World Cup Qualifying - 2018 Russia

Falastur said:
The thing is, the FIFA rankings are not what determines who plays in a World Cup. If they were, there wouldn't be qualification tournaments.
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Did anyone even suggest that? We're saying the number of countries from each confed should in some way relate to the strength of that confed. Nobody wants to do away with qualifying tournaments.

Next, I don't think anyone begrudges UEFA or CONMEBOL their spots. I don't think they should get them because they were good a few decades ago, but because they still deserve them based on how good they are now. In fact, both are underrepresented given how good they are.

UEFA has 20 countries in the top 32, and CONMEBOL has 7. The latter figure is insanely good given they only have 10 teams. Nobody is suggesting they take up 27 spots, but they should get the major share, and that share should be reassesed every 4 years based on rankings. You should probably rebalance soon after every WC so everyone knows how many spots are on the line by the time the next QTs start. You have to give UEFA and CONMEBOL less than their proportional deserved share until and if the world catches up. Dividing up the remainder, however many that is decided to be, should also be based on strength of each confed at the top (you should not get more spots because your weak teams are better than another confed's weak teams) and also rebalanced every cycle.

Every Confed but Oceania should be guaranteed 1-2 spots and that's it. If a Confed can't keep more than 1-2 teams in the top 32 over a 4-year rolling average then tough. They don't deserve to send more teams.

This is a snapshot not a 4-year average, so obvious disclaimers apply, but at the moment here is how Africa, CONCACAF and Asia compare in the top 32:

Africa (23, 27, 31) CONCACAF (16, 24, 26) Asia (32).

And WC spots are assigned

Africa 5
Asia 4.5
CONCACAF 3.5
Total 13

If the current confederation performance was true over 4 years that allocation is horseshit. CONCACAF should have the most, followed by Africa and Asia in that order.

I could even be convinced that CONMEBOL deserves 1 more taken from this group leaving my prefered allocation at:

CONCACAF 5.5
Africa 4.5
Asia 2
Total 12

That seems like a lot for CONCACAF but based on the current strength it makes sense. If you want to give Asia 3 then CONCACAF 5, Africa 4, Asia 3. Inflate everything for WC expansion.

ETA: I understand that Falastur Falastur wasn’t particularly arguing against something like this.
 
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mgarbowski said:
I could even be convinced that CONMEBOL deserves 1 more taken from this group leaving my prefered allocation at:

CONCACAF 5.5
Africa 4.5
Asia 2
Total 12

That seems like a lot for CONCACAF but based on the current strength it makes sense. If you want to give Asia 3 then CONCACAF 5, Africa 4, Asia 3. Inflate everything for WC expansion.
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I'm not knocking your idea, just trying to understand, but what is your logic on the 5.5 places for CONCACAF "based on current strength"? Aside from the three teams currently in the top 32 which you have already referenced, the next five CONCACAF teams in the rankings are in places 54, 56, 57, 70, 84. Of those teams, only three have previously qualified for a WC, once each, and only one of them (Honduras, 70th) has done so this century. Compare that to AFC (30, 55, 59, 60, 63) where each of those five bar China (60th) has played in at least 4 WCs before and one of them is a former semi-finalist, and to Africa (36, 40, 44, 45, 50) which includes two teams who have played in at least 4 WCs, and only one which has never qualified. I'm not sure I see why CONCACAF should be considered the strongest of the three?
 
Falastur said:
I'm not knocking your idea, just trying to understand, but what is your logic on the 5.5 places for CONCACAF "based on current strength"? Aside from the three teams currently in the top 32 which you have already referenced, the next five CONCACAF teams in the rankings are in places 54, 56, 57, 70, 84. Of those teams, only three have previously qualified for a WC, once each, and only one of them (Honduras, 70th) has done so this century. Compare that to AFC (30, 55, 59, 60, 63) where each of those five bar China (60th) has played in at least 4 WCs before and one of them is a former semi-finalist, and to Africa (36, 40, 44, 45, 50) which includes two teams who have played in at least 4 WCs, and only one which has never qualified. I'm not sure I see why CONCACAF should be considered the strongest of the three?
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You realize your litmus test is seriously flawed and skews the answer you’re presenting because if Concacaf has always had the fewest WC slots, and they have also always had three strong teams that monopolize the slots (Mexico, US, Costa Rica) so there are far fewer opportunities for the next batch of teams in the federation to acquire 4 WC berths (which seems to be your golden standard of excellence)??? The flip is that is Asia and Africa have more spots, then they automatically have a better chance of having a greater number of teams hit 4WC appearances.
 
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Ulrich said:
You realize your litmus test is seriously flawed and skews the answer you’re presenting because if Concacaf has always had the fewest WC slots, and they have also always had three strong teams that monopolize the slots (Mexico, US, Costa Rica) so there are far fewer opportunities for the next batch of teams in the federation to acquire 4 WC berths (which seems to be your golden standard of excellence)??? The flip is that is Asia and Africa have more spots, then they automatically have a better chance of having a greater number of teams hit 4WC appearances.
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First of all, as I said in my second-to-last post, I am not advocating any style of qualification system over any other. All I am doing here is playing Devil's Advocate and asking questions to other people designed to test (note: not break, just examine) the ideas other people are putting forward, plus occasionally positing other ideas again designed to contrast with what others are suggesting. In the case of the post you quoted, I said directly at the start of it that the only motivation behind my post was wanting to understand mgarbowski mgarbowski's idea further.

Secondly, the 4 WC berth "golden standard of excellence" is no golden standard, it's just a number that surprisingly many teams have hit, and I don't just mean that they are around that, I mean that of the 15 teams I looked at just now, about 5 of them had qualified for EXACTLY four, while I don't think any had qualified for three or two. One had qualified for five. The others had qualified for eight or nine are are in many ways the outliers of the sample. Four times just stuck out like a sore thumb as a very common factor.

Thirdly, I don't follow your logic. I mean, I get what you are saying, but it doesn't seem to disprove the thing you think it does. My argument originally was that I was looking to have someone explain to me why CONCACAF deserved 5.5 places out of 32 compared to Africa's 4.5 and Asia's 2 on the basis of "current strength" when CONCACAF teams 4-6 are the definition of also-rans while Asia actually has five historically strong teams. I completely agree with you that the existing system creates the perfect conditions to favour Asia, but just because CONCACAF has historically been weakened by this setup it doesn't explain why they should now be seen as stronger than the other two.

Just to say this one more time here: I'm not arguing that CONCACAF is weaker. I'm asking for someone to explain to me why they are stronger. If I read a decent argument in favour, I'd be quite happy to bow to the logic and support the statement. Also, please note that I most definitely wrote this post with a clear and level-headed mind, and if my post came across as aggressive or vehement then that is the fault of the writer for poor wording choice but this is most definitely not meant to be an argumentative message.
 
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Falastur said:
I'm not knocking your idea, just trying to understand, but what is your logic on the 5.5 places for CONCACAF "based on current strength"? Aside from the three teams currently in the top 32 which you have already referenced, the next five CONCACAF teams in the rankings are in places 54, 56, 57, 70, 84. Of those teams, only three have previously qualified for a WC, once each, and only one of them (Honduras, 70th) has done so this century. Compare that to AFC (30, 55, 59, 60, 63) where each of those five bar China (60th) has played in at least 4 WCs before and one of them is a former semi-finalist, and to Africa (36, 40, 44, 45, 50) which includes two teams who have played in at least 4 WCs, and only one which has never qualified. I'm not sure I see why CONCACAF should be considered the strongest of the three?
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First, I think Ulrich Ulrich's point is solid with respect to using past WC appearances as a factor. Asian and African teams have more structural opportunities to have qualified regardless of their merit or quality. If you use that as a factor then it is just a self sustaining algorithm for the status quo.

As for the rest I think I pretty much covered it when I said I don't care about strength below the top rank. I could be convinced the system should have included rankings from 1-40, or so rather than using 32 as the cutoff. But beyond that it don't matter. It is irrelevant, I'm pretty sure, whether one confederation has more teams ranked 40-49 than another who is more represented at 50-60, when you are assigning slots for a 32-team conference.

Further, those 40-70 rankings are not ignored even under the system I just made up. Because a team in the Confed with better mediocre to bad teams in its Confed will enjoy a higher ranking by virtue of playing and beating them. If Africa dominates then 40-50 range and the top African teams play and beat those top 40-50 teams then the top African teams will get even higher ratings. If one of the 40-50 teams starts beating all the other 40-50 teams in its Confed it will rise into the 30-40 range. So those lesser teams still have an effect, which makes me even more confident they shouldn't be double counted by using it independently as a factor.

Finally, I'm not too concerned about these details, even more so because the field is expanding so you have to rejigger all the numbers anyway.

My main point is that WC slots should be assigned with some basis in confederation strength and not just the number of countries in a confederation, which seems to be how Africa, Asia, and Concacaf were assigned based on your research above. Frankly, that is an inherently stupid system. It's not even based on actual population. If you're just going to base slots on population use the actual number of people not just the number of countries. A confederation is rewarded by having lots of tiny countries who can barely field a team, and that allows more of its large countries to coast into the WC, both by beating up the minnows and by getting more slots for just having a lot of tiny countries. Which, frankly Concacaf has plenty of, though apparently not enough.

The secondary point is that the measure of strength should be based on having teams who can actually compete in a WC rather than because a confed has a lot of mediocre teams. To put it another way: imagine two confeds with the same number of countries. Confed A has an extremely thick and high bell curve with short tapers. It has a lot of mediocre teams, hardly any high quality teams and similarly few terrible teams. Confed B has a much more tapered, and low bell curve, with comparatively few mediocre teams, but a disproportionate number of high ranked ones and also more terrible ones. Which confed should have more teams in the WC? Do you really want to reward the confed that specializes in churning out mediocrities?
 
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mgarbowski said:
First, I think Ulrich Ulrich's point is solid with respect to using past WC appearances as a factor. Asian and African teams have more structural opportunities to have qualified regardless of their merit or quality. If you use that as a factor then it is just a self sustaining algorithm for the status quo.

As for the rest I think I pretty much covered it when I said I don't care about strength below the top rank. I could be convinced the system should have included rankings from 1-40, or so rather than using 32 as the cutoff. But beyond that it don't matter. It is irrelevant, I'm pretty sure, whether one confederation has more teams ranked 40-49 than another who is more represented at 50-60, when you are assigning slots for a 32-team conference.

Further, those 40-70 rankings are not ignored even under the system I just made up. Because a team in the Confed with better mediocre to bad teams in its Confed will enjoy a higher ranking by virtue of playing and beating them. If Africa dominates then 40-50 range and the top African teams play and beat those top 40-50 teams then the top African teams will get even higher ratings. If one of the 40-50 teams starts beating all the other 40-50 teams in its Confed it will rise into the 30-40 range. So those lesser teams still have an effect, which makes me even more confident they shouldn't be double counted by using it independently as a factor.

Finally, I'm not too concerned about these details, even more so because the field is expanding so you have to rejigger all the numbers anyway.

My main point is that WC slots should be assigned with some basis in confederation strength and not just the number of countries in a confederation, which seems to be how Africa, Asia, and Concacaf were assigned based on your research above. Frankly, that is an inherently stupid system. It's not even based on actual population. If you're just going to base slots on population use the actual number of people not just the number of countries. A confederation is rewarded by having lots of tiny countries who can barely field a team, and that allows more of its large countries to coast into the WC, both by beating up the minnows and by getting more slots for just having a lot of tiny countries. Which, frankly Concacaf has plenty of, though apparently not enough.

The secondary point is that the measure of strength should be based on having teams who can actually compete in a WC rather than because a confed has a lot of mediocre teams. To put it another way: imagine two confeds with the same number of countries. Confed A has an extremely thick and high bell curve with short tapers. It has a lot of mediocre teams, hardly any high quality teams and similarly few terrible teams. Confed B has a much more tapered, and low bell curve, with comparatively few mediocre teams, but a disproportionate number of high ranked ones and also more terrible ones. Which confed should have more teams in the WC? Do you really want to reward the confed that specializes in churning out mediocrities?
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I think I get you now. So you are essentially saying that a Confederation should be judged based on the performance of its best member(s), on the basis that exposure to that team drags the rest of the Confederation up towards their level/provides the most reliable indication of the potential for their teams to seriously challenge in a tournament? I'm not sure I agree with the logic (I find myself wondering what would be the effect on the number of placings if, say, a CONCACAF team ever managed to get itself ranked in the top, say, 4 in the world) but I at least understand this viewpoint, which is what I was after all along, so I'm satisfied. Thank you.
 
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I did that quiz for kicks and got Serbia. I then felt kind of stupid for not realising that they'd qualified.
 
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Sabo said:
With the USA out, this quiz is supposed to match a team to cheer for with your soccer preferences. I got Sweden.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/world-cup-quiz/

The offseason sucks.
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F9FBB7A3-FE3A-4DDA-AE2A-F316A797D025.png


Does Aaron Johansson still play for them?
 
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"Switzerland matches all 7 of your 7 answers."

I'm kind of OK with this.
 
Both Belgium and France match 6 of my 7 answers. This is going to be a fun World Cup.
 
A Group of Death is really defined by having tough teams from the 3rd and 4th pots, so now we will start to find out who has the toughest roads.
 
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