AFC had to drop their beloved performance based seeding and will use the July FIFA ranking for the group stage draw.
Using the simulation results to determine the teams qualified for the group stage, let's see the teams affected by this change in the seeding procedure.
Pots using the AFC performance based seeding:
Pot 1: Japan, Korea Republic, Australia, Korea DPR, Bahrain
Pot 2: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates
Pot 3: Syria, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Singapore
Pot 4: China PR, Kuwait, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Lebanon
Pots using the FIFA ranking:
Pot 1: Australia, China PR, Iran, Japan, Korea Republic
Pot 2: Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan
Pot 3: Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Syria, United Arab Emirates
Pot 4: Korea DPR, Lebanon, Singapore, Thailand, Turkmenistan
Moving up:
3 - China PR
1 - Iran, Jordan, Kuwait
Moving down:
-3 - Korea DPR
-1 - Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Singapore
What the hell?! How can China be ranked so high?! They've done NOTHING! They finished bottom in their group in the first group stage of WCQ, and they went out in the group stage of the Asian Cup.
ReplyDeleteThe whole of Pot B are ahead of them in my eyes.
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia came very close to qualifying for the World Cup, Jordan peformed well in the Asian Cup, and went out of WCQ in a group which contained the two Koreas who both qualified to the World Cup. The Uzbeks got to the semis of the Asian Cup and the last round of WCQ, and even Qatar managed to get to the final round of WCQ and out of the group stage of the Asian Cup.
Meanwhile, Korea DPR qualified for the World Cup and they're in the minnow pot.
Group of death: Japan/Bahrain/Iraq/Korea DPR.
Group of Life: China/Qatar/Oman/Lebanon.
I like using rankings, but it's a shame for DPR, as I thought they'd finally get a seeding they deserved.
China has been better than in Singapore WCQ 2010 for a better goal difference, so it would go from pot 3 to pot 1 and moved up 2.
ReplyDelete@Lorric:
ReplyDeleteI agree that China probably don't quite deserve to be in Pot 1, but they do have 18 wins, 11 draws and only 3 losses since July 2009 (including wins over France, both Koreas, Honduras, Uzbekistan, and three 4th/5th-pot European teams, and draws with Paraguay, Japan, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and Bahrain.)
@anonymous:
In the performance based seeding, AFC ranked teams first by group position, so 3rd-placed Singapore was placed ahead of 4th-place China.
@Alex: ah... OK.
ReplyDelete@Alex
ReplyDeleteThanks again!