Pick whichever confederation(s) you like, and answer 2 questions: 1. How did the World Cup go overall for the confederation? 2. What should they do about it?
Conmebol 1. I have a feeling that Argentina winning it all's going to sweep under the rug what was otherwise a terrible showing: Peru didn't even make it , Ecuador and Uruguay crashed out in the first round, and Brazil **sigh** once again, couldn't win a knockout game against a European opponent. 2. With the UEFA cooperation paying some early dividends (the Finalissima happening, and the political victory of getting FIFA to back off of the biennial WC idea), and the extra WC berths making qualifying less cut-throat than before, I'm flabbergasted that Conmebol didn't adopt a different format for the '26 cycle (e.g. 2 groups of 5) that would allow them to play in the UEFA Nations League. Argentina's all well and good, but the rest are only going to get so much better by playing each other ad infinitum. Unless things aren't as straightforward as they look (e.g. UEFA getting cold feet, or Conmebol being boxed in by TV contract obligations), it's a real opportunity missed, and something to be revisited for the 2030 cycle. UEFA 1. Pretty easy to just look at UEFA failing to have a fifth-straight WC winner, but I view the real concern as this: with UEFA adopting the Nations League and keeping its Euro & WC qualifying format, they essentially closed up shop to the rest of the world, with barely a pair of friendly dates available during the cycle. Several posters here asserted that this would hurt the ROW, with teams missing out on matches against elite European opponents leaving them ill-prepared to face them in the World Cup... and yet, the finals were littered with examples of UEFA sides flattering to deceive. See: Wales's WC in general, Poland failing to beat the worst Mexico side in decades, Germany and Denmark crashing out early, and Morocco blazing a path through more fancied European sides. 2. Now, you can chalk up the above to, "UEFA dominates in home World Cups and struggles everywhere else"... but the self-interested question becomes, how can UEFA sides be more consistently dominant? Perhaps they also need more experience with ROW sides? To that end, and in terms of keeping national-team games interesting rather than the currently routine Germany 8-0 Estonia thrashings you see in the qualifiers, I'd rather UEFA take a page out of Concacaf's playbook and use the Nations League as qualifying for the Euros. That way, there are higher stakes applied to more even matchups, while freeing up 8-10 matchdays to either play against non-UEFA opposition - or rest, however they want to play it. That is, I'd have the top 12 teams in League A and the group winners in League B qualify directly (16 total), with the last 8 berths filled by playoffs involving the relegated teams from League A (4), the runners-up & 3rd-place teams from League B (8) and the group winners from League C (4).
To be honest the 2nd tier of Uefa has always been overrated. It has nothing to do with lack of friendlies outside Europe. I actually watch all the matches and I could have told you there was nothing special about Wales or even Poland (who only qualified from an easy group, and were even being outplayed by the Saudis) I was surprised about Denmark and Serbias failures but again these sides always seem to get overrated because they consistently play the top teams in UEFA and often get results against them. But as this WC has shown, teams from Africa and Asia, Concacaf can also get results against these teams, it just they don't have the opportunities to do so, so we assume they can't do what the likes of Serbia, Denmark, Switzerland can do against top tier sides. Consistently playing top sides, you will get results. There is just such a lack of inter confederational competitive matchups. I suggest a world nations league should be implemented. I think the joint Conmebol/uefa one is a joke and quite disrespectful to the ROW, because as I see it the best non UEFA sides beyond Brazil and Argentina are very well represented in CAF, Concacaf, AFC. A lot of them are in CAF. I dont think Conmebol beyond Arg/BRA is better than CAF. Not at all. I see this as a subtle implying that the other confeds are no good, or else they'd incorporate them in any future competition.
As to the OP regarding my thoughts on CAF 1. Obviously this was by far CAFs best tournament ever. Every CAF team won a match. Never before. 2 teams progressed, only once before, in addition to Morocco's record breaking run to the semis despite fielding a patched up squad of injured players. Despite all of this, I do not think CAF has gotten any better, it's just that these kind of results were always waiting to happen and just never quite came to fruition. Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon all played well enough to make the semis in their respective quarter final runs. 2014 CAF was literally seconds away from qualifying 3 sides to the knockouts. Despite the great CAF showing in 2022 I can't help but feel it could have even been much better. Senegal with Mane would have topped their group IMO and likely gone on to beat the US and make their 2nd quarterfinal run. It's a shame that teams like Nigeria, Algeria, Ivory Coast did not qualify. All better teams than both Tunisia and Cameroon. I think with those teams there would have been a strong chance for CAF to send 3 to 5 teams to the knockouts. 2. Going forward I would like to see CAF reform their qualifying system. People may think it's not a big deal with 9.5 qualifying spots, but it's actually very competitive in CAF and teams will be much more motivated with additional spots. I think there still may be one or two sides people expect to qualify who will not, especially of the qualifying format isn't thought out well. I also would like to see CAF organize more inter confederation competitions or nations leagues. If a World nations league cannot be implemented, something like a larger Afro Asian cup or even a completion involving AFC, Concacaf, and any other side to be invited. Even if an expanded Copa America Centenario could have one or two CAF reps invited, this would be good.
Obviously, a good tournament for the AFC with a record 3 teams advancing and 5/6 winning at least one match. Even Qatar, whose team did poorly, should get credit for hosting a controversial and politically charged tournament marvelously to allow the games and players to be at the center of attention in arguably the best played and most thrilling World Cup ever. From my vantage point, for the AFC, the World Cup showed: the top tier AFC teams can record upsets against even the best teams if things go their way (Saudi Arabia 2 Argentina 1; Japan 2 Germany 1; Japan 2 Spain 1; S. Korea 2 (weakened/clinched) Portugal 1) the top tier in the AFC is better than the lower 2nd tier sides in UEFA (Iran 2 Wales 0) and competitive with even the best 2nd tier UEFA or Conmebol teams teams (Australia 1 Denmark 0; Japan 1 Croatia 1; S. Korea 0 Uruguay 0) even the top tier in the AFC has to be at its best to beat anyone, even lower ranked teams, at the World Cup (Costa Rica 1 Japan 0; Ghana 3 S. Korea 2). And that (needing to play at their best) certainly applies facing slightly better sides (USA 1 Iran 0; Poland 2 Saudi Arabia 0). even the top tier AFC teams can get thrashed (England 6 Iran 2; Brazil 4 S. Korea 1, France 4 Australia 1) if things don't go their way, the heads drop, but they have enough in them even then to put up a fight if they don't give up the way Costa Rica did against Spain (cf. 2nd half: England 3 Iran 2; Brazil 0 S. Korea 1).
I personally agree... but Infantino's made clear that it's not a priority for him, from his willingness to divorce the Global Nations League from that original CWC funding proposal to FIFA now rolling out a half-baked "World Series" initiative. Don't disagree - with the 2nd question, I framed it as what each confederation should do out of its own self-interest to improve on its WC showing. So, the AFC should keep doing what it's doing - that is, the Asian Cup and the staggered WCQ with a final round pitting the best teams against each other)? My follow-up would be: do you think that same structure - with the rumored expansion of the WCQ final round to 3 groups of 6 - will adequately prepare the likes of Bahrain, the UAE, China, etc. who could benefit from the extra berths for 2026?
If the rumors about US, Canada, and Mexico being invited are true, that would leave three spots in a 16-team tournament. I believe the plan is to have three more CONCACAF teams qualify through the Gold Cup, but I suppose CONMEBOL could also invite, say, the latest African champion, Asian champion, and Oceanian champion. Or perhaps they could even invite one of the UEFA teams not qualified for that year's Euros.
They could... but what does Conmebol get out of inviting Senegal's B-team? It was already a stretch for FIFA to approve of Conmebol and Concacaf co-hosting the Centenario (and @Nico Limmat 's right to cast doubt on FIFA's willingness to do it again), and having multiple confederations at least officially co-host a Copa América wouldn't fly unless they got an extraordinary FIFA dispensation. Why does it matter? Without that, the guest teams don't have any power to compel clubs to release players - the same reason China's never accepted a Copa América invite.
What I really like, and that isn't due to World Cup expansion or because of what you are asking per se, is for the AFC (and CAF) to start their own Nations league but have their top 8 teams from Division 1 getting promoted to an Afro-Asian Nations Super-league. The 16 teams would be divided in 4 groups; the last 2 finishers in each group going through playoffs and relegation against the best finishers from their respective confederation NL. The top 2 from each group would advance into a tournament format to win the Afro-Asian Championship title (with rotating hosts, 1 from CAF and 1 from AFC, for each biannual tournament).
Why would uefa care about other confederations, seriously. The UEFA executive can’t stand Infantino & wanted to roll him but old Gianni has done a Sepp Blatter & secured all the votes of the minor football countries. I could actually see a point in the future if Infantino goes a bit too far with his hair brained ideas that UEFA just walks away and says play your competitions without UEFA and as someone who’s or Portuguese descent but born in Australia a member of AFC it’s concerning.
UEFA would never do that, in my opinion. 1. The tournament was a success for UEFA which, let's face it, will not win every WC. It had already won an unprecedented 4 consecutively by 4 different teams. Compared to 2014, 50% of the R16 were UEFA teams (38% in 2014), 63% of the quarterfinalists (50% in 2014), and 50% of the semifinalists and finalists (also 50% in 2014). Given the unprecedented short preparation time, this performance should be viewed positively. 2. Next month UEFA is expected to announce a new qualifying format starting from the 2026 WC which will be closely connected to the NL with teams being split into leagues to ensure more competitive matches while maintaining the opportunity for all teams to qualify, through playoffs for the teams in the lower leagues.
I'm pretty sure it's going to be the same as the women's new format: https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/new...fa-women-s-national-team-competition-system-/ Why did they never do something akin to AFC or CONCACAF formats? That would prevent teams like Togo (2006) slipping up to the main competition. Looking at the second qualifiers round of the 2022 world cup pretty much all the groups were one-sided besides the Ghana - South Africa and the Cameroon - Ivory Coast ones which makes me wonder if they can avoid having the top teams at this point. So you can end up with 2 groups of 6 nations at the end CONCACAF eliminates in quick rounds basically anyone outside the top 10 before they even have the chance of playing USA / Mexico.
It is not pre-qualifiers. Every team would still get the same amount of GS games, but the England-San Marino type of fixture would be avoided. I suspect if it is like the new UEFA women's NT format starting in September 2023, the automatic qualifiers for WC and EC will come from League A with the non-qualifiers from League A and the best ranked teams from Leagues B and C involved in two rounds of home-and-away playoffs to decide the remaining qualifiers, thereby preserving the opportunity for every team to qualify and to be promoted to a higher league or relegated to a lower league, having more competitive games, generating more revenue and improving the overall quality of UEFA NTs.
Concacaf 1. While it was a mixed bag for the confederation's four representatives, Costa Rica did beat the group winners (Japan) and Canada played some good football despite losing all three GS games. USA impressed me in all three GS games with its young squad and played a fairly even R16 game against Netherlands. Mexico flopped quite badly and confirmed it is the second force in the confederation behind USA (Mexico U20 NT results were also poor in this year's confederation championship). 2. Concacaf should continue what it is doing in providing NTs with regular competitive games in WCQ, GCQ and NL. It would probably benefit their NT ecosystem if all qualifiers were formatted in NL-style leagues to avoid weaker NTs from being eliminated early in qualifiers and thereby being deprived of competitive games while simultaneously providing all NTs with more competitive games, which should generate more interest and revenue and accelerate the development of NTs. Otherwise I am optimistic that Concacaf will continue its upward trajectory.
Concacaf: Pretty standard showing. Looking ahead, I’m concerned lack of competition for Canada/US/Mexico over the next 3.5 years will hurt development going into the WC. Playing the Gold Cup and Copa America won’t make up for the lack of competitive play while everyone else is in WCQ mode. The only friendly options will be against very weak teams eliminated in their confederation’s first round of WCQ. Conembol: They’ve declined since the 2014 WC. You have also seen it in WCQ and the Copa America. They’ve just been in a downward cycle and it’ll take time for the tier 2 countries to rebuild. UEFA: Pretty standard showing as well. I agree the 2nd tier in UEFA tend to be overrated at the global level. Teams like Wales, Serbia, Poland, etc almost never do much at the WC. Occasionally we have years like 94 where they do very well (eg Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania). But in 1994 qualifiers were more competitive due to fewer spots so those teams were of higher quality. Italy was the only missing UEFA team capable of doing damage at this WC. CAF: Objectively a big winner this WC. However I feel the Morocco success will overshadow what was I felt personally was another fairly mediocre showing for CAF at the WC. Morocco making it to the SF was a great achievement but I don’t rate their team stronger than previous African teams that unluckily fell short at the WC. Cameroon and Tunisia got meaningless wins at the end. Ghana fell apart in a must win game. Expanded spots likely won’t result in a much better showing for Africa. The issue right now is there are like 10-15 countries who I consider to be tier 2-3 teams internationally. This results in a ton of parity within the continent but due to the lack of elite teams, CAF rarely performs well at the WC. The playoff format at the end of WCQ also lends itself to a lot of variance rather than necessarily having the absolutely strongest teams qualify. With more spots, CAF can have longer group stages in WCQ and simply allow the top seeds to automatically qualify for the WC. AFC: Very good showing and probably among the two big winners this WC next to CAF. Clearly demonstrated they can compete with the tier 2 in Europe and nearly everyone else in the world.