OT - Question concerning Regional Allotments for World Cup
Help me understand how allotments for each region is chosen. Or more to the point, how will this world cup results change the allotments for the next world cup? Does that fact that France and Italy bowed out so horribly cut down on the amount of European allotments next time around. South America has been kicking butts, does this mean they will get more slots in four years? If the U.S. and Mexico keep winning, does North Central America get more than three teams in the tournament? How does it work? Thanks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup_qualification
Only looked it up because I didn't know either and the above link could be wrong, as it's just a wikipedia entry
It is really just a FIFA decision with give/take bargaining done by the various federations. For 2014 the numbers, which are already set, will look just about how they did for 2010 with 13 from Europe, 5 from Africa, 5 from Asia, 5 or 6 from South America (with the borderline team having to playoff against a team from another federation), etc.
Things at this point seem pretty stable and it would take consistent dominance or failure by one group (don't forget that all the semi-finalists in 2006 came from Europe) to change the numbers more than a spot or two.
That being said, it certainly helps perception every time the US and/or Mexico advance to the knockout rounds.
If one person can lift the bag of money to give to Sepp Blatter, I'm pretty sure he doesn't care. Once you start talking about a fork truck worth of money, then he'll listen.
It has a lot to do to with the # of teams in under each confederation, South América only have 10 countries and they get 4 1/2 allotments, FIFA is lucky that the next WC will be hosted by Brazil so with them automatically qualified there will be between 5 or 6 out of 10 south american teams, the 1/2 allotment is a game that the 5th place out of the qualifiers will have to play against the 4th place from the CONCACAF zone, and i guess it's about right, CONCACAF only had 3 allotments until recently when we were awarded half a ticket due to good perfomances, UEFA has 14 allotments if i'm not mistaken, but they have no less than 35 teams under their confederation, powerful teams like Turkey or Russia were left out, so i don't think that would change either (Plus UEFA has a lot of power within FIFA), i guess the problem this time could be that South Africa is the home team, they were automatically qualified, and they're mediocre at best, so that took out 1 spot and i'm not really sure wich confederation was left out without an allotment, the african confederation has 5 allotments +1 this year, if a zone is going to take a reduction of allotments i'd be sure it's Africa, they are at home and they have stunk so far...