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Friday, July 29, 2011

OFC and sporting reasons

In Oceania, the four lowest-ranked Member Associations (based on the FIFA/Coca-Cola Ranking of July 2011, and for sporting reasons) will contest Round One.


Source: FIFA.com

The four lowest-ranked teams in OFC are: Tonga (192), Cook Islands (195), American Samoa (203) and Papua New Guinea (unranked). However, Papua New Guinea were given a bye to Round Two - being placed in second pot, at the expense at Samoa (7th in OFC).

Wikipedia says Round One will probably be staged by Samoa (no reference though) and probably that's what "sporting reasons" means.

Thanks Andrew Culshaw for pointing this out.

About me:

Christian, husband, father x 3, programmer, Romanian. Started the blog in March 2007. Quit in April 2018. You can find me on LinkedIn.

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5 comments:

  1. LorricJuly 29, 2011 at 1:58 PM

    Perhaps you're right about sporting reasons. I took it to translate to "because these teams will get crushed, so we need to weed them out without embarrassing the region."

    ReplyDelete
  2. jonnyJuly 30, 2011 at 2:33 PM

    SAMOA FA : "This first stage is scheduled will be hosted by Samoa from the 21 to the 26 November 2011."

    http://www.footballsamoa.ws/News/ViewArticle/tabid/1064/Article/15480a62-aef0-478b-982a-114fb67d35ab/language/en-US/Default.aspx

    ReplyDelete
  3. AlexAugust 1, 2011 at 4:13 AM

    Samoa as Round One host is also mentioned in this FIFA document.

    ReplyDelete
  4. EdgarAugust 5, 2011 at 10:47 AM

    Thanks guys!

    ReplyDelete
  5. AlexAugust 11, 2011 at 12:13 PM

    At Nic's suggestion, I'm posting a link here to some additional discussion in another thread which relates to this topic. The relevant posts (which start on July 30) discuss PNG, their team strength, and their bye to Round 2.

    Link

    ReplyDelete