Match Day Thread Toon General Matchday Thread

Strange, they have before. Must be just some fans are being windy.

 

Eaten too many baked beans?

 

Thinks that's just @Sheikh_of_Araby

 

@Mick O'Toon is going to have a rough Monday

 

Magdad is blind

 

GodAlmighty isn't though

 

Big Nick strikes again.

 

Howes not playing him properly. Thats why he’s struggling in our team.

Nah just kidding. Clearly we need Wissa next to him but will we play 4-4-2?

 

And just to clarify, by 'strikes', I mean scores a goal, not 'doing an Isak'.

 

Who’s that?

 

So let me get this straight. The likes of Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey have to get to the World Cup via a qualifying play off.

Meanwhile already confirmed World Cup “teams” include Curacao, Uzbekistan, Cape Verde, Jordan and Haiti.

Make it make sense.

 

It’s not complicated. Countries throughout the world belong to regional affiliations. FIFA assign a certain number of places in World Cup Finals to regional affiliations and they then decide how they want to assign those places. Some split them into various groups (e.g. UEFA, Concacaf) and winners go through with runners up playing off. Others put them in one big group (Conmebol) and assign places to number of teams based on finishing position.

Italy, Denmark etc didn’t win their groups so have to play off. Curacao, Cape Verde etc won their groups so go through directly.

If you wanted to assign places on merit you could put all ~200 teams in one big group and play say 20 games at random and assign top 48 teams to next World Cup Finals based on finishing position. However it could bankrupt some of the smaller countries and also add greatly to carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

I like to see the smaller countries represented in the finals even if one of them is Scotland.

 

Also, more intern breaks would be required than present to have such a system. Never thought I'd see the day Roly would advocate more international breaks.

 

Don’t twist it! I don’t care enough to put thought into it, but maybe back to bigger groups but without home and away, pre-group qualifiers for smaller nations to improve the calibre in the groups.

I’m not pro-Italy, for example, but what is the point in the teams I’ve mentioned earlier even going? You surely want a tournament where the best compete with each other? It seems uefa have tried to do that with the UCL but FIFA have gone the other way.

 

Its where the smaller nations through their organisations are dictating what happens.
Infatino is making promises to, in football quality terms, the smaller confederations to get their votes to enable him to be elected. That promise is greater participation in big tournaments eg the World Cup.
Its really as simple as that.