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After England’s rather easy wins against Andorra and Kazakhstan, there have been many calls for a pre-qualifying tournament. I've been saying this for a while as despite the 4-0 and 6-0 victories, there was a nagging air of inevitability and even boredom about both games. Thinking it through, I believe that the following system could be useful for the next European Championship or World Cup.
The bottom 16 ranked teams after 2010 qualifying should take part in two separate straight knockout competitions for three places in the main group stage. The two winners of both sides of the draw would qualify automatically, with the two losing teams playing off to join them. By taking 16 out, that leaves 37 European nations plus the three pre-qualified teams, making for a simple main draw of eight groups of five to follow the normal format.
By my reckoning the 16 teams would be something like: Albania, Malta, Luxembourg, Moldova, San Marino, Azerbaijan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Andorra, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Montenegro and Iceland.
Now there’s no doubt these are the whipping boys and only allowing them a few places in the main qualifying draw would limit the number of pointless games, while increasing the competitiveness of the main groups and even giving the minnows something to aim for.
What’s more, it would allow them to celebrate a win every now and again, something which is a rare commodity for these teams against much stronger opposition. There would also be the fact that they would gain more ranking points and by winning games would increase their stake for a place in the main draw.
Preliminaries already take place in every other continental zone, with South America even going so far as shunting their lesser sides into CONCACAF. So the question remains why would a similar system not work here?
The answer lies with two of the things that are inherently wrong with the modern game.
1) Money: The smaller countries’ Football Associations are unlikely to vote in favour of losing out on potentially money spinning ties against major nations. We all saw the furore surrounding England’s arrival in Almaty recently and this huge publicity and capital potential is a major factor in participating in qualifying despite not having a hope in hell of progression.
2) Sepp Blatter: Good ol’ uncle Sepp, as head of FIFA he would ultimately have final say on proceedings and would predictably veto any move to change the system. This would be for one reason and one reason alone – his own selfishness. Whilst the minor nations may not bring any pedigree, skill, exposure or history to the footballing table, they do hold one precious commodity - a FIFA vote. Blatter, who loves to be the big man in charge, is hardly likely to throw away 16 of his precious votes.
The idea of a pre-qualification system would work well in Europe, just like it does elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately it would appear that it won’t be happening in our lifetime, so many more mind-numbingly pointless 90 minutes await us for the foreseeable future. Great.
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1. rafi, usa
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In Euro 08 qualifying Portugal was held to 1-1 draw with Armenia , and Armenia beat Poland 1-0. |
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2. Rob, Newcastle
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They will finish in the bottom 16 ranked whatever though. A couple of freak results won't change that. |
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