2014 World Cup Update: Taking a Look at the Draws

Last week, the draw for the qualifiers of the 2014 World Cup took place. This was after some regions held initial qualifying rounds among their minnows. Thanks mostly to action in Asia, the potential pool of teams is now down to 175 nations (from 207). For more details on the overall qualification process, see this post. You can also see the results for these rounds on my pages for Asia and North America.

So what to make of the draw? Let’s break it down, region-by-region.

AFC

The Asian Football Confederation started with 43 teams and is now, after two rounds of competition, down to 20. None of the teams from the first round advanced to the third, and the only thing that could really be termed an “upset” is Indonesia defeating Turkmenistan.

Broadly speaking, a “group of death” is unlikely to occur even in the third round of this competition. There are 5 groups, and all the highest ranked teams remaining were therefore drawn into separate groups. However, there are potentials for surprises. The 2010 World Cup teams received byes to the third round, however, they were seeded according to their current FIFA Ranking. Japan, Australia, and South Korea retain their top spots as the highest ranked teams in the region, but Bahrain and North Korea each ended up in pots 3 and 4. (Taking their place in the top 5 seeds were Iran and China.)

The top two of each group advance to the fourth round, and all the top seeds will be sure bets to advance. The most interesting draw is probably Group E, with Iran, controversial 2022 World Cup hosts Qatar, and 2010 qualifier Bahrain, along with Indonesia.

In the fourth round, the remaining 10 teams are divided into two pools of 5. This seeding has not occurred yet, but whichever group only gets one of the top three teams will be much easier for the remaining teams to qualify out of. The top two teams from each group qualifies for the World Cup Final, and the 3rd place teams playoff for the right to advance to the Inter-Confederation Playoff. In contrast to 2010, the draw for the Inter-Confederation Playoffs already took place, and so in November 2013 the AFC will face off against the 5th place South American team. Generally, this is not a desirable matchup, but lots can change between now and 2013.

CAF

The Confederation of African Football has not begun qualifying yet. 52 nations will compete, with the teams ranked 29th to 52nd playing the first round. This first round begins in November, and features 12 home-and-away matches.

The winners of the first round advance to the second round, where all 40 remaining teams are divided up in to 10 groups of 4. The winner of each of these groups advances to the third round, where the 10 teams will be paired in 5 home-and-away matches. The winners advance directly to the World Cup.

I personally think this format is, well, not that great. It sounds more exciting I’m sure but I generally like table-based systems that reward the top teams over a longer period of time.

A quick overview of the groups shows the other problems with 10 groups of 4. For reasons I’m not sure I completely understand, Burkina Faso is the 4th ranked team in CAF, higher than Nigeria, Senegal, and Algeria. I have a hard time believing this, resulting in Group E likely being the most volatile group, with the other seeded teams being Gabon, Niger, and the winner of a first round matchup involving Sao Tome and Pricipe versus the Congo. Group A may also be tight, due to South Africa likely being vastly overrated.

UEFA

Europe has 53 teams competing for 53 bids. The qualifying format is simple. There are eight groups of six teams and one group of five teams. The nine winners advance directly to the world cup, and the eight best second place teams playoff for the remaining spots. (You may recall France’s controversial win over Ireland in 2009, which took place in one of these playoffs.)

A quick rundown of each group:

  • Group A: Croatia and Serbia duke it out for the top spot. Belgium and Scotland may make threatening noises. The minnows here are Macedonia and Wales, though at least the Wales-Scotland games may be interesting for a rare competitive match between the Home Nations.
  • Group B: If Italy has regained any of their former mojo this group is theirs to lose. If not, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria all figure to make things interesting. Armenia and Malta (as in, the tiny island) round out the group.
  • Group C: Zee Germans are probably locks to win this one, resulting in a knife-fight between Sweden and Ireland for second place. Austria is also a possibility. The Faroe Islands and Kazakhstan, not so much.
  • Group D: 2010 runner-up, the Netherlands, should be able to take care of business, as should Turkey for second place. Hungary and Romania are the other two teams worth mentioning, but for the sake of completeness let’s also point out the other two teams are Estonia and Andorra.
  • Group E: This may be the tightest group on paper. Norway is the highest ranked team, but both Slovenia and Switzerland played in the 2010 World Cup. Three teams that could easily qualify, but again there are only two slots. The real victims here are probably Albania, Cyprus, and Iceland.
  • Group F: Portugal and 2018 hosts Russia will finish in the top two, the only question is in what order. Israel is also in this group, probably sailing to a comfortable third over Northern Ireland, Azerbaijan, and Luxembourg.
  • Group G: I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one go according to seed. This has to be a dream draw for the Greeks, as they’ll face Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithunia, Latvia, and Liectenstein.
  • Group H: Tell you what: England had better win this group. However, there are some plucky teams vying for second and a possible upset in the forms of Montenegro, the Ukraine, and Poland. Also here is Moldova, and the national team from one of the world’s smallest countries, San Marino.
  • Group I: The current World Champions, Spain, are here. France is also, but luckily for them, the rest of the group is Belarus, Georgia, and Finland. 

You may’ve noticed that one group has one less team than all the others, so matches against the last place teams in the other groups don’t count in determining the best group runner-up.

CONCACAF

Thanks to the US being here, this is probably the region I know the most about. 35 teams entered the competition, however, 5 teams have already been eliminated in the first round. The five winners and the other 19 teams ranked 7th through 25th are now divvied up into six groups of 4. The only one of these groups that is likely to not go according to see is Group E. Grenada is higher in the FIFA rankings but Guatemala trounced them 4-0 at the Gold Cup, and I would say from a subjective viewpoint is better overall.

The third round is where CONCACAF’s big boys (Mexico and the US) enter, along with fellow 2010 World Cup qualifier Honduras, plus the next three highest ranked teams (Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Cuba). If everything goes according to seed (except for Group E), the three groups will look like this:

  • Group A: US, Jamaica, Group E winner (likely Guatemala), Group F winner (Haiti)
  • Group B: Mexico, Costa Rica, Group A winner (El Savador), Group B winner (Trinidad and Tobago)
  • Group C: Honduras, Cuba, Group C winner (Panama), Group D winner (Canada)

Group C should be the most interesting of these three, unless the US or Mexico really screw up. The top two teams from each group then proceed to the fourth round, the a six team round-robin known as the Hexagonal. The top three teams automatically qualify for the World Cup finals, while the 4th place team plays a home-and-home playoff against the OFC qualifier (which will almost certainly be New Zealand).

CONMEBOL

South America’s qualification is as simple as it gets. Nine teams play a round-robin series of home-and-home matches. The top four teams qualify for the World Cup, and the 5th place team will face the playoff winner from the AFC. Brazil, as the hosts, are automatically qualified and will not participate. CONMEBOL did not lose any slots though, so this is a great opportunity some of the weaker teams in this region to get to the promised land. The remaining 9 are: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezual.

OFC

Last, and frankly, least is Oceania.With the departure of Australia after the 2002 World Cup, this region is New Zealand and bunch of tiny Pacific islands. There are only 10 FIFA members in the region, and if New Zealand doesn’t win the qualification tournament it would be a major upset. Anyway, the first round features the four lowest ranked teams (Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, and American Somoa) facing off in a single round-robin tournament, with the winner advancing to Group A in the second round along with Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tahiti. Group B consists of Fiji, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. This at the 2012 OFC Nations Cup, so this is also a single round-robin. Finally, in the third round the remaining 4 teams will be play a double-round robin with the winner playing the 4th place team from CONCACAF for a spot in the World Cup.

And there you have it. There’ll be more news later this fall as more qualification rounds get under way, but after I update the AFC and CONCACAF pages I’ll be focusing my efforts on American football. So until then.

Humanitarian Bowl Brings Back the Roots of Bowl Game Sponsors

The headline isn’t a pun, I swear. Especially since potatoes are tubers, not roots.

“What do potatoes have to do with anything?” you say. Well, I’ll tell you. The Humanitarian Bowl is now the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Heck, I don’t even like baked potatoes but this logo is delicious:

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that one of the great traditions of bowl games is that most of the old ones were named after agricultural products. The Orange and Sugar date to 1934, and the Cotton to 1936. And of course, the bowl game in Atlanta on December 31st should still rightfully be the Peach Bowl. Also in the recent past were the Tangerine and Citrus Bowls.

And with that kind of agricultural heritage, this annual WAC-MAC tilt is obviously destined for greatness.

Joe Posnanski Hits the Nail on the Head re: College Sports

This article states something I’ve thought about for the last year or so far more eloquently than I can. Here are the quotes I agree with the most:

Ask yourself this: What would happen if tomorrow every single player on the Auburn football team quit and re-formed as a professional team called the Birmingham Bandits. Who would go to their games? Anyone? How much would those talented young men get paid?

Ask yourself this: What would happen if all the ACC basketball schools dropped their players and replaced them with Division II talent? Would North Carolina-Duke suddenly play in empty arenas?

[…]

College football is not popular because of the stars. College football is popular because of that first word. Take away the college part, add in money, and you are left with professional minor league football and a developmental basketball league. See how many people go watch that.

The 2014 World Cup is Underway

Well, sort of.

Two weeks ago qualifying began for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. If you’ve paid any attention to the site at all the past few years, you may’ve seen the detail I paid to the qualifying rounds of the 2010 World Cup. In my opinion, that is part of what makes the tournament so great – it’s not just a tournament of 32 teams, it’s really a tournament that features nearly every FIFA member in the world – 204 out of 207, in fact.

For those unaware, I will first explain the qualification structure.

All FIFA members are organized into six confederations which roughly correspond the continents: CONCACAF (North and Central America), CONMEBOL (South America), UEFA (Europe), AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa), and the OFC (Oceania). For 2014, the bids are allocated thusly:

  • UEFA: 13 bids (out of 53 entrants)
  • CAF: 5 bids (out of 53)
  • AFC: 4.5 bids (out of 43)
  • CONMEBOL: 4.5 bids (out of 10; also Brazil qualifies automatically as hosts of the 2014 World Cup)
  • CONCACAF: 3.5 bids (out of 35)
  • OFC: 0.5 bids (out of 11)

All the whole number bids are direct entrants into the World Cup Finals – so UEFA gets 13 direct qualifiers, CONCACAF gets 3, and the OFC gets none. What are the half bids? The four half-bids will be contested in November 2013 for the final two spots in the World Cup. In a change from years past, this year on July 30th FIFA will draw which confederations will be matched against each other. (In 2010, the CONCACAF qualifier (Costa Rica) faced off against the CONMEBOL qualifier (Uruguay).)

Membership in the confederations is not fixed, and on occasion teams will move around. The two most notable examples are probably Israel (which switched from the AFC to UEFA) and Australia (which moved from the OFC to AFC prior to the 2010 World Cup cycle). The Israel move was for political reasons (the rest of the Middle East is in the AFC), and the Australia move was for competitive reasons (the only other sizable and competitive country in the OFC is New Zealand, the other countries are mostly remote Pacific micronations).

As you might’ve guessed, UEFA and CONMEBOL are the strongest confederations, and in fact no other confederation has ever produced a winner (or a runner-up, for that matter).

So, given that, how is the draw determined? Well, each confederation determines how to divvy up their bids. CONMEBOL’s is the simplest: all nine teams (Brazil is in automatically as hosts) will play a home-and-home double round-robin, and the top four teams get the automatic bid. Others, however, are more complicated. UEFA will draw eight groups of six teams and one group of five, with the nine winners advancing directly to the World Cup and the eight runners-up contesting among themselves for the final four spots. That’s still relatively simple, the other confederations have multiple rounds of tournaments.

One such tournament has already begun. In CONCACAF, Belize beat Montserrat 5-2 on June 15th, officially beginning the preliminaries of the 2014 World Cup. Unfortunately, four days later the Belize national football federation was suspended by FIFA, and unless the situation is resolved before July 10th the second leg will not take place (which would result in Montserrat going through automatically). The AFC will begin its qualifying tomorrow, however, with eight matches taking place. In fact, the AFC will be a veritable hub of World Cup activity over the next month, as the first and second rounds take place and the initial 43 teams whittled down to 20.

To help keep track of this action, I’ve created two sets of graphics that help visualize what is going on. First, for the AFC you can easily the first and second round pairings in every American’s favorite tournament abstraction, the bracket. (Of course, this being soccer all pairings are home-and-home, so each represents two games and the winner is decided on aggregate.) I’ve also made one for CONCACAF. I’ve used images instead of tables here to help show the individual early match ups and also to facilitate inling these brackets elsewhere. I may do one for the other confederations, though the other confederations make use mostly of drawn-out round-robin tournaments. Also, CAF and the OFC won’t begin their processes until next year, and the draws for these events have not yet taken place. (UEFA will start even later, as they are currently contesting their qualifiers for the 2012 Euro Cup.) I will update the brackets I’ve already made, of course, as action on the pitch warrants.

And speaking of “on the pitch”, it’s nice to be talking about FIFA and soccer again in that context, isn’t it?

On Baseball Realignment

So realignment is suddenly in the news again, as rumors of the possibility have begun to surface.

The article cited above talks about having two 15-team leagues and eliminating divisions. This would be a radical departure for baseball, which has featured divisional play since 1969, and in addition would require a team switching leagues, which has only happened once in modern baseball, when the Brewers moved to the NL in 1998 to accommodate the expansion Rays and Diamondbacks. (Wikipedia actually says baseball at that the considered doing two 15-team leagues then, but ultimately decided not to due to various issues.)

Currently, baseball is organized into two leagues with three divisions each. This setup originates from expansion in 1969, when both leagues expanded from 12 to 14 teams and instituted two divisions of 7 teams each. Those divisions would remain in place until 1994. Since then, other changes have taken place due to further expansion, giving us our current format or 14 teams in the American League and 16 teams in the National League.

You may be wondering why there’s still two separate leagues in the first place, which is another artifact of baseball history. Until 1999, the AL and NL were indeed separate organizations – hence why one league has slightly different rules than the other. That’s why a generic term for the top level of professional baseball is the major leagues – the AL and NL together represent the two top level baseball leagues. This is in contrast to the myriad minor leagues and independent leagues. (As a side note, some consider the post-World War II Pacific Coast League the only modern third major league, but any notion of the PCL being on the same level as the as the AL and NL was squashed when the Giants and Dodgers moved west in 1954.)

So are there any problems with the current setup? Well, yes. One of the issues baseball has struggled with since realignment is the idea of the balanced schedule versus the unbalanced schedule. Currently, teams play an unbalanced schedule, which means that they will generally play teams within their division more than teams without. I know the Braves’ schedule the best, so I’ll use them as an example: they’ll play most of the teams within their division 19 times this year, and most of the teams outside their division 6 times this year. (Remember, most teams play each other in 3 game series.)

There are pros and cons to each style. The nice part about the current format is that it places a strong emphasis on winning your division. There are 4 playoff berths in each league, 3 of which go to the division winners. The downside is that the wild card is then very wild, as a team’s overall record will depend much more on the teams within their division. The balanced schedule fixes that issue, but then the divisions are just arbitrary splits because everyone plays he same schedule.

One way to settle this is at the heart of the current rumor, that is, just eliminate the divisions altogether and award playoff spots to the top four teams. There are problems with this proposal as well, though. To me, this raises the question of “why bother to have playoffs at all?” After all, if everyone plays each other 11+ times, I’d say you have a pretty good idea who the best teams are in each league at the end of the end of the season. (Of course, that doesn’t seem to stop the NBA and NHL, where half of the teams make an entirely too long postseason after a reasonably long regular season.) Also, having divisions gives each team something to play for and “win” – after all, baseball is about the grind moreso than other sports, and home field does not confer nearly as significant an advantage, so what in reality is the difference between the top four seeds in a postseason tournament? Sure, the difference between the first and fourth place teams may be large, but the difference between each seedline is not going to be that great, so what is the incentive to try to build a team that wins the games necessary for first and the game necessary to win fourth? This plan could potentially ruin the regular season.

The other problem is with an odd number of teams in each league, you are also then forced to have an interleague series all year long. I don’t really have an inherent problem with this, and this could be easily solved by not having anyone switch leagues. (Though, if you asked me, I would say the Brewers should switch back to the AL.)

Of course, is there any room for realignment and keeping divisions? Sure. Unfortunately, the ideal solution would be for each league to have 18 teams so each division could have 6 teams, but further expansion is almost certainly not on the table. I have some other ideas, that would probably involve massive league switching, but I think if more than one team switches league that also raises the taboo discussion of the designed hitter. Otherwise, we’re just talking about trivial fixes, like having the Pirates switch to the NL East so they’re in the same division as Phillies.

So what’s going to happen? Well, nothing probably. But baseball fans love to talk about this stuff, and it makes for an interesting discussion as we try to predict what baseball will look like in the future.