Cape Verde

Great for nations like Cape Verde, but wow there's going to be some god awful games at the World Cup next year. For anyone out the loop on the next one, they have increased it from 32 teams to 48. So far there are 22 teams that have officially qualified and they include Cape Verde, Iran, Jordan & Uzbekistan.

With 3 of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq and Qatar to close out the Asian part of qualifying. In Africa, Benin look like they are in a good spot to qualify with Congo and Burkina Faso in the 4 team play offs. Still too early to tell with Concacaf but if it ended today Suriname and Curacao would qualify. Basically, every group in the WC next year will have a team that's there for an absolute crushing, even Scotland should qualify!

Watching Sky Sports news yesterday and they were saying there is a UEFA idea on the table to scrap qualifying and have a big group table like the Champions League. So rather than splitting it into 10 groups, all 50 odd teams would be in one table and you'd play 8 games against teams of a different ranking, every team would play 2 games against top ranked sides, 2 the next block down, so on so on.

 

Cape Verde 1, Scotland 0. Calling it now (If Scotland qualify).

 

They are the second smallest in terms of population to have qualified for a WC Finals

 

I really don't see how a swiss model for qualifying will help especially for the world cup, keeping 12 automatic places would mean you only have to finish top 12 to qualify and there would be no incentive to finish 1st or 12th so you'll still have plenty of dead games. It would go along the same lines as the South America qualifying where teams are qualified or as good as qualified with lots of games to spare. If they did 8 games there's a good chance 12 points would be enough so teams could be qualified as still have.

Also if it was like the Champions League with teams playing a team from each pot home and away there would be huge differences in the top and bottom of pots. If we split UEFA into 4 then teams could face Spain and France from pot 1 and other team plays Austria and Ukraine. Pot 4 would be Kazakhstan at the top and San Marino at the bottom. For your top nations it won't make a difference but for the teams just outside that like Wales and Scotland their chances will be hugely impacted by the luck of the draw.

 

Yeah i dont see how it would benefit or change to the current ways anyway, but it means 2 extra games across the continent and 2 extra earners for UEFA, so i wouldn't be surprised if they want to go for it. There's no easy way to have 50+ teams run a fair and exciting qualifying campaign, when the drop off between even the top 20 or so and the next 20 or so with the talent drop that it currently is. World Cup are Euros qualifying is largely a bore-fest and there aren't many fun ways to make Andorra and the likes feel like they have a shot.

 

So does the dynamic pricing model go through the roof if Cape Verde tickets are needed?

 

Yeah about same number as living in Bradford

 

Iceland are the smallest apparently