In fairness UEFA have tried to address it as well with the nation's league but people have whinged about that too, despite it addressing the two of the biggest issues of international football (other being the amount of friendlies). That competition is still in it's infancy and I'm sure the plan is for it to replace the traditional qualifying in its entirety. They just need to (imo) ensure a way that prevents the entire top division qualifying by default. Edit - I think I quoted your wrong post.
Yeah but nations league only added to calendar not taking away pointless thrashing. The nations league does put weaker nations in their groups but they then allow a 3rd game in the international break for another friendly to flog players totally
Yeah I agree that it will work better once it's completely replaced the qualifying and friendlies can be limited to pre tournament only (for those who consistently qualify for them at least). I do believe that will happen and I believe FIFA have spoken out about following suit with their own version of it so hopefully they can work towards the same. If we get the above and throw in longer (and therefore less) international breaks then it'd be a huge improvement. Knowing them though they'll and up ****ing it up with this world cup nonsense.
I think personally they need to seriously think about the structures. England have played 10 games to qualify for this tournament. they have actually played 4 real games. draw 2, won 2. albania, Andorra and san marino??? at best one of these 3 should be in group having prequalified. that's 4 games and two international breaks that could be removed straight away with no impact to quality of the qualifying. why should England get ranking points beating san Marino when brazil play Argentina instead for example. Same in South America they actually play 18 bloody games in The world cup qualifiers. They could easily split into 2 gouprs by rankings and play 9 games plus a play off somehwere for the 3rd or 4th places teams against each other. halves the amount of games. simple. If they want more "tournaments" in each 4 years and flog players all summer then they have to take away somewhere else.
2022 FIFA World Cup qualification - Wikipedia Not sure I understand this, but basically Scotland and Wales are seeded, so they won't face Portugal or Italy unless or until they win their one-off game against an unseeded side. So six seeded teams play a one-off tie at home against six unseeded. The six that are left will play three one-off 'finals' at neutral grounds, leaving three qualifiers. They add to the ten automatic, group topping qualifiers to form UEFA's 13 places. I think. Still don't know why Israel didn't qualify as an unseeded play-off team from their group though, as they finished above Austria. Then again, Israel isn't in Europe anyway.
I have absolutely no idea how any of it works - nor the will to find out. They explained it in detail several times during the last Wales game - in Welsh, so I understood about 3 words.
Well if the finishes top they’d go straight through and if they finished second they’d have been seeded for the play off
It won't be long before a university somewhere starts offering a degree in Football Fixtures, Analysis and The Impact on International Relations, Economy and Competition - or something like that ......
