When I’m in charge of world football…

…This how it will be.

Teams like Luxembourg and the Faroe Islands really shouldn’t be playing in world cup qualifying groups with teams like Spain and Germany (although they could probably give England a run for their money).  It’s not good for the sport that certain teams are habitually thumped, yet on the rare occasions they do manage to get a result it will be meaningless because it is one of many group games they have to play.

To solve this I would make the world cup more like the FA cup – basically a straight knock-out.

Here is how it would work:

The first and second rounds would take place some time prior to the finals, as the qualification stages do now.  The top 100 teams in the FIFA world rankings would be joined in a draw by 20 teams that had qualified from the remainder (of which there are currently 107).  These teams would be drawn against each other with no seeding or other preference – If Brazil have to play Kazakhstan away, too bad, thats where they play.  The 60 winners of this round would be drawn for the second round, of which 30 would emerge.

These teams would go to play in the finals along with the current champions and the host nation.  The finals would be much like they are at the moment – with one nation hosting a month or so of games – except that it would be a straight knock-out with no group stages.

This would make all games vitally important – an upset would be amazing/fatal, depending on whether you were the underdog or not.  No more pointless drubbings, and “good” teams are punished for being below par if they don’t manage to win.

I’m not sure how the qualification for the lower ranked teams would work.  I think group stages would be fine here, as it means that teams would get plenty of experience actually playing competitive matches rather than being thrashed most of the time.  It would give them something worth playing for, rather than attempting merely to minimise the scale of defeat, and teams around about the 100th rank would be scrapping like cats in a bag to get an automatic qualification spot.

Of course it won’t happen because (a) it would mean fewer games and hence less revenue; and (b) actually the current system isn’t broke enough to warrant such a massive overhaul.  I still think it would be fun though.

Just don’t get me started on international cricket…

Sports Report

Yesterday evening a match of Association Football was undertaken between eleven gentlemen representing the United States of America and eleven gentlemen representing England.  Both sets of gentlemen each scored one goal.

Scurrilous rumours that the company formerly known as British Petroleum had, on behalf of the English gentlemen, attempted to sap American morale by deliberately spilling considerable quantities of oil on large stretches of American coastline were unfounded.