Good riddance to Ronaldo if he can't get his team a spot in the WC....even if he is a great player.
Ibra got this
Imagine if Portugal misses the World Cup. Holy Messi -riders will go berserk. It will be unbearable. Still, let's go Ibra and Swedes.
I think Belgium has an outside shot at winning it all. They have a very gifted generation. With that said, never a European team won a WC in South America...
oh and thanks ARG
Also, for those ignorants saying that Uruguay was lucky to be 4th last WC just remember we won the Copa America in Argentina the following year.... that proves it wasn't a fluke...
Belgium is good but not yet THAT good. 2016/2018 seems more likely.I think Belgium has an outside shot at winning it all. They have a very gifted generation. With that said, never a European team won a WC in South America...
oh and thanks ARG
I don't give a , tbh.
Yeah and this post makes you credible
Sorry I kind of forgot this thread. DAF already addressed some of your post but there are other things to say:
1) It hurts the WC structure to have bad teams in small groups because it means inevitably the winner of a weak group gets in while more deserving teams stuck in a strong group get left out. If you cant see how the group draw can hurt or favor a teams chances, what can I say?
Furthermore, most regions play the exact same format every WC, as I understand it europe changes its groups every WC. Thus its much harder for middling teams in other regions to make the WC than it is in europe. this also explains your slovenia example.
2) no one is arguing you get in by history or good name, on the contrary, the argument is that by making larger groups you expose teams to more compe ion instead of isolating them in small groups. I dont see how gifting spots to teams in weak groups makes for a more compe ive field. (oh and by the way, the swiss beat the eventual champs but were able to get all of 1 point in two games vs lower level conmebol / concacaf teams, and france didnt win games but they were in group with two good conmebol/concacaf teams).
3) If you think the small group system favors european teams in the WC, then tell me, why is it fair for it to be that way? Its the world cup, not the europe-invented-football cup. Oh, BTW, the only region that plays more games than europe is conmebol. In the past 2 WC, for the conmebol qualifier the difference between 4th (direct qualy) and 6th (eliminated) was 5 pts; remember 5th is a playoff in between the two. I would say every game mattered.
4) How the can you say there are not that many crap teams in europe when you have some of the most historically terrible squads ever in your region?!?!!! Teams that have all time winning percentages below 1%! Im not going to sit and look them all up but I challenge you to find me one team in conmebol that has an all time winning percentage below 20%. You just cant compare.
According to the FIFA ranking Jordan is vastly superior to Georgia. Considering I am arguing that the ranking is broken, that is an important point. Jordan at least has players that play outside of Jordan! Do any georgians play outside of georgia? I highly doubt it. And that 3-2 match, I havent been able to find when it was played making it very difficult to argue but even if it was recent... so what? Argentina has 36 wins against brazil 35 head to head, are you going to argue that argentina is better? a 1 game difference in what was probably a friendly is irrelevant
5) Im not arguing for europe to get less spots. On the contrary, I would argue for more, and thats why I would have them play more playoffs with other weaker regions. But having dominant teams in the region like Italy, Germany, france, england, holland etc doesnt mean that the crap teams are better. There is no way to justify joke teams like san marino and faroe islands having a higher region multiplier than african / asian GOOD TEAMS like ghana, ivory coast, korea, japan. NO WAY TO JUSTIFY THAT AT ALL.
The system is broken. and it matters because it means we get lopsided groups in the WC that are based on this system. No one is saying europe should get less spots, or that historical teams should get in easier. reread my post, I said exactly the opposite.
oh, and go Ibra.
another example of european system's brokenness: portugal finished with 21 pts, sweden with 20pts. one of them will not go. iceland and croatia finished with 17pts (coincidentally, both runners up in the swiss / belgian groups). one of them will go. are you sure every game mattered velik?
The groups are randomly drawn acording to rankings, just like everywhere else (except in SA). Apart from that the system has been the more or less the same for years.
The point being that it's not like crappy teams from Europe get through. At the last WC the worst European performers were France and Italy (and France cheated their way to wc anyhow) and even they got a few points.2) no one is arguing you get in by history or good name, on the contrary, the argument is that by making larger groups you expose teams to more compe ion instead of isolating them in small groups. I dont see how gifting spots to teams in weak groups makes for a more compe ive field. (oh and by the way, the swiss beat the eventual champs but were able to get all of 1 point in two games vs lower level conmebol / concacaf teams, and france didnt win games but they were in group with two good conmebol/concacaf teams).
It's fair because it's been decided so by UEFA members. FIFA just allocates the spots, qualifying format is left up to regional federations and UEFA members decided this is best and most fair for them. CONMEBOL does its own thing as do all the other federations.3) If you think the small group system favors european teams in the WC, then tell me, why is it fair for it to be that way? Its the world cup, not the europe-invented-football cup. Oh, BTW, the only region that plays more games than europe is conmebol. In the past 2 WC, for the conmebol qualifier the difference between 4th (direct qualy) and 6th (eliminated) was 5 pts; remember 5th is a playoff in between the two. I would say every game mattered.
There are not that many: Andorra, Faroe Islands, Malta, San Marino, Luxemburg, Cyprus, Lichtenstein (that is 7 teams out of 53). Others are crappy from time to time, but that's about it.4) How the can you say there are not that many crap teams in europe when you have some of the most historically terrible squads ever in your region?!?!!! Teams that have all time winning percentages below 1%! Im not going to sit and look them all up but I challenge you to find me one team in conmebol that has an all time winning percentage below 20%. You just cant compare.
According to FIFA rankings there is only about 150 points between them, hardly "vastly superior". I think you might be mislead by the natural linearity of the rankings, but difference between 1. and 10. team might not be the same as difference between 11. and 20. You just have to order them somehow. (EDIT: and yes plenty georgian players play abroad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia...#Current_squad)According to the FIFA ranking Jordan is vastly superior to Georgia. Considering I am arguing that the ranking is broken, that is an important point. Jordan at least has players that play outside of Jordan! Do any georgians play outside of georgia? I highly doubt it. And that 3-2 match, I havent been able to find when it was played making it very difficult to argue but even if it was recent... so what? Argentina has 36 wins against brazil 35 head to head, are you going to argue that argentina is better? a 1 game difference in what was probably a friendly is irrelevant
You make it sound like Switzerland climbed the rankings playing friendlies with Lichtenstein. Even if there are more crap teams in Europe how does it hurt teams outside of Europe? Clearly european teams that do qualify for WC are better than teams that qualify from other regions, so what exactly is wrong with the ranking system besides the fact that it probably underrates european teams?5) Im not arguing for europe to get less spots. On the contrary, I would argue for more, and thats why I would have them play more playoffs with other weaker regions. But having dominant teams in the region like Italy, Germany, france, england, holland etc doesnt mean that the crap teams are better. There is no way to justify joke teams like san marino and faroe islands having a higher region multiplier than african / asian GOOD TEAMS like ghana, ivory coast, korea, japan. NO WAY TO JUSTIFY THAT AT ALL.
On what are you basing the fact that the system is broken? Not on results, as this is exactly how this rankings are determined. You didn't watch any of the teams for which you claim are too high in the rankings. So what makes you say they are broken? We get lopsided groups because of crappy teams from other regions, not because a not so great european team happened to be the group's top seed.The system is broken. and it matters because it means we get lopsided groups in the WC that are based on this system. No one is saying europe should get less spots, or that historical teams should get in easier. reread my post, I said exactly the opposite.
Look the system will always be "broken" to some degree - there are simply not enough games and things (players, coaches etc.) change far too often to have a completely "fair" ranking.
So you say the system is broken - how do we fix it then? How do we determine fair ranking? Round and robin of all 200+ teams each year? The current system takes matches played against each other and tries to weight them according to difficulty and importance - i say that is about as perfect as it can realistically get. You can't rank teams according to potential or on where they should be "on paper", only on past matches - and past matches say that France didn't deserve to be a top seed in their group.
Last edited by velik_m; 10-24-2013 at 04:09 PM.
No one in Europe is bothered with the fact that one of them will not go. If they didn't want to play in play-offs they should've won their groups.
How to fix part of the FIFA ranking? Easy, get the regional pt out of the equation. Why should anyone get 1 regional pt for beating San Marino and only .86 for beating Ghana? Why beating Andorra should give you the same regional pts than beating Brazil?
FIFA rankings
not
It's not regional points, it's just a multiplier. The reason it's done this way is because there is not enough cross region games to give you a working system. And for every time the teams in Europe get too many points from beating San Marino, they probably get too few from beating say Sweden. It all evens out more or less.How to fix part of the FIFA ranking? Easy, get the regional pt out of the equation. Why should anyone get 1 regional pt for beating San Marino and only .86 for beating Ghana? Why beating Andorra should give you the same regional pts than beating Brazil?
Regional pts., multiplier, whatever, it shouldn't exist. Just give pts according to the ranking that team has and that's it. Why do you have to add a "multiplier"? It doesn't make sense. And why beating Sweden would give you too few pts? You would still be getting that 1 multiplier pt right? So still, same as beating Brazil, Argentina, Spain or Germany.
I told you why you need the region multiplier, there are not enough inter-region games. Just WC every 4 years and a few friendlies here and there... Region multiplier also acts as a bit of correction for linearity of ranking. In Europe there are 5-6 top teams and then about 30 pretty even teams. Just because you're playing 30th team in europe doesn't mean they are 3 times worse than 10th european team - that's a region strength. Yeah it's not perfect, but it's better imo than not having it, though it would be interesting to see what the ranking would look like without it. I'm guessing asian and NA teams would jump up little in the rankings, and european and SA teams would fall a little, but that is just a guess...
Your argument doesn't convince me at all. So what if there aren't enough inter-region games? You play who you play and you get pts for beating who you beat, that should be all. If you beat a team ranked 104 you get pts for beating that team, if you beat a team ranked number 1 you get pts for that. Maybe take into consideration level of opposition faced for teams with similar amount of pts but that's it. That imo, would be fairest way of doing things.
Because most points are gathered in region. Lets say Nigeria gets to the WC and then lucks out on beating say Spain suddenly they raise to the 10th place in rankings after WC. But they won't play any teams from other regions until maybe next WC and then the whole Africa recalibrates their overall ranking against them (other teams will never get to play against Spain) - essentially dragging an entire region up the rankings based on that one fluke result. How is that any more fair?
I would actually prefer to have match strength be determined by points rather than rank position (there might not be much difference between number 70 and number 100 team and opposite between number 1 and number 31, despite both being 30 places apart), but then it's probably hard to control the positive feedback loop.
We Americans like your proposal, and we look forward to be the #1 Ranked Team in the World after we beat Antigua & Barbuda 400 times next year.
Firs of all, if they beat them, they beat them period. Then, if Nigeria keeps losing against teams from their region they will drop in the ranking. There's just no way to justify regional pts other than being a conservative dinosaur that doesn't like to mess with the status quo.
Pts isn't fair 'cause it doesn't take into consideration level of opposition, it isn't the same to play the Europe qualifier with teams like Andorra and San Marino, than playing the South American qualifier where every team is compe ive and some even have a huge home field advantage.I would actually prefer to have match strength be determined by points rather than rank position (there might not be much difference between number 70 and number 100 team and opposite between number 1 and number 31, despite both being 30 places apart), but then it's probably hard to control the positive feedback loop.
That still won't give you enough pts, tbh.
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