More info on the qualifying format.
It seems there will be a new draw after each group stage, according to La Verdad. CONCACAF's spokesman, Ben Spencer, is cited in the article, although not strictly for this phrase:
"Después de cada fase se realizaría un sorteo para acomodar a los equipos en los nuevos grupos, sorteo del que dependería que México evite a algún rival en especial, como Estados Unidos, para la ronda final de ocho equipos en dos esferas."
Translation: After each stage, a draw would be made to place the teams in the new groups.
Of course, the article's author would like Mexico to avoid the United States in those draws.
In the preliminary round, the teams will be seeded using the FIFA ranking. However, we don't know if the FIFA ranking will be used for the group stages too.
Truly, the quality of games would go down in the previous qualifying. I bet Concacaf aims the long run. I'm just not so sure this would work out for the best...
ReplyDeleteThinking out loud, it could use the UEFA system as model. Let me explain.
Organize a preliminary round to reduce teams to 36. Then, divide all in 9 groups of 4, with the first two qualifying to the final stage.
Here, the UEFA model would come in. The 18 remaining would be drawn into three groups of 6. The winners would qualify to the WC. The best two runners would face a playoff to decide who qualify to WC playoff against, probably, South America's 4th place.
IMHO, it would work better then the actual proposal by Concacaf. But, who am I, anyway?!
Edgar, thanks for tracking down.
ReplyDeleteHaving eight groups of four teams is similar to Africa's twelve groups of four teams -- I was surprised to see no African team winning by double digits during this 12-group stage during WC2010 qualifying. The biggest win was "only" 8-1.
@Dorian - African national team matches very rarely produce double figure results. In fact, I think there has neverbeen a case of an African national team scoring more than 9 goals in a competitive match (African Nations Cup or World Cup Qualifier, including qualification).
ReplyDeleteRecently, Djibouti have borne the brunt - apart from this 8-1 defeat to Malawi, they also lost 9-1 to both DR Congo and Kenya. Ghana also won 9-1 in Niger back in 1969 and Libya beat São Tomé & Príncipe 8-0.
In general though, the difference between top and bottom in Africa is not as much as say CONCACAF, OFC or AFC, and the smaller teams in Africa regularly restrict the best teams to only 1 or 2 goals, especially when playing at home.