World Cup 2014 - The Draw

Everything else
1

Probably not that exciting for anyone outside Europe as there probably won’t be any great surprises. But Europe always gets some shockingly unbalanced qualifying groups. This World Cup draw is set to get worse, as FIFA has finally decided to ditch sense, where it would base seeding on past tournament performance. Now it has decided to base seedings entirely on the ridiculous FIFA ranking system.

So if you look at the top seeds for Europe this time you get:

Spain, Holland, Germany… sure they are top seeds. England, Portugal, Italy… ok… strong teams with mixed recent performances… Croatia, Greece… hmm well maybe… and Norway. WTF Norway?

France, easily one of the best teams in the world, is second seed. Now sure they had a bad World Cup, but they at least qualified. Norway hasn’t qualified for a major tournament this century. The last tournament it competed in was Euro 2000, where they exited in the first round. Ironically, France won that tournament.

France’s recent world cup record:

1998: Winners
2002: Qualified
2006: Runner-Up
2010: Qualified

Norway’s recent world cup record:

1998: Qualified
2002: Failed to Qualify
2006: Failed to Qualify
2010: Failed to Qualify

Something is amiss with FIFA’s seeding system…

Probably too early for any shocks in the other qualifying groups, although one has to wonder how China got to be top seeds when they’ve never won a game at a world cup, and whose record is qualified once, played 3, lost 3, scored none and conceded nine. Saudi Arabia, one of the most successful teams in Asia, are demoted to second seed, despite qualifying for more World Cups than any asian team other than South Korea.

Bizarrely, North Korea, who actually qualified for the last World Cup, unlike China, is in the lowest ranked pot. At least North Korea scored a goal in 2010, and they were in the “group of death”, with Brazil, Portugal and Ivory Coast. For China, Brazil, Costa Rica and Turkey were relatively lightweight.

China’s ranking is equally bizarre. Their most recent performance was in the Asia 2011 tournament, where they went out in the first round. The other teams in their group are all ranked lower than them in the seedings. Is this political? Does FIFA want to impress the Chinese?

No, it’s FIFA’s stupid ranking system. Friendlies are totally overvalued. If you beat beat Germany’s B team in an experimental friendly before a World Cup, it’s worth more than beating them in the previous World Cup final. The ranking system is also cumulative, so the more pointless friendlies you play the higher your climb the ladder.

So China plays tons of friendlies. It played 11 in 2010 compared to North Korea’s 1. It also tends to pick friendlies with teams it can beat, so it’s continually racking up points. I don’t know if China does that on purpose, but FIFA’s ranking system certainly encourages it.

Game developers have implemented much better ladder systems for years. What China has done is the equivalent of picking games against rookies and beating them repeatedly in non-tournament play, in a system that rewards the amount of games you play, more than the quality of the opposition and the standard of the tournament you are competing in.

Gaming the system means China can end up with a group consisting of weaker teams like Jordan, Oman and Singapore. All teams they would be expected to beat. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, could end up in a group with Australia, Bahrain and North Korea. Nasty.

Back to Europe and FIFA’s ranking system risks producing lop-sided groups. You could get in one group: Norway, Montenegro, Belarus, Albania, Faeroe Islands and San Marino. And then another group could be: Spain, France, Czech Republic, Romania, Latvia and Wales.

But maybe FIFA will yet fix it so that the draw will not favour China and Norway. I remember when there was controversy at World Cup 1990, and England were given top seed at the expense of Holland. England then were drawn in the “group of death” as compensation.

The draw starts at 7pm GMT.

2

“Qualifying groups” is a different thing to the group stages of the cup, right?

3

The French team has been declining for years now. Their performance at the last WC was only the last of it. Two years before in the Euro Cup they got ejected in the group round, dead last, with only a single point to their name. Even Romania beat them with two points.

Saying that they are one of the best teams in the world isn’t true anymore. It makes me wonder what they are going to do for the EC next year with regards to team composition.

4

France are a great team. World Class. Their bad performances are often the result of infighting, something a Dutch fan must be able to empathise with :).

Any team that can win the world cup is one of the best teams in the world by definition.

“Qualifying groups” is a different thing to the group stages of the cup, right?

Yeah, the qualifying stage is where teams try to make it to the finals in Brazil.

5

Holy crap. China got Jordan, Iraq and Singapore, which is almost as easy a group as I could imagine. Maybe it is political. Or political as well.

At this rate of FIFA fixing, England will get France for sure.

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Well, they didn’t, but England still got a relatively easy group, including Montenegro and friggin’ San Marino, which competes regularly with Andorra for biggest whipping boy of Europe.

— Alan

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Sweden ended up with Germany, Ireland and Austria. Won’t be easy :(

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I think it is an average group. Poland and Ukraine are no pushovers. Montenegro have proven a tough team recently: beating Switzerland and drawing with England at Wembley. Ukraine beat England in the last World Cup qualifiers and have a large pool of quality players to draw on. Poland have been a persistant thorn in England’s side throughout the history of World Cup qualifiers. Poland were the first team to knock England out at the qualifying stage back in 73, drawing at Wembley to send Poland to West Germany instead (and eventual 3rd place finish).

Sure, San Marino suck, but every group got a San Marino! I don’t think “how bad the worst team in the group” is a measure of its strength, which is why their results are ignored in calculating the best teams in second place. Besides, I think San Marino still hold the record for the fastest goal ever scored in a World Cup qualifier… against England. The shame. We went on to win 7-1, but it was a stinging epitaph in Graham “Turnip” Taylor’s career as England manager.

Greece got the easiest group… again. I would have taken Holland, Portugal or Norway’s group over England’s too. But Germany has a tough group. And Spain… they really lucked out.

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San Marino might be terrible, but I still remember Stuart Pearce’s gaffe that let them go 1-0 up on England in roughly eight seconds in 1993.

England went on to win 7-1, but still, small victories… and Davide Gualtieri became a legend at home.

10

I would like to know how Europeans feel about the fact that 53 European countries will vie for a mere 13 WC spots. Meanwhile 4 spots are up for grabs for the 9 South American countries who will be playing each other. The words shocking and nonsensical (along with “morons oganizing this thing”) are exactly what came to mind when I first saw the qualifying setup. Percentage-wise, South American teams have almost double the chance to successfully make it through qualifying than any of the European teams do. How is that remotely fair? Bizarre and ridiculous IMO.

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Maybe because even though there are 5x less teams in South America than Europe, each continent has won roughly the same number of titles (10 european titles, 9 south american)?

The number of spots is based on the performance of the continent’s teams throughout history and is not meant to reflect a “fair distribution” based on the size of each continent.

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Another way to look at it would be that South America has ~380 million people and Europe has ~730 million. So, in population terms, Europe is double SA but they have 3 times the WC spots. If you divide the same population up into lots of smaller states, should you get more spots? How many spots do the 54 countries and 1 billion people of Africa get?

13

Interesting. So if one applies that same logic to, say, NHL hockey, the Toronto Maple Leafs should be given a free pass into the third round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs each year, due to their having won 11 Cups over the decades. Ask any hockey fan if that system would be considered reasonable. I can tell you even Leaf fans would consider it ridiculously unfair. Which is my point regarding the WC setup.

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Is this a sports competition that strives to feature the world’s best teams, or is it a social-political event rewarding continents that don’t practice birth control? Seems unfair then that China and India aren’t given an automatic pass into the WC finals every time. Those two make up a third of the world’s population after all. ;)

15

I don’t know if you’re as stupid as you sound, but there’s no way that adding more European slots so that Liechtenstein and the Faroe Fucking Islands have a better shot at the World Cup makes anything more competitive or fair. When Latvia has a chance of beating Uruguay in a match, then maybe someone will listen to you. Soccer (you heard me) stopped being a Euro only sport a long time ago.

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That’s a good point (especially the classy birth control remark). It’s almost like they should reevaluate the qualification spots based on the performances of the various continents throughout the years.

However, to accurately capture your gut feeling of European superiority they would probably be better off asking you how many spots each continent should get.

Only one more European team advanced out of the group stages than South American teams (6 to 5). This despite Europe sending 13 teams to South America’s 5.

17

Still no automatic spot for the top placed OFC team but this time around it’s the top qualifier from OFC (likely to be New Zealand again) up against the fourth ranked team out of CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Carribean). This is good for us, I’ll take it! It’s certainly a lot nicer than the prospect of having to face the AFC or CONMEBOL team for that last spot.

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You act like he’s European - are you sure? He uses NHL as a reference for fairness. I can’t imagine many Europeans would do that.

Also Latvia could beat Uruguay, maybe not with their present team, but they qualified for Euro 2004 beating Sweden and Turkey on the way. Turkey, like Uruguay in 2010, were semi-finalists in World Cup 2002.

And also… it’s football (not soccer) in pretty much every country in the world. So you aren’t laying claim to the sport by calling it “soccer”. In fact Italy calls it “calcio”. In South America it’s “futbol”. Soccer is only a term used in English speaking countries where a native “football” game already exists.

As to fairness, Europe does get less qualification berths than it should, in my opinion. But it’s not at the expense of South America. That continent is traditionally strong. Any of the South American countries could compete in European qualifiers and stand a chance of winning their group.

An easy way to judge that is to look at the teams from Europe that have been squeezed out because of reduced European qualifying berths, like Holland, Portugal and England, and ask yourself: could they have beaten teams like Costa Rica, North Korea and Angola? The answer is “almost certainly”, so those continents are probably over-represented. I don’t feel the same way about South American teams, so I think their allocation is fair.

But I don’t care about it that much. It’s a World Cup, not a Euro-South American tournament. I’m glad for smaller teams like North Korea to be there at the expense of the occasional stronger European team. It adds to the flavour.

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well, in most of South America it’s “futbol”, In Brazil, it’s “futebol”. Just a small nitpick there ;).

I agree 100% with you. The quality of the WC would probably be better with more european and american teams, but then it wouldn’t be much of a “World” Cup anymore. I think the current division is pretty good.

20

I wrote it just to annoy you Tim.