Topic: ⚽ FIFA World Cup 2022: Qualifying Games For Qatar - page 18. (Read 6071 times)

I think it's very difficult to look at Asia as one continent because the differences between nations in mentalities, economic development, popularity of football, are really huge.
Due to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, large investments in football began in these 2 Asian countries and already at the 2002 World Cup South Korea was fourth in the world, which was a miraculous and unexpected result.
African or North American national teams are still waiting for such an achievement.
South Korea and Japan are still strong teams, dangerous to any team in the world.
Does anyone else remember the first half of the match between Japan and Belgium at the last World Cup in Russia. Belgium, which later knocked Brazil out of the competition and finished in third place, just happily continued the competition.
Other Asian national teams do not invest so much in the development of football, or football is not their most important team sport, and therefore do not achieve such results in major competitions.

The reason is that the Chinese and Indian Championships are very weak compared to the European Championships. Although the Japanese J1 league looks more interesting, the Japanese team also shows very weak results in the World Cup playoffs. Anthropometry also plays some role, but the main role is played by the competitiveness of the championships.

I don't think that it has to do anything with time. Football is very popular in both Japan and South Korea, and this has been the case for the past decades. I am not exactly sure why the Asian teams underperform at international level. Despite their huge population, China and India almost never qualifies for the World Cup. Asian players are in general shorter compared to the Europeans, and that maybe the reason. But in that case Brazil and Argentina should not perform so well. I strongly suspect that there is some other reason. 

If we look at the performance of Asian teams against European teams, it is easy to understand that Asian teams are very weak. They are far behind. While teams like Korea and Japan have been able to improve themselves somewhat, they are still much weaker than European or American teams. The European leagues are very advanced. We don't see any better league in Asia than that. More time is needed to improve football in Asia.

I agree with you, one cannot just look at numbers of countries on an continent or number of population. Of course Asia has much more inhabitants, but the two largest countries India and China are practically not present in the football World. African teams are very passionate, but so far haven't had much success in world cups. You could give them more slots, which of course would increase the chance that a few teams could come further into the tournament, but it wouldn't raise the quality  of the tournament probably.

I would actually favor a more dynamic mode of qualification, where only a few best countries directly qualify per continent (say half of the current numbers) and then the remaining spots are given in intercontinental playoffs or even a small tournament, like a mini B-world cup 

In terms of population, Asia is much greater than Africa (you can add in Australia as well, since they are now a part of the AFC). You should be happy that CAF is being given more slots when compared to the AFC, although the population is smaller. The new qualification system is still unfair to teams such as Bolivia and Venezuela in the CONMEBOL, who have hardly any chance of qualifying for the world cup. On the other hand, a lot of weak teams from both Asia and Africa are going to qualify for the main tournament. But I am not going to complain much about it. After all, we need representation from all the continents.

Africa has some great talent, many countries there have a great level of soccer.

But I'm not sure which countries in Africa are being left out of the world cup because there are only 9 slots. Maybe I'm missing some. Also, if you look at the history, no African team has yet advanced to the semi-finals, ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_nations_at_the_FIFA_World_Cup

It's not about the size of the continent, it's about how many countries are great at soccer.

For example, you mentioned Europe, which has the largest amount of spots. It's still very common to hear about amazing countries not being able to qualify. For example, Italy, which have won the world cup 4 times in the past, couldn't qualify for the 2022 world cup. So, even though they have a lot of spots, it's still extremely competitive to get one. There are just a lot of great soccer playing countries in Europe. If you look at history, an European country has won the world cup 5 times, and 13 other countries have been in the semi-final: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_nations_at_the_FIFA_World_Cup

Also, the groups for qualifications are not exactly by continents like you mentioned, in particular America is divided into CONCACAF(North America, Central America, and Caribbean) and CONMEBOL(South America) . You can see the historical data of each confederation here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_team_appearances_in_the_FIFA_World_Cup#Results_by_confederation

It's pretty clear that UEFA, and CONMEBOL should have the largest amounts of slots(CONMEBOL currently only has 4.5!), as they just have the best performing countries, proven over the entire history of the tournament. If anything, I would argue those 2 confederations should have more slots.

well in 2026 CONMEBOL will have 6  slots  so they will be fine, while in africa we continue to be discriminated  and humiliated as if in africa they are only participating because as the name says: " world cup " so all continents need to be represented. it makes no sense that:

the European continent has 16  slots

entire American continent (South America, North America, Central America and the Caribbean) have 12  slots

Asia has 8  slots seats

but Africa, which is a very big continent, only has 9  slots

FIFA should have placed at least 12  slots for Africa, but in the end these changes will only be seen in 2026, there are still many years to go

But it's also a matter of diversity. The World Cup would be much less appealing if there were 90% European and South American teams only. But I agree that this would be an interesring format if we had a worldwide qualification somehow to guarantee that are only the best teams qualify for the tournament. Maybe the FIFA could have a one time special event (outside of the regular world cup), like the European Nations League (but it should be more appealing that the teams actually care )

And it gets more complicated now. FIFA is investigating Ecuador and potentially kicking them out of the world cup because apparently one of his players is Colombian.




That would be an incredible qualification for Chile, who ended up seventh in the group!

We had this discussion so many times. My suggestion is to have at least 6 slots for the CONMEBOL confederation instead of the current 4.5. Teams such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Cameroon will be participating in this edition of the world cup, while strong teams such as Colombia and Chile are unable to secure their qualifications. Now please tell me one thing. Are teams such as Colombia inferior to AFC teams such as Saudi Arabia? Even the lowest ranked CONMEBOL team (Bolivia) plays much better than Saudi Arabia.

As we get nearer to the actual competition taking place at the end of the year, I will start updating this thread more.

Absolutely right, CONMEBOL should have at least one extra slot in my view, 4.5 is just too few as basically all the teams there are good enough to qualify, and two of them are always qualifying: Brazil, and Argentina, which are both still undefeated. This basically reduces the slots for the rest of the teams and makes it extremely competitive.

Costa Rica vs New Zealand will be an interesting match, the all whites should be able to win there.

So, overall, my guess is that Oceania (Australia, New Zealand) will go to the world cup.

Never write off any of the CONMEBOL teams. Even the weakest teams in that confederation, such as Bolivia and Venezuela are capable of defeating the strongest teams in CAF and AFC. Now I regard Australia as one of the strongest teams in AFC, but still I would go for Peru if they face each other. Anyway, we need to wait one more week to find out which team is going to qualify for Qatar 2022. Also, there is one more playoff scheduled for next week (CONCACAF v OFC), in which Costa Rica will take on New Zealand.

Groud D already has France, Denmark and Tunisia.

The next one to join it will be either Australia or Peru. We will find out in a few days, but my guess is that Australia will end up winning.

Peru is not a particularly strong team, and in these qualifiers they've not been incredibly good. On the other hand Australia seems to be doing quite well lately, and I'm sure they're going to secure their spot at the world cup.

It will be a close match though, but as I said I think Australia has a slight advantage and will end up winning.

I forgot about that... 

Yes the Scottish First Minister and her SNP party are still trying to get the powers in Westminster to allow another referendum in Scotland which would have a simple "Yes" and "No" vote at ballot box.

Adding England vs Scotland as well as England vs Iran and of course Iran vs USA all in Group B makes it one of the most politically charged world cup group stages ever !

From a political perspective that group is completely crazy, and if I remember correctly Scotland is still looking for their independence so that would add to the political quagmire of that group, but I think the team that most people would like to qualify to the world cup due to everything that is happening right now is Ukraine, still despite all of that I do not think there will ever be a match as intense as the one we saw at the 1986 world cup in the quarterfinals of the tournament when Argentina defeated England with two of the most famous goals ever scored.

If India, Bangladesh or Pakistan had qualified they would have had huge amounts of supporters watching the games on television in those countries but only a certain number of teams can qualify from each region but still Iran will be joined in Group B by England and the USA as well as one of Wales, Scotland or Ukraine.

The fact there are deep political differences between Iran on one side and England and the USA on the other - this will make the England vs Iran game and Iran vs USA game a must watch 

South Asian teams constitute Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. This time no team among this enter the 32 teams. Already 29 teams have been qualified and the remaining 3 will be selected by june. Atleast few Asian teams Iran, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea and the host team Qatar.

Of the African teams that qualified I think Senegal in Group A, Tunisia in Group D, Morocco in Group F, Cameroon in Group G and Ghana in Group H ALL FIVE have a good chance to go through as runners-up in their groups. Senegal, Morocco, Cameroon and Ghana seem to have the easier chance than Tunisia but it will be great for African football to see the teams play in the world cup in Qatar.