They even asked on the Fifa.com website if they should change the number of teams involved in the final tournament. So yes people think things should change or change is in the air.
As far as I understand the 32 team format for the final tournament has been around for at leas the last 4-5 world cups. Interestingly, it seems so natural to have this number of teams in the tournament while in the near past it was a lot less and in the early days it was even as low as only 18 teams.
Some think that due to the maturing of Futebol around the world that locations like Africa or Asia should have more teams but, how do you do this without throwing in more from Europe where football is very mature. However, are we trying to be fair or are we looking for simply the best play from teams around the world. Is football so mature in Oceania or Asia?
The most interesting method would be to come up with the world rankings and then simply pick the top 32 teams. Ye, this would leave out Asia or Africa many times and locations like North America would also be short on representation. How in reality would you come up with enough games in a format that works to have some form of ranking? Keep the games in the different confederation, or just do a huge random draw of everyone that can play and have a certain number of games? You'd have a bunch of teams killing the weak and less mature say like Germany playing a Burma. Or Brazil with a Maldives islands. This would make thing a little different.
Under the current system several higher ranked teams from Europe for example have been left out since you find they did not make it out of the second round (playoffs). This because you find you have representation from all confederations.
Going with the recently released world ranking you find a mix of teams from around the world but, mostly European.
FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking
Last Updated 28 Nov 2013
Nov 2013
| Rnk | Team | Pts | +/- Pos | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | 1507 | 0 |  | |||||
| 2 | Germany | 1318 | 0 | | |||||
| 3 | Argentina | 1251 | 0 | | |||||
| 4 | Colombia | 1200 | 0 | | |||||
| 5 | Portugal | 1172 | 9 |  | |||||
| 6 | Uruguay | 1132 | 0 | | |||||
| 7 | Italy | 1120 | 1 | | |||||
| 8 | Switzerland | 1113 | -1 |  | |||||
| 9 | Netherlands | 1106 | -1 | | |||||
| 10 | Brazil | 1102 | 1 | | |||||
| 11 | Belgium | 1098 | -6 | | |||||
| 12 | Greece | 1055 | 3 | | |||||
| 13 | England | 1041 | -3 | | |||||
| 14 | USA | 1019 | -1 | | |||||
| 15 | Chile | 1014 | -3 | | |||||
| 16 | Croatia | 971 | 2 | | |||||
| 17 | Côte d'Ivoire | 918 | 0 | | |||||
| 18 | Ukraine | 907 | 2 | | |||||
| 19 | France | 893 | 2 | | |||||
| 20 | Mexico | 892 | 4 | | |||||
| 21 | Bosnia-Herzegovina | 886 | -5 | | |||||
| 22 | Russia | 870 | -3 | | |||||
| 23 | Ecuador | 852 | -1 | | |||||
| 24 | Ghana | 849 | -1 | | |||||
| 25 | Denmark | 831 | 1 | | |||||
| 26 | Algeria | 800 | 6 | | |||||
| 27 | Sweden | 793 | -2 | | |||||
| 28 | Czech Republic | 766 | -1 | | |||||
| 29 | Slovenia | 762 | 1 | | |||||
| 30 | Serbia | 752 | -2 | | |||||
| 31 | Costa Rica | 738 | 0 | | ||
| 32 | Romania | 734 | -3 | | ||
If you use this list as a base you find that several teams on this list have not made it to the 2014 competition; Teams like Ukraine, Slovenia, Serbia etc. You also would see no representation from Asia and Africa is really almost an after thought. So this could be an interesting way to come up with the 32 teams for the final tournament..... but, if you want to continue to have a world wide representation with the best teams unfortunately, you have to leave a few from Europe out and include a few from the far flung parts of the world.
The current format seems to be working very well. The last time they expanded things it was to include a couple more from North America, Asia and Africa.
Also the group play format if wonderful. You have a method to eliminate the bottom half of the teams but, still allow them to play a fair number of games. Think each group has play 3 games (6 in each group) and ties become really important. This provides for interesting football and lets the better 2 teams pass out of group stage. Then you start doing the single elimination.
I've run many a rain gutter regatta or pinewood derby with the Cub scouts. I've seen what happens when your numbers get too big if you decide to do Round robin or even double elimination.
See my post on double elimination.
Many like double elimination due to the fact you have each player go twice. This keeps people from feeling they got cheated especially if they get to change lanes or gutters. Round robin is another interesting animal. Since you complete against everyone it can take a long time.
An 18 team round robin competition would require about 153 games or so. Even if you have them going on constantly you are looking at like 15 games for each of 10 locations. You'd still have the near month long competition if you want to include some rest days. It would be double that for the 32 teams so round robin is not practical or even fair in some respects. You technically could have a couple of teams that end up with the same number of wins, draws and loses. You don't want to have to do some lottery draw to decide who is best. And an additional penalty kick event could be a bit much.
The group play stage is like the first of the 2 double eliminations or both for that matter. They make sure to have each team playing several games. Then you simply kill of the loser. Not that bad of a system.
There is also the issue of seeding for the world cup. You have 4 teams in each of the 8 groups so you have a total of 4 pots to pull from. They want to make sure that not to many come from each confederation in each group. Does no good to have a group of Africa teams with say Belgium or mainly South America with say just Australia. The play by confederation has already occurred and we don't need a repeat of that. That make it almost a guarantee that each pot has some Europeans but not to many. As of right now only 9 teams are left from Europe to be seeded. That makes 3 per remaining pot. Though that does give you the possibility of 3 or more teams from Europe in a group. You'd likely want to increase the numbers of euro teams in a pot. Throwing all the Asia team in a pot or all the North American team also makes sense if you want to guarantee they do not play each other.
Come Friday December 6th this will all be resolved for the 2014 Brazil World Cup.
Then we can find out if there will be an iron group of power house teams. With countries like Italy, Netherlands, France, Portugal, and Russia not being in the first pot anything could happen. It could be just one of those times getting out of group play will be a pain.
Buaidh - NO - Bas
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