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Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo reacts after the drawn World Cup group 1 qualifying soccer match against Denmark at Parken in Copenhagen, Denmark, Saturday Sept. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Tariq Mikkel Khan/POLFOTO)
New Zealand’s qualification to the World Cup has brought up questions about whether they actually deserved a spot. This isn’t the first time where seemingly weak sides are questioned for their value to the World Cup.
It’s one of the perennial questions that is asked in every World Cup. Is the process meritocratic? Do sides that qualify deserve to be there over sides that missed out?
To me, it’s always been a bother that the determination of how many sides from each Confederation make the World Cup are done by politicians instead of teams earning it from the pitch.
This is the reason why there will always be mumbling that this Confederation deserves more spots or this Confederation should have less teams at the World Cup.
I believe the root of this problem is that World Cup qualification is segregated between Confederations. I don’t believe it’s a good idea that, to qualify to the World Cup, you only have to beat teams from your own region with the exception of the few Intercontinental Playoffs.
It’s such a shame that aside from the World Cup we don’t play against teams outside our Confederation in a competitive match.
So here I’ll present a new World Cup qualifying system that is radically different to the current system. In this system, no one can complain that their Confederation had too little, or not enough teams at the World Cup.
I will admit that I did not invent this idea. It was discussed on the Roar years ago and worked on by bloggers like Pippinu and others.
But there was never an article written about it, despite numerous suggestion that someone should do it.
The frst requirement is that there are only Four Confederations. So it will be the Americans, Europe, Africa and the Asian Pacific.
Second, we merge the Continental Championships with World Cup Qualifications.
Each Confederation will have their continental tournament with 16 teams, and whoever does not qualify to the Continental Championship gets eliminated from the World Cup early.
Third, the semi finalist of each continent will qualify directly to the World Cup. This means that it’s still a World Cup by ensuring that each Confederation has a minimum of 4 teams.
However, for the team that finishes 5th to 16th, they will go to the second round of World Cup qualifications.
So the 48 nations remaining from the four different Confederations are now allocated to 8 groups with 6 teams in them. Each group will not contain more then 2 teams from the same Confederation.
They will play home and away, and the top team of each group and the Top 7 second place team will qualify to the World Cup.
The 16 automatic qualifiers are placed in group of 4 to determine the top 7 seeds to ensure they get match practice before the World Cup.
I think despite any logistical issues, this will be a fairer and meritocratic system.
A Confederation could have as low as 4 teams in the World Cup to up to 17 (if the host was from that Confederation). So no Confederation can complain that they didn’t get enough spots than they deserve as they end up playing against teams from each Confederation to get there.
This will also finally end any debate about the relative strength of each Confederation.
Instead of one side boasting that their region is superior to other, they actually have to go out on the pitch and prove it. This can either confirm the European/South American dominance in world football, or it can give opportunities for lesser known countries from less fashionable regions to upstage and break the European/South American hegemony.
We can finally have a World Cup where we can’t really question the 32 teams that qualified there.
If you guys are not happy with this system, feel free to post up your own alternative non-segregated World Cup Qualifying system.
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