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Less European representation

Pratters

Cricket, Lovely Cricket
Should Europe have less teams in future world cups as gap between European and other sides seems to have diminished..
 

flibbertyjibber

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You think it has diminished? Look at Group G. I would say less teams like Panama and Tunisia as they are crap and bring nothing to the tournament.
 

Daemon

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Yes. They must pay for the European colonial period one way or another.
 

NUFAN

Y no Afghanistan flag
I think FIFA have the 32 allocated spots between the confederations pretty much spot on.

I dont think 16 teams from Europe is enough when it goes up to 48 teams.
 

Uppercut

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I think FIFA have the 32 allocated spots between the confederations pretty much spot on.

I dont think 16 teams from Europe is enough when it goes up to 48 teams.
Should be one more South American team and one less North American team imo. But yeah it's more or less fair enough.
 

Athlai

Not Terrible
Should it go to 48? 32 seems fine.
I think if it's 48 there isn't much chance for teams to miss out that may actually genuinely be genuinely world class. There's always a few European teams that warrant a spot in the world cup that miss out. Or teams that randomly have a brain explosion in qualifying and miss out (USA).
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
I think the gap's widened, if anything.

Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Panama especially have no place in a global tournament. Costa Rica look to have gone backwards too.

I don't think anyone could realistically argue that Italy, the Netherlands or Chile wouldn't have added more in terms of competitiveness.
 

flibbertyjibber

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I don't think anyone could realistically argue that Italy, the Netherlands or Chile wouldn't have added more in terms of competitiveness.
Yeah, even though Italy and Holland have been crap of late they are far better than many of the non european sides there. Wales would improve the tournament too and all the beaten play off sides from europe.
 

Uppercut

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I think the gap's widened, if anything.

Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Panama especially have no place in a global tournament. Costa Rica look to have gone backwards too.

I don't think anyone could realistically argue that Italy, the Netherlands or Chile wouldn't have added more in terms of competitiveness.
You can't just cherry-pick the best teams though. Tunisia are the highest-ranked African team, Saudi Arabia qualified ahead of Australia, and Costa Rica qualified from CONCACAF in second. Netherlands didn't even make the playoffs- an extra European slot is as likely to go to an ultra-defensive Greece or Northern Ireland side as it is a big name that got an awkward draw and slipped up.

Will definitely give you Chile though. The South Americans are hard done by imo.
 
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sledger

Spanish_Vicente
You can't just cherry-pick the best teams though. Tunisia are the highest-ranked African team, Saudi Arabia qualified ahead of Australia, and Costa Rica qualified from CONCACAF in second. Netherlands didn't even make the playoffs- an extra European slot is as likely to go to an ultra-defensive Greece or Northern Ireland side as it is a big name that got an awkward draw and slipped up.

Will definitely give you Chile though. The South Americans are hard done by imo.
Reckon they'd be given more slots if they actually had more countries on their continent tbh. It's crazy to think how big South America is but so few countries in relation to other continents.
 

OverratedSanity

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Reckon they'd be given more slots if they actually had more countries on their continent tbh. It's crazy to think how big South America is but so few countries in relation to other continents.
Yep. It's a shame because they're all pretty damn good.
 

harsh.ag

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Why is it a bad idea to use regional competitions like Euro, Copa America etc as qualifiers for the WC?
 

Howe_zat

Audio File
Why is it a bad idea to use regional competitions like Euro, Copa America etc as qualifiers for the WC?
That's how it works in rugby union so it's not unheard of.

The big difference is that qualifying in rugby attracts almost no attention because there is such a gap between the big teams and the minnows. So it's done by scrapping any need for the obvious sides to get in and let second tier regional tournaments decide the rest. In football, there is still a lot of media attention around England getting past Belarus et al, so it'd be a money loser to scrap those games.

A problem that it has in rugby (and would have in football too) is that the qualifying gets done very early and so the teams that qualified in 2012-13 are rocking up to the world cup in 2015 with less relation to the teams that qualified than makes for a good story.
 
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