I write this article just a day after FIFA met to decide the allocation of World Cup qualifying spots for 2014. In what was an unsurprising and ultimately fair move, Africa will revert back to five qualifiers rather than the six allocated for South Africa 2010 with South America quite rightly being upgraded to 5.5/6 spots.
CONCACAF are moaning they have been hard done by with their allocation of spots but their results at the finals remain unimpressive and their allocation is more than fair.
This four year cycle of squabbling for World Cup qualifying allocations is politically tiresome exercise that for all intents and purposes has not changed the status quo.
Europe and South America dominate the World Cup finals. I don’t resent this situation because these regions produce the best players and most innovative tactics.
The World Cup finals format in all its glory is a imperfect system to decide a champion. The area that can be drastically improved is the World Cup qualifying format.
Of all six confederations I believe only two have the optimum qualifying format, Europe and Africa. The optimum format includes 3 important factors: fairest competition, number of games and revenue generated.
The perfect number of games I think for all the relevant stakeholders (players, clubs and the national teams) is around 10-12 games. Australia’s move to Asia is a fine example of tapping potential revenue. Huge fixtures against Japan generated massive interest.
Even the lesser known teams such as Qatar and Iraq drew crowds in excess of 50,000. This is a win for the FFA, for the AFC and for FIFA. The Asian region needs adjusting but more about that later.
Australia’s move to Asia got me thinking about the potential of the American region, North, South and Central America. I believe the next bold step in world football would be to amalgamate the Americas in to one big Confederation.
With massive markets in the USA and Canada, which still have massive room for growth, the possibilities are immense!
Let’s break down the numbers and look at the possibilities. The CONCACAF has 40 member nations and South America (CONMEBOL) has 10. The big problem with the CONCACAF region is the quality of those 40 nations and this lack of quality is why CONCACAF is stagnating as a region. South America is not without its problems either.
The most obvious being the gruelling length of its 18 match series. By combining all the Americas, a number of problems in world football can be solved.
The qualifying format is easily sorted when eight spots available. Seed teams like Brazil, USA, Mexico etc and then dissolve the weaker Caribbean teams with knockout playoffs leaving 28 or 32 teams therefore having four groups of 7/8 teams. Meaning there are 12 (with a maximum of 14) hard fought games.
A clear picture of the potential this idea has is starting to form. Imagine a seven team group consisting of Brazil, USA, Uruguay, Canada, Cuba, El Salvador and Barbados.
All of a sudden the USA/Canadian public is exposed to yearly matches involving teams like Brazil and Argentina. At the moment every four year cycle just sees USA v Mexico as the big matches.
Now start to add up the benefits that this new America’s region would bring. Real “big” games for massive money markets in the USA and Canada.
Fewer games for the overworked players from South America and combine that with less travel. Madrid – New York or London – Toronto is a far shorter flight than Milan – Rio. So now the European club bosses are a little happier. A new and improved Copa America could be set up and hosted around this super region.
Let’s face it, the GOLD cup is a bit of a joke and the Copa America loses credibility when you have to have invitee nations (this year it’s Mexico and Japan) to make up the numbers. Other benefits included exposing smaller Central American nations to Brazil and Argentina and raising the profile of football to the people of these countries.
The second part of this world football ‘shake up’ is an already discussed idea to split the AFC into 2, East and West Asia. This idea has already been commented on by a few leading Asian football correspondents.
Basically it involves all the Middle Eastern teams with Uzbekistan, India etc in one qualifying set up and the East Asian teams (Japan, Korea, Australia etc) on the other side. It also involves Oceania in one way or another being absorbed into the East Asian region.
This split serves the Middle East’s need to always have a qualifier into the World Cup and solves the NZ problem.
This solution for Asia has already been discussed at length but (correct me if I am wrong) there is no precedence for the idea to have all the “American” nations pooled together to revamp a stagnating region.
CONCACAF is going in circles without meaningful/tougher competition, South America qualifying is too long and too grueling, the time zones line up, travel is lessened, star South Americans play less games (this is sorely needed for player welfare), the US and Canada get more meaningful games.
The solution is simple.
Sooner rather than later FIFA needs to combine all of America
Can you find meaningful fault in this grand idea?
P.S. I would love for this idea to gain traction and anyone reading this has the necessary means to pass this on to a Jesse Fink or Tim Vickery at BBC or anyone at say ESPN or even US Soccer. Please do so.
oly
Guest
Football_Wunderkid: "The only thing that is sewn up is that the USA and Mexico get a free ride to the World Cup and 38 other nations are left to fight it out for 1 and half spots." Football_Wunderkid: "Even in this proposed new region, I guarantee that the USA qualifies 9 times out of every 10 qualifying cycles. The same goes with Mexico." So if this is the case, then the 38 other CONCACAF nations would still be fighting it out for limited spots, but now also against nations from South America. Hardly seems fair.
John
Guest
Read point #4. They DO play together all the time.
Djsinnema
Guest
This is a point that has not been put up before. Outside of world cup qualifiers, they play very few times with their national teams. away from these qulifiers, they may play a couple of Friendlies, and are not in an ongoing qualification process (since they all play in the Continental championship) What i do not understand is the Invitees that are part of the confederation championship.They would be better off having two groups of 5 then having semis and final, or going straight to a final. If this occurred, we would not be having this debate
John
Guest
With respect to the Gold Cup, there are two classes. The Gold Cup held the year before the world cup and the one held the year after the world cup. The one after the world cup is taken seriously with world cup qualifying seeding at stake in addition to a confederations cup berth. The one before the world cup is the one which often sees weakened teams because it's an annoyance in the middle of world cup qualifying and there's no confederations cup berth at stake. It's also held in July during European pre-season which is another annoyance. .
John
Guest
A few points on the South American qualifying system: 1) FIFA has altered the calendar to ease travel concerns. The Saturday/Wednesday configuration has been changed to Friday/Tuesday giving players more time to get back to their clubs. FIFA has also added more dates in June 2012 and June 2013 so more of the games can be played in the offseason. 2) I know it's only a one-off this time around but without Brazil there's 16 games as opposed to 18. 3) Unlike other confederations with qualifying processes for continental championships, South American teams don't need to qualify for Copa America. In a typical quadrennial, South American teams still play less overall qualifiers than most other confederations. 4) The biggest flaw in the complaint about the amount of games is the fact that every single team would play games on the spared international dates anyway. Since the world cup, south american teams have been playing on just about every single international date and it's not like they're sticking to Europe. They're traveling all over the place to Asia and the Americas. This month Argentina is playing the US in New York and then going to Costa Rica. Paraguay's doing a similar tour. Scaling back the length of qualifying is falsely painted as a choice between meaningful games and rest. It is really just a choice between meaningful football and meaningless football. The only thing it will accomplish is to change the value of the matches from meaningful qualifiers to meaningless friendlies. Teams will still travel all over the place regardless 4) It's fairer than fair. 5) It's the best for the fans. The people of South America lose their stars to European clubs for economic reasons. Getting to see their heroes play at home is already a rare treat. 6) The South American qualifying system allows federations, many of which are relatively cash poor, to maximize revenues. The 18 game format is crucial to the value of television rights and sponsorships. Any reduction in games or a reduction in quality of opponents (by joining with CONCACAF) would be detrimental.
TomC
Guest
Interesting idea, but I can't see CONCACAF going for it. Under the current system you can pretty much guarantee that the USA and Mexico will qualify. Under this proposed system it becomes a lot less likely. Moreover, there are some places in South America where its bloody hard to get a result regardless of how good the local team are at the time. Ecuador and Paraguay are obvious examples. I don't think CONCACAF would like a system where they have to travel there. On another note, I would argue that Africa's WCQ system is actually the most dysfunctional of them all. The final phase has five groups of six with each playing home and away against one another. Most groups have a big gap between the top couple of teams and the bottom, and ultimately qualifiers are decided by two or three games, which creates a randomness in the process and often throws up some qualifiers who probably shouldn't be there. In 2006, for example, Angola qualified over Nigeria, after pinching a draw away and a late winner at home, on a head to head basis. Nigeria (or Senegal, Cameroon or Egypt) would have been much more competitive in the finals. I think the CAF would benefit from a system more like the AFC's, that weeds out all but the ten or twelve strongest teams and splits them into two groups. You'd get more consistency and fairer results.
Football_Wunderkind
Roar Pro
Through Asia, Australia have a fairer route, not an easier route to the World Cup. What better way to develop Canadian football than exposing their teams and public to a high quality Brazil or Argentina in high intensity World Cup qualifier? ..... Every year. Canadian kids might see Leo Messi at his best and change their favorite player from Wayne Gretsky to him? The Canadian FA will get ticket revenue from a sold out stadium. The price of Canadian football TV rights would increase. Now the Canadian FA has money to implement a solid youth set up with the appropriate infrastructure. Pretty soon ... Canadians are technical and tactical enough to consistently qualify for the FIFA World Cup. I am seeing a lot of comments from people that go along the lines of "why would CONCACAF give up 3+1/2 quaranteed spots" This is such a superficial response. Think about it long term. If the status quo remains in CONCACAF... pretty soon... Countries like Honduras, Jamaica, El Salvador, Trinidad, Cuba and Canada will get tired of trying to jag a spot in a World Cup. The fact is that at the moment and for the next 50 years. It isn't 3 and 1/2 spots that is "sewn up" for CONCACAF. The only thing that is sewn up is that the USA and Mexico get a free ride to the World Cup and 38 other nations are left to fight it out for 1 and half spots. Merge the Americas and have 3 groups of 8 teams trying to finish top 3. or 4 groups of 7 trying to finish top 2. Expose the also rans to a higher standard of football. My article wasn't about World Cup spots and petty things like this.,.. It was about maximizing the potential of football in a region which could be doing things so much better.
Twatter
Guest
Football_Wunderkind. Good read /article. I love the subplots the conniving the hypotheticals of world football, interesting the middle east wants a little more of a peice of the action after watching the A.F.C. i can see why.
Football_Wunderkind
Roar Pro
Why would the South lose a lot of income? New revenue streams are opened through competitive games involving the USA, Mexico and Canada. The question/problem that needs an answer is the current stagnation that this the CONCACAF region. The GOLD cup is played in the USA every rotation nowadays. U/23 teams are often fielded. All the games are double headers even in the knockout stages. It is a bit of joke. The WCQ is also repetitive and tiresome. In the 2010 qualifiers, the USA played Trinidad & Tobago 4 times!! Twice in 2 different group stages. Ditto with Honduras and Mexico ... Count Costa Rica and El Salvador into this ridiculous situation. I am betting the fans of these countries are dying for change, for re-invigoration. Other than saying "it will never happen"... People tell me some better solutions than the status quo that is CONCACAF ???
AGO74
Guest
This proposal to split Asia will create the situation of what we currently have in the Americas. One very strong confederation in Sth America and one very weak (by comparison) confederation in North America. Why would East Asian nations want to restrict their chances at qualifying by restricting itself to only 2 or 2.5 positions. West Asia is a rabble at the moment as evidenced by the recent Asian Cup and World Cup Qualifiers in comparison to East Asia. Can't see it changing too much for the forseeable future. From a Euro-based Socceroos perspective, the games in Qatar or Bahrain are probably more enjoyable due to the less travelling involved!
Djsinnema
Guest
Football_wunderkind is right about US Television rights deals. The USA's Soccer community is made up mostly of Central and south american people, who immigrated from their homeland to the US. Hispanic people make up a large proportion of their population. They all take a keen interest in the fortunes of their former homelands and the US team,
Djsinnema
Guest
It is clear that Oceania becoming part of Asia makes sense, since it is clearly not going to make a difference regardless. The pacific Island nations are just going to get thrashed, and as such, will go out with many of the weaker Asian nations. NZ will at least have a chance to join Australia in the finals again, and will never need to put up with those playoffs again, If it will do any thing to the Asian Quota, it will go up. It is almost a win-win. In regards to spliting the confederation, even though it will have clear benefits, to both halfs, It will overall weaken the two confederations, and maybe the closest we will get, is the AFC setting aside 2 groups for East and 3 for west in that group stage. In regards to the americas, there is little to no chance of a merger occurring. Despite streamlining the qualification and giving and creating a more efficient Continental championship. It provides little for ether party. The North and central will loose a couple of spots as a result, and then the South teams will loose alot of income
Football_Wunderkind
Guest
Tifosi. Even in this proposed new region, I guarantee that the USA qualifies 9 times out of every 10 qualifying cycles. The same goes with Mexico. Mexico are mission impossible in their home stadium. The Azteca. They just held Spain to a draw their a month after Spain won the World Cup. As for the USA. They are already in a position to challenge and beat South American teams. They had a 2-0 half-time lead against Brazil in the 2009 Confederation Cup final only to let it slip. Plus those World Cup TV rights that FIFA sells to the USA networks has nothing to do with the USA team being in the competition. Its for the people that grew up on 'soccer' in the home lands that now watch it on USA television. The same people that filled up Soldier Field in Chicago for a gate of 55,000 for USA v Honduras.
Football_Wunderkind
Guest
CONCACAF would agree to it because the USA and Mexico would agree to it. Money talks... One of my main points is that with this system... you create the chance to set up yearly big USA/Mexico/Canada matches. USA v Brazil in New York or Mexico v Argentina at the 110,000 Azteca stadium. Canada v Brazil in Toronto. Most importantly they meaningful matches. All the American channels would jump at the chance to broadcast USA v Brazil... Even that match bypasses the anti-soccer sentiment in the USA Even Honduras v Brazil or El Salvador v Argentina would be played in packed out stadiums in these Central American nations. Tickets prices would go up accordingly. Filling up the coffers of the Honduran FA. Do you think the head of the Panama FA would rather keep the 3.5 World Cup spots for his region hoping that one day by some miracle Panama qualify for the World Cup? Nope... he would take the chance that he gets to host Panama v Brazil and pack out his stadium and get gate receipts coz he knows that scenario is more likely.
Tifosi
Guest
You said : I believe the next bold step in world football would be to amalgamate the Americas in to one big Confederation. This wont happen. FIFA need the USA in the World Cup. TV rights from the USA are the largest from any single country on the planet. FIFA also need the game to grow more in the USA. The World Cup is the best way to do it and its working. Since 1990, the game is much bigger in the US. The USA aren't in a position yet to be able to play Sth american teams and win. It might happen eventually but not yet. If its harder for the USA to make a World Cup, those TV dollars wont be as large. Don't expect to see any changes here. Besides US Soccer makes money from big name friendlies and they even make it when Mexico plays friendlies in the USA. However there are rumours that CONEMBOL want to merge the Copa America with the CONCACAF Gold Cup so that they can play the tournament in the USA and get a lot of money from it. I can see this happening.
Football_Wunderkind
Guest
Your point about CONCACAF possibly ending up with less spots or even CONMEBOL ending up with less is a great point. It is probably one of the main points of my argument without me saying it. This merger serves both regions nicely. It gives them both a shot and gaining more entries. So CONCACAF wants more allocations? What about having a possible 8 entrants into the World Cup? Here you go... now go and earn it against Brazil or Argentina or Chile. Same thing goes with South America. They quite rightly believe they should have more entrants in the World Cup and with this new merged region they could earn more. They might qualify 6 or 7 nations. They might only qualify 3 and CONCACAF qualify 5. Who knows in the future but this system gives them both a chance at more spots. CONCACAF is stagnated and South America want a chance at qualifying more teams. Merge them together.
Football_Wunderkind
Guest
This is easily solved with a world cup draw style event (could even make a big night of it). Have 4 pots to draw teams out of. Pot 1 is the 8 top ranked South American teams. Pot 2 is the top 6 CONCACAF teams + the 2 remaining South Americans. Pot 3 is the 2nd level of CONCACAF teams eg. El Salvador/Jamaica and Pot 4 is the 8 lowest ranked teams who survive the earlier knockout competition. Going by that system. An 8 team group might end up looking like -: Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Bermuda, Chile, Honduras, El Salvador and Puerto Rico. You could probably seed the South Americans and have 1-4 and 5-8 in separate pots to ensure you don't get a group heavily weighted with top nations.
Vas Venkatramani
Guest
Why would CONCACAF agree to it? They have 3-3.5 spots sewn up for sides that are usually the inferior of the CONMEBOL teams - probably the best qualifying tournament, because every team plays each other. The only way we can improve Asia is to create eight groups of four teams. the winner of each one goes to the next round to play home and away ties. Europe seems to be well sorted, as is Africa. Oceania has to be integrated into Asia - plain and simple.
Brian
Guest
Asia is too weak to be split up. The Western conference does not have any teams approaching the world's top 32. One of FIFA success has been developing markets by allowing weaker confederations from which weaker nations qualify to participate in World Cups and build themselves up. Mexico, USA & Japan are all competetive now but weren't once and got there through easier World Cup qualifying. Australia was a bit different in that now we have an easy route but for many years didn't. This market development should be continued. Combining the Americas or splitting Asia would for example, severly dent China & Canada. Two nations without much recent past, but the economist will tell you the potential is there.
Chuq
Roar Pro
Also, the "issue" with the South American nations playing 18 matches where others only play 10-14 isn't really a big problem - remember they don't have qualifiers for their continental championships - in fact they need to get a couple of ring-ins to make up the numbers!