World Cup Format - Fair or is there Something Better?

As we head into the final stretch with the group Draw for the World Cup many times fairness.

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

Fairness and the World Cup

I've had some rather spirited discussions lately on the "fairness" of the teams going to the World Cup with a colleague recently.

You see if you go strictly by the numbers it does not seem fair how they decide the number of teams that will advance to the World Cup by continent.  The best example is to compare Europe and Africa.  Both have almost the same number of teams overall - 53 and 52 respectively.  But, the big difference comes in the number of teams each continent will provide to the big event.  Europe will send on 13 teams and Africa only 5.  So by the numbers this seems so unfair.  But, is it really?

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve.  In this case how many people will try and watch let alone attend in person a game if you have a bunch of so-so teams no one has ever heard of?
European teams have a long history within the footballing sport.  For that matter Football was invented in England.  Some African teams have just a few years history and little or no governmental support or infrastructure.  Add that up and it is clear why FIFA chooses to send the number of teams that it does from each continent.  The one with the highest percentage of teams attending is South America.  It's in the 45 percent range.  Oceania has the lowest with a mere 4.5%.  Europe has a 25% ratio, Asia 10-11 percent and North America 10% and Africa about 10%.
Statically, and numerically this is not fair but, it provides for a quality tournament worth watching.



Let's examine why this works better then going by pure numbers in a bit more detail.  The easiest way to do this is to see a list of those that made the final since the World Cup began and the champions.

National team	Finalists	Winners	Runners-up
Brazil	7	5	2
Italy	6	4	2
Germany	7	3	4
Argentina	4	2	2
Uruguay	2	2	0
France	2	1	1
England	1	1	0
Spain	1	1	0
Netherlands	3	0	3
Czechoslovakia	2	0	2
Hungary	2	0	2
Sweden	1	0	1

It is very easy to see where the teams that win come from.  Europe and South America.
I'm not even sure how many times teams from Asia or Africa have even made it into the semi-finals.  The USA for example has begun to consistently make it out of group play to the round of 16.  They have been improving and down the road there may be a chance at making it to the final.  For the time being they become one of the many wild card teams that may play that perfect game and really give a contender for the cup a run for their money.

So there is that trade off.  Do you want to be fair numerically or do you want to have a quality game?

The quality of the game is more important to the world Cup then to say some other sporting events or activities.  For the World Cup you are looking for the very best teams the world over.  You don't want the best proportion of teams the world over, but, the best teams of the world.

In younger youth sports that do not have a financial incentive attached things change.  You might require fairness in the games played at school or by those still in primary grades.  This keeps things positive and helps get away from the "win at any cost" issue.

Now some start to say there should be fairness in hiring practices, school admissions, and other societal things.  But, what are you really achieving?  What is your aim in forcing things to be fair by some predefined criteria?

Brazil has begun to implement affirmative action when it comes to university admissions.  Federal university is free in Brazil (tuition at least) if you can make it in.  Thus there is a big process each year to see who can gain one of the few slots available for a specific area of study.  Many people take training courses there much like the ACT or GMAT trainings/testing here in the USA just so they have a change at passing Vestibular.   Now, what ends up happening is that the more well off families can afford to pay for such courses.  Poor families are highly under represented.  That does not mean poor people are not taking the test to see if they can get into university.  Thus they are starting to implement affirmative action.
A very large portion of the population in Brazil are of mix-race.  And the majority have some African blood.  Negros are highly under represented at university and then it goes down from there.... the more Caucasian you are the more you are likely to go to university. Not a guarantee but, statically the reality.
So with affirmative action you basically declare we have to have 10% of college applications, or students say be Amer-Indian or negro. Now this creates a different problem of fairness.  Are you being fair by saying if your race is X percent of the population therefore you automatically get X percent of the college admissions slots?


This leads to some people that might wonder - 'Did I get into this school simply because I'm ______ race?'
Now your not getting into school based on merits but, race.  And do you use merits after race since you will always have a limited number of slots?
One small problem you begin to find in Brazil is the number of people claiming they are negro to take advantage of the affirmative action but, at the same time looking white as heck.  They may have some African blood in them but, when do you cut it off and say you have to be at least 30% African blood or 45% Amer-Indian blood?  Is that provable blood or not?  Some people may look dark as heck and could qualify as Amer-Indian possibly but, can not prove one way or another their background.

These and many other issues arise when you begin to get involved in correcting social injustices by way of quotes and the like.  Abuse of the system will exist.  It could also do some good and right some wrong however, is their a better way to handle this.

It appears no one has found it yet since, places like Brazil are now trying affirmative action just like the United States did over 35 years ago.



Have you ever thought how it would be to have a color blind job interview?  One were the interviewer and interviewee don't even really see one another.  Where the voice and/or face are distorted or blurred.   Imagine how this changes the make up of a company.  because now a days you can't judge someone just by their name.
There are Garcias that don't seem Latino at all and McDaniels that are so Black their appear blue.  You can't judge a person just by their name.......



So we have to be careful with how fair we want to be!
For we can go to far to the other side in trying to right past wrongs or making up for racial injustice perpetrated hundreds if not thousands of years ago.  You might just say the Holocaust is an example of over stepping ones bounds to right a perceived wrong carried out years earlier.

We must guard against be fair for all the wrong reasons



Buaidh - NO - Bas

Trip to Brazil

I recently returned from a 3 week long trip to Fortaleza Ceará Brazil to visit with some relatives.

Many things have changed since we had visited 4 years prior.  For one the slow down in the world economy had occurred, and thus the repercussions were being felt everywhere.  However, from everything I've been able to read it seems like Brazil was one a roll starting back then and has been buffeted a bit from the over all slow down.  They did not have a house crash like the in the USA.  They don't have a massive debt debacle hanging over their head like Greece.  In fact they were having 6-7% growth as late as two years before.  It has markedly dropped off recently.

What seems to have changed so much in part is how expense things have become.   We found that toys in general are nearly double the price.  Oddly it includes products from Brazilian companies as well as brand names more familiar to us in the US.
Also we found that there has been an increase in car ownership.  Motorcycles for that matter too.  Thus an increase in the over all traffic in the area.  Since most commerce happens downtown it sure has made a mess of things.   The light at the end of the tunnel is the fact that more shopping centers are being built further out from the city center, and more super markets are being built.

Unfortunately, it is apparent that the infrastructure has not been keeping up with the changes.  The amount of additional traffic on the street where we stayed was just amazing.  Tons of people walking, or jogging early in the morning or just before dark to beat the heat.   Tons of extra cars, and the noise.  Lots of extra noise.

Another main thing that has changed is the perceived and real crime that is occurring daily.  It may not be as bad as some would lead you to believe, but, with just a few reports on TV about it you never know.  It has gotten so bad that some people will leave their cell phone home if they are going to certain parts of town which might include downtown.

Many people who want to take advantage of the beach do so at locations outside of town due to this phenomena.  The local beaches have been left to the unsuspecting tourist.  A said state of affairs though I'm not sure it is any worse then being in certain parts of Los Angeles or New York City.


There has also been an increase in the number of people traveling within Brazil.  This is in part due to the fact that there are now several budget air lines within the country.  Sadly, by all reports many of the airports have not been updated to handle the increased traffic.  In some cities that have gone off and built a new airport.  Then one of the budget companies will use the old one to help keep the airfare down.  This appears to be the case with AZUL, that was founded by the former head of Jetblue.
We happened to fly on GOL inside of Brazil and had a mixed experience.  These companies have helped to change the way things are done int he airline business in Brazil.  Both are less then 15 years old.  They are new millennium companies.  Thus taking people from using buses as the main mode of transportation between cities and changing it to flying.


Brazil is without a doubt a country in development.  It can not longer be called a 3rd world country.  It's been 2nd world country for quite some time.  it still has a long way to go and hopefully due to the World Cup in 2012 and the Olympics in Rio in 2016 things will change for the better.

Eles defitivamente estão um País em disenvolvemento.  Nâo pode mais dizer que estão do triceiro mundo.   O gigante finalmente acordo.   Infelizmente acordo com certas dores de cabeça.

Viva Brasil!  

Buaidh - NO - Bas

Are Kids over Scheduled?

I currently have a position as Cub Master in the local Pack.  We have only a hand full of boys since we are associated with the local church and that is how we recruit.  Nothing really outside the church membership.  Thus our numbers have not reached over 5 boys in the 2 1/2 years since I was called to this position.
During this time I have fought with the ever constant problem of other activities interfering with our meeting schedules.  Things like Baseball, Soccer, Piano Lessons, Choral groups and the like.  In your area the list could go on.  All worthy activities right?  The problem is we seem to take a back seat to some of these other activities.  We have had boys that don't show up for Den Meetings for a a month at a time since it is not working with the current baseball schedule or games and/or practice.

So are we over scheduling our children?  Are we signing them up for way to much stuff?  Are we trying to pass of our innate need to parent on someone else?

I know that in today's world there are the single parents that have to fill up activities or day care while they are off at work.  And then there are the families where both parents work to make ends meet.
But, then there is the classic "Soccer Moms" thus named since they are racing all over town dropping off their kids at some soccer event.  They spend a large portion of their day ferrying their children around to their million activities.  And they are likely the same ones that are waiting line at the local In-n-Out burger drive-thru that almost always has a line.

Have we forgotten how to interactive properly with our children?  Have we forgotten how to use cooking dinner as a teaching moment by deciding to place our kids in a cooking class.  What will they learn there that you could not teach them while at home.  Imagine the interaction and learning that would occur as you help your child pick out a recipe; fine the ingredients already present at home and then shop for the remain items and finally cook the food!

or how about the young 3-4 years olds doing cheesy ballet at the park with an instructor.  Can't mom do hopping and the like with their child anymore?  Or do you have to get your exercise at the gym and your child in a structured overpriced class you could just as well do at home?

So as we struggle to find a good meeting time that will get the most boys to our meeting we sit and wonder..... what is really more important.  Cub Scouts or something else?  And/or why can't you find a way to do both?


Buaidh - NO  - BAS