Thanks Forfantone for pointing this out.
Key decisions reached in Rio (FIFA.com)
Click on the "Click here to relive the Media Conference." link on that page.
Forward to 37:52 where FIFA Secretary General, Jérôme Valcke answers a question regarding the draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Here's his answer:
"As the FIFA president said, there are only 11 countries which are already qualified. At the beginning we thought that we could give an information about the draw at this Executive Committee meeting, but we still need to see if Argentina will qualify, some teams which are really in the top teams in order to understand how it will work. And clearly we will follow the FIFA ranking system and again you will see the teams, the top teams, and we will divide them in these different pots, but again it's too early and when we'll have all the teams qualified then there will be an information at the Organizing Committee which is taking place I think on the 1st or 2nd of December then there will be a ratification by the Executive Committee on the 3rd and unfortunately in a way because I will be the one drawing the balls and doing this draw, we will have to wait until the end of the 3rd of December to know exactly the process of the draw, of the final draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. So you can be sure that the best teams will be seeded as it is the case all the time, but how exactly teams will be divided it's too early to say."
Could it be that past practice of using prior World Cup results and prior years' rankings will be abandoned, and FIFA just use the November 2009 ranking in some way?
ReplyDeleteIf they spend all this time, effort and money working out a ranking that was meant to be better than the old one and then still don't use it to seed countries then it would be a very sad state of affairs. I think the 'old' system of giving countries that historically do well a helping hand in the tournament even if they are not ranked high enough in the LAST 4 YEARS, is completely outdated. If the ranking is not used as the only mechanism they only ridicule their own ranking. Time for change!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more that they should use their new Ranking for WC2010 seeding. Note that the old Rankings used in prior WCs did use eight years' worth of matches. When FIFA completely redid the Ranking in the summer of 2006 by shortening the inputs to four years, this would *seem* to be a signal that the WC2006 seeding formula would not (could not?) be used for WC2010 because the Ranking component was so overhauled.
I'd also like to see the top 15 teams plus host be seeded...
This is a very interesting subject. The problem is that FIFA always change the rules regarding seeding to favor the "big" nations.
ReplyDeleteLast WC they used a really weird system because US othervise would have been seeded. This time FIFA are might just use the FIFA-ranking because now the "Right" nations are ther. But after all, be sure Europe will have 5 seeded teams. No more, no less. Argentina and South Africa will be the other 3. FIFA will find one system that garantees that 5 european teams will be there for avoiding problems with the rest of the pots. Brasil The reason are that it will be practikal to have 8 european teams left for a pot. Other seeding groups doesn´t matter, they are just geographical criterias.