Reply With Quote
Ghana c-stomping Egypt 5-1
resistanze !!!!!
Ghana c-stomping Egypt 5-1
resistanze !!!!!
Son, you and I, let's go to Brazil together!!!!!
Well, not yet for me lol
(By the way, if Egypt wins the 2nd leg 5-0, I'm not responsible for any jinx)
Sweden - Germany: 3-4
20 minutes to go. Will history repeat itself?
lolitaly
Uruguay 2 (an offside goal and one of the most ridiculous invented penalties I have ever seen) - Argentina 2 (a handball assist) at halftime. Luckily the Brazilian ref isn't suppossed to go to the WC.
damn that's bad officiating, WTF
lol Suarez
Good win for uruguay though
Both Uruguay and Colombia won so they will be group leaders alongside Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. This means Italy, Holland, England, France, Portugal, Sweden won't be. Lot of tough opponents for the group stages. I still don't know how the Belgium and Switzerland are over Italy who got to the Euro final but well that's the FIFA ranking.
Belgium actually is REALLY good. I didn't see it coming either but at this moment they even deserve "sleeper-contender" status.
Still, what did they do to deserve a higher ranking than a team that made it to the Euros' final and qualified directly to the WC?
Switzerland is the shocker to me, but Belgium is legit.
I suspect Switzerland's ranking might be directly correlated to the assets held in FIFA bank accounts in that country.
Intercontinental Playoffs
Mexico vs. New Zealand
Jordan vs. Uruguay
Two uneven matchups in all honesty but in the playoffs you never know, especially ones involving this much travel. Had FIFA used 2010's draw, Uruguay would have played Mexico while NZL/Jordan would play for a spot
The main problem IMO is the european classification system. First, there are too many teams that have zero chance at doing anything at a WC: Macedonia, Malta, Faroe Islands, Kazakhstan, Andorra, Estonia, Cyprus, N. Ireland, Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lichtenstein, MOldova, San Marino, Georgia, Belarus (I read in the paper that san marino had 0pts, 53 goals against and 3 for, all time .0092 winning percentage). Thats 16 teams that have no business playing for qualification with Italy, Germany, Holland, England, Spain, France etc, and you could probably add another 3-4 to that group. Second, by splitting up into groups (not sure what the criteria is for making the groups), certain teams are basically gifted a spot AND a better ranking position. Belgium and Switzerland wouldn't have the ranking / wc berth they have if they didnt get the groups they got: croatia, serbia, scotland, wales, macedonia for belgium; iceland, slovenia, norway, albania, cyprus for the swiss. If you replaced france (spain, finland, georgia, belarus group rivals) with either, I can guarantee you that france gets a berth and a group seed while belgium/switzerland are in playoffs and out of the top 8 teams. In fact, if you replaced a country like Chile or Ecuador with them they'd achieve the same, or someone like senegal who is likely to not even make it into the WC.
Europe should have 3 groups: one for all the POS teams, the other two for the rest. Let the POS teams group winner play a playoff with an asian country, the winner of that gets to play the playoff against a concacaf/conmebol team. The other two groups get berths for the top 6 of each group and a playoff spot for the winner of a matchup between the 7th of each group. That way you remove the cupcakes from the equation, you remove the luck from getting a favorable group, and you improve the ranking because that way switzerland / belgium / greece / bosnia / russia / portugal / ukraine dont benefit from playing "WC qualy" weighted matches against crap teams while other regions have much more compe ive matches to play against. This also applies to a lesser extent in asia and concacaf, because there is also a large difference between the top teams in the region and the rest. I think long term the best solution is probably to unite concacaf and conmebol into one region and do qualification based on two groups, and reorganize africa, europe and asia so that they are more balanced. Right now conmebol and CAF are much more compe ive than the other regions, and it totally plays against them. Right now concacaf, AFC, and ofc have 7 berths + 3 playoffs for 20 countries; CAF and Conmebol have 9 berths + 1 playoff for 20 countries; and europe has 13 berths for 53 (
the second problem is the ranking; as I understand it takes the last 4 years in account and applies a weighting system to every game, even friendlies, some of which are played with zero compe ive spirit. The regional strength weighting is a big issue, because the entire confederation gets a multiplier based on that confederations last 3 WC performances. So spain beating georgia 1-0 is worth practically the same for them than nigeria beating jordan 1-0, despite jordan being vastly superior as a team and ranked higher by the same ranking (jordan 73, georgia 97th):
Spain example: 3 result points, 1.03 opposition strength, 1 regional multiplier, 2.5 qualy multiplier: 772 points for spain
Nigeria example: 3 result points, 1.27 opposition strenght, .86 regional multiplier, 2.5 qualy multiplier: 819 pts
nigeria gets less than 50 more pts, despite beating an opponent ranked 24 places higher. clearly the regional strength multiplier favors UEFA and to a lesser extent Conmebol; without it, nigeria would have got an extra 130 some points from beating jordan. If you do this for every game over 4 years it makes a big difference
Last edited by diego; 10-16-2013 at 01:13 PM.
Damn Negredo has been beasting with both City and the Spanish NT
There is so much wrong with this post, i don't even know where to begin.The main problem IMO is the european classification system. First, there are too many teams that have zero chance at doing anything at a WC: Macedonia, Malta, Faroe Islands, Kazakhstan, Andorra, Estonia, Cyprus, N. Ireland, Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lichtenstein, MOldova, San Marino, Georgia, Belarus (I read in the paper that san marino had 0pts, 53 goals against and 3 for, all time .0092 winning percentage). Thats 16 teams that have no business playing for qualification with Italy, Germany, Holland, England, Spain, France etc, and you could probably add another 3-4 to that group. Second, by splitting up into groups (not sure what the criteria is for making the groups), certain teams are basically gifted a spot AND a better ranking position. Belgium and Switzerland wouldn't have the ranking / wc berth they have if they didnt get the groups they got: croatia, serbia, scotland, wales, macedonia for belgium; iceland, slovenia, norway, albania, cyprus for the swiss. If you replaced france (spain, finland, georgia, belarus group rivals) with either, I can guarantee you that france gets a berth and a group seed while belgium/switzerland are in playoffs and out of the top 8 teams. In fact, if you replaced a country like Chile or Ecuador with them they'd achieve the same, or someone like senegal who is likely to not even make it into the WC.
Europe should have 3 groups: one for all the POS teams, the other two for the rest. Let the POS teams group winner play a playoff with an asian country, the winner of that gets to play the playoff against a concacaf/conmebol team. The other two groups get berths for the top 6 of each group and a playoff spot for the winner of a matchup between the 7th of each group. That way you remove the cupcakes from the equation, you remove the luck from getting a favorable group, and you improve the ranking because that way switzerland / belgium / greece / bosnia / russia / portugal / ukraine dont benefit from playing "WC qualy" weighted matches against crap teams while other regions have much more compe ive matches to play against. This also applies to a lesser extent in asia and concacaf, because there is also a large difference between the top teams in the region and the rest. I think long term the best solution is probably to unite concacaf and conmebol into one region and do qualification based on two groups, and reorganize africa, europe and asia so that they are more balanced. Right now conmebol and CAF are much more compe ive than the other regions, and it totally plays against them. Right now concacaf, AFC, and ofc have 7 berths + 3 playoffs for 20 countries; CAF and Conmebol have 9 berths + 1 playoff for 20 countries; and europe has 13 berths for 53 (
the second problem is the ranking; as I understand it takes the last 4 years in account and applies a weighting system to every game, even friendlies, some of which are played with zero compe ive spirit. The regional strength weighting is a big issue, because the entire confederation gets a multiplier based on that confederations last 3 WC performances. So spain beating georgia 1-0 is worth practically the same for them than nigeria beating jordan 1-0, despite jordan being vastly superior as a team and ranked higher by the same ranking (jordan 73, georgia 97th):
Spain example: 3 result points, 1.03 opposition strength, 1 regional multiplier, 2.5 qualy multiplier: 772 points for spain
Nigeria example: 3 result points, 1.27 opposition strenght, .86 regional multiplier, 2.5 qualy multiplier: 819 pts
nigeria gets less than 50 more pts, despite beating an opponent ranked 24 places higher. clearly the regional strength multiplier favors UEFA and to a lesser extent Conmebol; without it, nigeria would have got an extra 130 some points from beating jordan. If you do this for every game over 4 years it makes a big difference
Your list of 16 teams that have "no business" playing qalification is completely random. I don't know how San Marino and Belarus end up on the same list. Sure there are some micro states fielding teams, but how does it hurt anyone, and maybe some teams had a bad qualifying, so what? Team go through ups and downs, Slovenia finshed qualification for WC in France last in group with 1 point, and then qualified for next WC unbeaten.
I don't know why we would have to watch same teams from Europe over and over, just because they have history and good name. Regarding France you can't guarantee nothing, unlike France Slovenia and Switzerland actually won games at the last WC (Swiss beat later champion Spain in their group!) and didn't need to cheat to qualify.
I like the small group system, it means every game matters, unlike some other systems where they play gazillion matches and half the teams qualify anyway. If you're the best prove it on the field. And i bet this "every game matters" is why European teams do so well in the direct elimination rounds at WC. Go take a look how many times an european team lost to non-european at the last two WC's in DE.
There are not that many crap teams in Europe and i don't know on what you're basing your opinion that Jordan is "vastly superior" to Georgia? How many times did you watch both teams? Ironically Georgia and Jordan played only one match so far and Georgia won. In fact i bet you haven't watched one game of Bosnia, Switzerland, Belgium etc. in this qualifying, yet you pass your judgment on where they belong on the ratings.
Yes, Europe is considered a top region, but can you blame FIFA? Outside Brazil, no other non-european team has even sniffed the WC le in the last 20 years. Maybe teams from other regions should win some more games at the WC before you start ing about "unfair" spot allocations. It's not like when the number of teams at WC was expanded all the new spots went to Europe, in fact it was quite the opposite.
LOL, reminded me of this:
Getting to the semis doesn't qualify as "sniffing" a WC? Losing in the quarters to the eventual champs after missing a ton of opportunities including a penalty doesn't either? Europe can place 4 times as many teams as any other region, of course there will always be at least 1 or 2 European teams that make it far.
And I don't know how much "WC knock out stage preparation" can you get from a group consisting of iceland, slovenia, norway, albania and cyprus.
Either way, I don't know if changing Europe's qualification system is the answer, however changing the way you get points for FIFA's ranking defenitely is. Getting 1 regional pt for beating San Marino while getting only .86 regional pts for beating a team like let's say Ghana is bull , tbh.
Nah, both South Korea and Uruguay were lucky to reach the semis and no-one thought they have a chance of actually winning it. And other regions combined place many more teams at the WC and yet they for the most part fail to make an impact (though they did pretty good at the last WC).
Apparently "WC knock out stage preparation" prepares you a lot, again have you looked up how many times an european team lost to non-european at the last two WC's in DE? Even beating San Marino is not that easy, when you must beat them (granted not that hard either).
Well that's 'cause most of those teams aren't regular WC contenders. Only Argentina and Brazil are "regular contenders" from non European countries. In Europe you have Germany, Italy, Holland, France, Spain and England maybe. That's it, there are no more contenders in Europe nor the World. So with this added to the fact that they can also field around ten more teams to get the eventual "surprise" on the semis makes it obvious that Europe usually has the most teams getting far. The truth is, at the end of the day you always get the usual suspects on the latter stages of the WC. Either way, I don't know what's the point of this argument.
I think that this goes more in hand with what I said above than with your theory. I doubt Spain crushing (and cruising) everyone by a difference of at least three goals on the last qualifier had anything to do with them winning every knock out stage game by 1 goal and Cardozo missing a penalty.Apparently "WC knock out stage preparation" prepares you a lot, again have you looked up how many times an european team lost to non-european at the last two WC's in DE? Even beating San Marino is not that easy, when you must beat them (granted not that hard either).
playoffs for the last 4 spots November 15th and 19th:
Ukraine vs France
Portugal vs Sweden
Greece vs Roumania
Iceland vs Croatia
F UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Sonic, I was about to post this; beat me by 1 minute
Well that sucks, I wanted to see both Ibra and CR7 in the WC
One of them is not going to the WC
There are currently 4 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 4 guests)
Posting Permissions
