Barring a miracle, Uruguay and Mexico have booked their place in Brazil 2014 after annihilating Jordan and New Zealand respectively in the first leg of their inter-continental World Cup playoffs.
While many would’ve expected Uruguay to progress past Jordan with ease, a five-nil result in Amman to South Americas fifth-best team (6th including Brazil) has the Middle East minnows staring down the barrel of an embarrassing 10-0 aggregate score.
Our friends from across the Tasman haven’t fared much better.
The Kiwis were expected to at least provide some competition against a Mexican team who was far from convincing in CONCACAF qualifying.
Mexico have the USA to thank for even having the chance to playoff for a World Cup spot as they were about five minutes away from being eliminated.
But they seemed to have found their shooting boots as they put a hand full past a defiant but helpless Glen Moss.
These hammerings of nations from Oceania and Asia are further proof that the current set up of a 32-team World Cup is the right amount of teams and still gives a good representation of a true “World” Cup.
Michel Platini recently floated the idea of a 40-team World Cup. The reason given was to give truer representation of a World Cup.
The truth behind the reason given is that he’s trying to butter up the voters of the countries who often miss out on the World Cup ahead of the upcoming FIFA Presidential vote.
Suggesting that with their vote he can get their nation to the World Cup.
I’m just going to say it, the idea of a 40-team World Cup is ridiculous.
While we all love our football and would love to see a World Cup go on forever having eight groups of five teams each would see the current four week model stretch out to six weeks at least, although Platini thinks he can get it done in only three extra days.
It’s a bit much to fit into our already crowded football schedule, plus does anyone remember the debacle that was the Cricket World Cup a few years back?
Platnini stated the following “We can add two African, two Asiatic, two American, one Oceania and one from Europe.”
Hypothetically if these eight teams were going to Brazil there would be spots for New Zealand, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Panama, Venezuela, Senegal, Tunisia and Sweden.
We’ve already seen what kind of competition New Zealand and Jordan are likely to provide and I wouldn’t hold much hope for any of the other nations bar Sweden.
So there you have it, potentially a whole lot of lopsided games and dead rubbers.
The FIFA World Cup is unique to any other World Cup because it showcases the very best national teams that football has to offer with very few that are there purely to make up the numbers.
There are always the fairy tale stories which is fantastic and a poetic angle of the beautiful game but there are also very few games where teams are embarrassed and demoralised on the world stage.
Inviting eight extra nations to a World Cup cheapens what it means to be a World Cup footballer.
I can understand what FIFA are trying to do by giving more places to developing confederations such as Oceania, Asia, Africa and North America to an extent.
But these confederations already make up close to half of the competing nations at a 32-team World Cup and yet consistently it is teams from Europe and South America that make up three quarters of the teams in the round of 16.
These confederations are already being given the opportunity to make it to a World Cup and until they can justify having more spots by consistently beating European and South American opposition their current allotment of World Cup places is more than sufficient.
Having so many minnows at a FIFA World Cup benefits no-one and could be to the detriment of these developing nations. Platini has raised the 40 team World Cup argument purely as a publicity stunt and essentially to buy votes.
Let’s hope that common sense prevails and the World Cup remains a 32-team competition with a good mix of the best countries in the world based on the FIFA world rankings as well as providing a good representation of nations from all six confederations.
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