European WC Qualifying Is A Joke

VS.

In the mod­ern world of foot­ball, Europe is the most pow­er­ful con­fed­er­a­tion in FIFA and its a shame that FIFA’s most pow­er­ful con­fed­er­a­tion doesn’t lead the way in how it runs its World Cup qualification.

When it comes to World Cup qual­i­fy­ing, Europe can look to other FIFA con­fed­er­a­tions on how it should be done. Let’s be hon­est the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for Europe is ridicu­lous and an absolute joke. CONCACAF has 35 FIFA mem­ber nations, Asia has 43, and Europe & Africa each have 53 FIFA nations, and yet UEFA lumps all its teams in 8 or 9 groups instead of fol­low­ing the rest of the world’s exam­ple of mul­ti­ple rounds to knock­out the smaller teams.

Its ridicu­lous that teams like Italy, Eng­land, Spain, and Nether­lands get a free 12 points in the final stage of qual­i­fy­ing against sides like Faroe Islands, San Marino, Malta, and Andorra. When a con­fed­er­a­tion has more than 30+ mem­bers there has to be mul­ti­ple rounds of elim­i­na­tion to weed out the lesser teams and test the depth of the bet­ter teams.

The inten­sity of inter­est in Euro­pean qual­i­fy­ing is dulled by the fact that Por­tu­gal can remain alive in qual­i­fy­ing with a win against Malta. MALTA! That’s just ridicu­lous, that’s the rea­son why Euro­pean World Cup qual­i­fy­ing is the least inter­est­ing and one of the eas­i­est. France was in seri­ous trou­ble in qual­i­fy­ing but they pulled them­selves into a play­off by beat­ing the Faroe Islands and Lithua­nia, HA, 2 soc­cer giants for sure.

CONCACAF con­structed its qual­i­fi­ca­tion so that its 6 best teams fight for its 3 auto­matic spots. Asia can shave its 43 mem­bers down to 10 in the final stage and Africa’s for­mat lead­ing to 5 groups has led to high drama and new faces in The Great Tour­na­ment. Its a sim­ple solu­tion. Europe has 13 spots, cre­ate a final round with 6 groups of 4 teams each. Top 2 in each group advance to the World Cup along with the best 3rd place team.

UEFA needs to learn from Asia, Africa, and CONMEBOL and insti­tute mul­ti­ple qual­i­fy­ing rounds to elim­i­nate the smaller nations. Nar­row­ing the teams down to 6 groups of 4 teams each would gen­er­ate more inter­est­ing matchups and thus more excite­ment in Euro­pean qual­i­fy­ing. Because right now its a joke.