Possible? Yes.
Complicated? Yes.
Pot 1: Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Belgium, Uruguay, Switzerland
Pot 2: Netherlands, Italy, England, Chile, USA, Portugal, Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Pot 3: Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Russia, France, Ecuador, Ghana, Mexico, Costa Rica
Pot 4: Algeria, Nigeria, Honduras, Japan, Iran, Korea Republic, Australia, Cameroon
Pot 1: draw all the seeds and assign them to groups
Pot 2: there are teams from UEFA, CONMEBOL and CONCACAF. The draw algorithm goes like this:
- if it's an UEFA team it will go to the first available group with a CONMEBOL seed (if Chile were't drawn yet) or to the first available group (if Chile were drawn)
- if it's Chile (the only CONMEBOL team in the pot) it will go to the first available group with an UEFA seed
- no restriction for the USA
Pot 3: teams from CAF, UEFA, CONMEBOL and CONCACAF
- Côte d'Ivoire/Ghana will go the first group available team with an CONMEBOL seed or two UEFA teams or USA's group
- Ecuador will go to the first available group with no CONMEBOL team
- the European teams can only be drawn into a group with at most one other UEFA team
- Mexico and Costa Rica can't be drawn in USA's group
Pot 4: teams from CAF, CONCACAF and AFC
- Asian teams will go to the first available group with a CONCACAF or CAF team
- Honduras can't be drawn in the same group with USA, Mexico or Costa Rica - it will go the first available group with no CONCACAF team
- African teams can't be drawn in the same group with Côte d'Ivoire/Ghana - they will go the first available group with no CAF team
Using the order from the official draw, these would have been the groups:
Group A: Brazil, Netherlands, Croatia, Nigeria
Group B: Spain, Chile, Costa Rica, Korea Republic
Group C: Colombia, Italy, Russia, Cameroon
Group D: Uruguay, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Honduras
Group E: Switzerland, England, Ecuador, Australia
Group F: Argentina, Greece, Ghana, Japan
Group G: Germany, USA, Côte d'Ivoire, Iran
Group H: Belgium, Portugal, Mexico, Algeria
With all teams being seeded, what the closest to the official draw result can be archived?
ReplyDeleteLast two world cups, you could switch just two or three pairs of teams and get a draw possible with complete seeding. How about this time?
Swap Italy and France
DeleteSwap Costa Rica and Iran
Swap Croatia and Netherlands
Swap USA and Korea Republic
It's a great idea and one that FIFA should deploy. The "geographic" pots are flawed as there is often large differences in quality within the pots, plus it prevents (for example) the chance for a North American team to play an Asian team. The draw above has a better balance than the official draw although Brazil wouldn't be so pleased! Plus Group E looks even weaker than the real one! The biggest problem was Switzerland sneaking into the Top 8 based on an easy qualifying group and a couple of good friendly wins.
ReplyDeletehttp://fog2014.blogspot.ie/2014/07/world-cup-seeding-blunder.html
DeleteNot sure my reply posted, so trying again.
FIFA sometimes actually calculate the strength factor (T) of the points calculations based on the opponents ranking 3-6 months after the date of the match. If the opponent raises in the rankings before FIFA add the match then the team in my opinion will receive too many points based on the spirit/rules of the FIFA calculations.
Hi David,
DeleteQuite busy @ the office. Will have a look and post my opinion next Friday.
David,
Deletealthough I don't think you can call it 'a seeding blunder' as FIFA applied their seeding-rules (top-7 of the October 2013 ranking + Brazil are seeded) correctly, I do think you have a very valid point here.
It is in my opinion an undefendable assumption that in case a match is included at a later moment in the FIFA ranking calculation for whatever reason, the opponents' strength is suddenly taken from the ranking at the moment of this decision instead of the prevailing ranking at the moment the match was played.
You have found a perfect example of the, in this case far-stretching, consequences of this weird and seemingly irrelevant assumption and illustrated it clearly. Well done.
FIFA needs to abandon this strange assumption and calculate with the obvious/logical ranking.
By the way, positions for countries which are tied on rounded points in the ranking are decided by unrounded points. So Italy would have been seventh and thus seeded.
DeleteThough one can not state that with 100% certainty as because of your spotted anomaly (and several other cases where FIFA acted in the same strange manner) more ranking-positions of teams might have been changed leading to all kinds of changes in FIFA ranking points for the involved teams, leading to different ranking positions in the next month's ranking, leading to etc. etc.
The only way to be 100% sure is to calculate everything again from the first strange FIFA-act and who would know when that was. Edgar, do you perhaps know ?
That was in March 2008, when FIFA added the matches Denmark played against Honduras and USA more than one year ago (in January 2007). I've recomputed all the rankings since then, using the ranking at the date the match was played (as opposed to the ranking when the match was added) and the 2014 seeds were unchanged.
DeleteWell done. I had a suspicion already, because the difference between Switzerland and Italy was only 0.01 point. It could easily fall the other, original way round as it apparently did.
DeleteBut still the assumption is illogical and needs to be abandoned asap imo.
Thanks Ed and Edgar! You have confirmed my opinion that FIFA are doing something strange/weird/unfair. Plus you have gone that extra further! I did wonder what the overall effect of all these FIFA 'blunders' would be, but didnt have the where with all to calculate it. Thank you.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTahiti seeded in the finals, really?
DeleteJames, please see my point below regarding the seeding. I think seeding the host, holder and continental champion would be reasonable, but my main point is to make the qualifiers truly global, while making sure that each confederation has at least one spot. If desirable, the seeding could instead be based entirely on the FIFA world rankings.
DeleteI think you have thought your idea out well and that the current system does need some form of an overhaul, but adding that amount of travel into an already congested domestic schedule would be problematic and the major European clubs wouldn't buy into it.
DeletePersonally, with respect to Oceania, I think the winner of that section should join the final Asian round of qualification. This will at least enable them to get some competitive football rather than having a long wait and then playing a difficult 2-leg affair with the likes of Uruguay or Mexico. As for other global play-offs, I think a Pan-American play-off between Concacaf 4th and Conmebol 6th makes sense. I actually think FIFA have the continental slots more or less correct based on current strengths. My main issue is that their rankings and methods of "potting" teams for the Finals draw is flawed to say the least. It shouldn't be that hard to get 8 evenly balanced groups in the finals and yet, for the umpteenth time, they have screwed it up (either by accident or design, depending on whether people believe the conspiracy theories!)
Thank you for your feedback James, and please see my comments below.
DeleteI have a completely new suggestion for how to handle the World Cup qualifying (and seeding). The idea is to maintain a truly global competition with participation from all 6 confederations, but also base the representation from each confederation on performance rather than politics. So here are the high level suggestions:
ReplyDeleteHost, holder and contintental champion to qualify directly, thus ensuring each confederation has at least one participant.
This leaves 24 additional spots for global qualifiers: 16 groups of 6 teams, where winner of each group qualifies and the runner-up qualifies for a play-off against another runner-up.
In the final tournament, the continental champions+holders+hosts would be seeded in pot 1, the top 8 group winners in pot 2, the 8 worst group winners in pot 3 and the eight play-off winners in pot 4.
I agree the biggest obstacle for global qualifiers would be travel cost. However, I think it would create a much more fair and transparent qualification process. Some additional details:
Assuming the directly qualified teams would be those who qualified for the confederations cup in 2013, i.e. Spain, Uruguay, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Japan and Tahiti, the 16 groups could look something like
GrA Tys Pan Per UAE Tog Qat
GrB Arg Ven CpV Bol Mor Lit
GrC Col Arm Egy Zam Bul Geo
GrD Por Sco Hon Uzb Sle Cub
GrE Swi Iran Tur Irl Pol Ben
GrF Ned Rom Hun Sen Gab Lib
GrG Bel CR Mal Jor Trt Bot
GrH Gre Ser Aut Fin Hai Mol
Gr I Eng Sln Tun Isr Jam Azer
GrJ USA CzR Ice Saf Bel Est
GrK Chi Swe Cam Gui CDR Eth
GrL Cro Alg Par Slk Mac CPR
GrM IvC Den Mnt Lib Con ElS
GrN Ucr Ghn Bfa Aus Oma NyZ
GrO Bos Ecu Cor Alb Uga Nir
GrP Fra Rus Nor Wal Sau Ang
An obvious question is what would happen to the remaining 105 teams currently included in the FIFA world rankings. Here I would suggest dividing them into 16 groups in division B, where the winner gets to qualify for a place in division A for the next cycle, while the runner-up gets to play-off for a place in division A. In the same way, teams in division A that finish last would be relegated to division B, while teams in division A who finish fifth would get to play-off against the runner-ups in division B. The final issue is how to select the 96+8 teams to join division A for the first cycle. One idea would be to for the world cup qualifiers for Russia 2018, in addition to finding 31 teams to join Russia, have 42 spots for qualification to division A and an additional 46 spots that would play-off for the final 23 spots. For Qatar 2022 division A would then consist of 32+42+23=97 teams (including the 2018 world champion who would qualify directly for Qatar 2022), plus Qatar and the 6 continental champions (who would along with the 2018 world champion would qualify directly for Qatar 2022). Hence, a total of 104 teams, of which 8 would qualify directly and 96 would compete for the remaining 24 spots as described above.
What do people think?
Fredrik, as a football fan I think it's a good idea. I always enjoyed the concept of global qualifiers.
DeleteAs you mentioned the first two problems are: politics and costs.
The OFC winner should be invited to the next AFC Nations Cup.
I received a question about the Oceania winner being seeded. The main point is however not the seeding, but having a truly global nature of the qualifiers, without endless political discussions about how many spots each confederation deserves. If desirable the final seeding could be done completely based on the FIFA world rankings, though I would prefer the scheme outlined above.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your constructive feed-back James. You are right that the major European clubs could have objections, but don't they always when it comes to international football? With my format, the number of games would not increase and there may at most two games that are far away. E.g. England according to the hypothetic scenario above would still have three opponents from UEFA. Also, some stars from e.g. South America based in Europe would be playing away games in Europe. With current format, there threats from Blatter (increasing participations from weaker continents for political reasons) and Platini's even more worrying proposal of increasing the number of teams to 40. Regarding current seeding, I think all 32 teams being seeded based on world rankings, as explained by Edgar above, would be an improvement over today's procedure. Having said that I think that basing the top seeds on world rankings is much more fair than basing it on FIFA politics as was the case in the bast.
ReplyDeleteJames DJanuary 3, 2014 at 11:38 PM
I think you have thought your idea out well and that the current system does need some form of an overhaul, but adding that amount of travel into an already congested domestic schedule would be problematic and the major European clubs wouldn't buy into it.
Personally, with respect to Oceania, I think the winner of that section should join the final Asian round of qualification. This will at least enable them to get some competitive football rather than having a long wait and then playing a difficult 2-leg affair with the likes of Uruguay or Mexico. As for other global play-offs, I think a Pan-American play-off between Concacaf 4th and Conmebol 6th makes sense. I actually think FIFA have the continental slots more or less correct based on current strengths. My main issue is that their rankings and methods of "potting" teams for the Finals draw is flawed to say the least. It shouldn't be that hard to get 8 evenly balanced groups in the finals and yet, for the umpteenth time, they have screwed it up (either by accident or design, depending on whether people believe the conspiracy theories!)
I think confederations should considering merging together. CONCACAF and CONMEBOL should merge into one big American confederation, and AFC and OFC should merge also. With only 4 confederations the seeding procedures for the WorldCup could be a lot easier, regardless of the procedure of seeding and drawing the countries.
ReplyDeleteWith 4 confederations, the numder of WC-berths could be: Europe 13, America 8, Africa 5, Asia & Oceania 5.