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Less European representation
- Thread starter Pratters
- Start date
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.
Uppercut
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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
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.
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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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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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
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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Yep. It's a shame because they're all pretty damn good.
Howe_zat
Audio File
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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