Five teams came and four remain from CONMEBOL, the South American football conference. Thirteen teams came from UEFA, the European football conference and three remain. What can account for the differences?
I believe the key lies not only in the quality of the players (bear in mind that one third of the players on Inter Milan’s squad come from Brazil or Argentina, four each), but also the qualification process. While the comparison may be unfair, the ten CONMEBOL teams play two games against each other and while there are minnows in this conference (Venezuela has never qualified and Bolivia tries to schedule its home games in La Paz to count on wins), they do all compete against each other.
UEFA, due to the size of the conference, broke its fifty-four team conference into nine groups of six, with a ew competitive teams in the same group against teams such as Andorra, San Marino and the Faeroe Islands. Germany, for example, qualified out of a group that included Russia, Finland, Wales, Liechtenstein and Azerbaijan. Other than Russia, Wales is the only team out of that group that has ever qualified for the World Cup, and they haven’t done so since 1958.
So, what could UEFA do to make the qualification more competitive and perhaps infusing the process with a bit more vigor?
Chad S
Quality of players is part of it(but Spain has as much talent as anyone and haven’t impressed anyone), but also the fields. European soccer fields are cut differently than South American and generally African ones as well(the ones outside of Europe are usually cut shorter for more offense). The Germans have an advantage of being used to the new ball(it was used in the Bundesliga last season) and they’re playing more like a south american team than a defensive european power(which would explain why Holland is doing well also).
As for changing the process, they should do qualification with all the teams randomly drawn into 16 qualification groups and the top 2 teams in each group go to the Cup(instead of the usual 2 matches per pairing, do 3-home/away/neutral).
Mark S.
Oh, I don’t know. Six of the final eight and all four semifinalists in 2006 were from Europe. 2002 wasn’t very glorious for Europe either. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that no European team has won a cup held outside of Europe and only once has a non-European team won a cup held in Europe (Brazil in 1958).
Brazil and Argentina are always good, and Uruguay has a very good team this year. I’m not quite as convinced with Paraguay and Chile.
I’m surprised that Finland has never qualified. Is football not very popular up there?
Randinho
@Chad S: With the exception of Gilberto, who plays for Cruzeiro (not Gilberto Silva) all of the Brazilian players play in Europe.
Most of the Argentinean players play in Europe as well. Also the dimensions of stadia in Brazil such as Mineirao, Maracana and Morumbi are bigger than the Nou Camp, Old Trafford, Emirates Stadium and San Siro, to mention just a few that I looked up on Wikipedia. Indeed, only Stamford Bridge compared to Mineirao and it was still slightly smaller.
Martin
Glenn Beck and Marc Thiessen suggest nuking 44 european countries.
Mark
Take a look at ESPN’s soccer rankings:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/spi/rankings?cc=5901&ver=us
1. Brazil
2. Argentina
3. Spain
4. Holland
5. Germany
6. Uruguay
7. Portugal
8. England
9. Chile
10. Cote D’Ivoire
11. Russia
And the top six are in the group of 8…
Admittedly this gets updated as games are played, but I think the result we got is exactly what we would have expected given the strength of these teams.
Mike
The answer is pretty simple, the tournament’s not in Europe
Randinho
@Mark S.: Since the tournament went to 32 teams, this is the lowest number of European teams that qualified out of group play: six. 1998 and 2006 had ten, 2002 had nine. That’s a significant difference.
Peter J
Not sure if I see a need to change the UEFA qualifications.
Sure, without a doubt, 2010 isn’t looking very good for the UEFA teams.
But during the same kind of qualification these are the results from 1990 to 2006
(number of UEFA teams in each part of the knockoff stages):
1990 10/16 6/8 3/4 1/2
1994 10/16 7/8 3/4 1/2
1998 10/16 6/8 3/4 1/2
2002 9/16 4/8 2/4 1/2
2006 10/16 6/8 4/4 2/2
And in 2010 so far it is:
2010 6/16 3/8
I’m not denying that the South American teams haven’t been good this year, but as I’ve commented before, they got lucky too, except for Brazil-Chile, no South American team will face another South American team until the semifinals (if they advance).
On the other hand, the six UEFA teams advancing from the group stage got unlucky, since there were three UEFA team vs UEFA team matches in the round of 16, thus cutting the number of UEFA teams left in half.
mcd410x
The theory I’m working on is that it’s not so much the quality of the teams as it is the distance traveled to play them.
Europe is small. Half the size of South America. And even Western Europeans teams are notoriously bad at traveling as far as Eastern Europe. Ever hear of Dennis Bergkamp, the non-Flying Dutchman? (Hell, when English club teams play either other, they take the bus!). Most European players play their club football in Europe. They simply don’t travel a lot.
On the other hand, most South American stars play their club football in Europe, too. Which means they have to fly back and forth to South America every time there’s a group of qualifying games. That’s a long way. Uphill, even.
Conclusion: Give the teams an equal distance to travel and South American teams are going to weather the trip more easily.
Mark S.
@Randinho:
Yeah, Europe’s down a bit. I generally think the first tier consists of Germany, Italy, France, England, Spain, Holland, and maybe Portugal. Italy and France stunk up the joint, and England wasn’t far behind.
I didn’t pay much attention to the qualifiers, so I don’t know what happened with some of the second tier, like Sweden, Russia, and Belgium.
Martin
@Mark S.:
I think it might be fair to say that South Americans play, while Europeans act.
Ash Can
@Mark S.: As of the 1980s, when I was last there, the Finns were too busy skiing, playing hockey, and playing some tricked-out version of baseball to bother with soccer. It was just never a very high priority for them.
Peter J
Also, UEFA:s share of the number of teams in the world cup is getting smaller.
In 1990 it was 14 of 24, in 1994 13 of 24, in 1998 15 of 32, in 2002 15 of 32, in 2006 14 of 32, and this year it is 13 of 32.
BGinCHI
Um, obviously, the Euro population is split apart in some areas and not in others.
How much better would Great Britain be? Yugoslavia? USSR?
It’s amazing the Euro teams are doing as well as they are. What’s Portugal’s population?
Point well taken though about a competitive region. It leads to the need for well-organized teams.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Ash Can: Sweden made it to the World Cup final four back in 1994, I believe.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@BGinCHI: Does anyone know why Wales is allowed to qualify as a seperate entity? Imagine if Ryan Giggs had been on some of the more recent English teams. Why don’t the combine them now? England would be a lot better.
BGinCHI
CJ, it’s not really “allowed.” They are fiercely proud of their nation and are undoing the colonial headlock in at least his small way by playing in the int’l game as their own nation. As does Scotland and N Ireland.
It’s kind of a win-lose proposition; obviously Wales loves their team (and I know this well because my Welsh-speaking wife has passwords with “giggs” in various forms), but they are always going to have a hard time against bigger nations.
handsmile
Yikes! I had done my homework on the teams competing in this weekend’s quarterfinal matches, but I did not expect this question to be on the test.
Frankly, this is beyond my competence to offer substantive answers to Randinho’s question. But let me throw out several, perhaps pertinent, observations.
* Like UEFA, both CONCACAF and the Asian Football Federation (acronym?) are composed of many nations with vastly disparate football programs. Such disparity may be attributed to a confluence of factors such as socioeconomic development, demographics, and historico-political traditions. The egalitarian ideal of world football would, and I believe should, foreclose the option of barring these “minnow” nations from participating in international competitions. Moreover, I would suspect that the current qualification process generates significant revenue for these nations, i.e., the economic boon to the Faroe Islands when France visits for a qualifying match or the U.S. invades, I mean plays, Grenada.
* The possibility of reducing the number of UEFA’s qualifying berths to the World Cup could not be seriously entertained given the economic leverage that Western European nations possess through their individual professional leagues/clubs.
* It seems to me that the appearance of Parguay and Uruguay skews the perspective. I would submit that their success at this World Cup was made possible in no small part by the staggering implosion of two perennial football powers, Italy and France. Also, their victories in the Round of 16 came against two competitors from the Asian/Oceania federation of which little was expected in South Africa.
On these matters, I will defer to the football scholars who regularly post on these threads.
wengler
I’m assuming that for Brazil 2014 it will be CONMEBOL getting 4.5 +1(the host) so a team like Ecuador or Colombia will have a good shot of slipping in.
Quite simply a lot of national sides have caught up to Europe. Greece is not better than South Korea. Slovenia is not better than the US. CAF has teams with a lot of talent and AFC has good teams at the top as does CONCACAF. Hell even an Australia-less OFC can go undefeated.
I think UEFA would be better served by going to multiple group stages to determine who qualifies. Andorra and Faroe Islands don’t need to have 12 games to figure out that they aren’t going to the World Cup. Filter down those 54 to 32 and then play 6 home and away games with the 8 group leaders and 4 of the best second place advancing. Then have the 4 worst second places go into a playoff for the final place.
handsmile
@ Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Sweden placed third in the 1994 World Cup, beating Bulgaria (!) for the bronze as it were.
handsmile
Apologies for the boldfaced text and larger point size in my #18 post above. I had simply typed an asterisk before each of three paragraphs, hit the “Submit” button, and look what happened….
PanAmerican
Peter Goldstein (is he writing anywhere this year??) tracked Euro WC performance over the years. When the tourney expands they feast on the noobs but over time the disparity closes. It’s not so so much CONMEBOL vs. UEFA in the knockouts as UEFA sides running up against the likes of Japan and the US in group play.
Mark S.
Sweden has a very respectable record in the World Cup (a second, two thirds, and a fourth). Better than some countries *cough Spain cough*.
Violet
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Telling a Welshman he should play on England’s team will get you in trouble. England, Scotland and Wales play separately in football and rugby. However, they go to the Olympics as Great Britain. This is causing a problem for this upcoming Olympics, as rugby sevens will be included for the first time (or at least the first time in a long time) and they’ll have to field a British team, which they usually don’t do.
Looking forward to the matches tomorrow. I’d better get to bed so I will be halfway awake to watch them.
Tokyokie
How about dividing Europe into four regional pools, (northwest with the British and Scandinavian teams, Mediterranean with Italy, San Marino, Spain and teams along the Adriatic, etc.) Make the number of teams in each pool as equal as possible, then randomly assign two from each pool into a group and let them play some sort of round robin, with the top two teams advancing. (The third- and fourth-place teams would then compete for the remaining UEFA Cup slots.) The larger pools would pretty much mean that every good team would have to play another good team. By dividing Europe up into smaller pools, the odds are greater of handing a team like Germany the easy draw that it had this go-round.
Silver
Size matters too. Remember, Brazil has 200 million people. Argentina has 40 million. Even Chile is slightly larger than Holland.
Konrad
I keep reading about this phenomenon on soccer websites, and I don’t see what the big deal is. Here is the reason why South American teams are doing well this year:
Uruguay is good and Paraguay got lucky.
Brazil and Argentina do decently to great each Cup. Barring burnouts ala Italy 2010, they’re a constant presence in the group stage. So is it a surprise they’re in the quarters this year?
Uruguay has a good team this year, and they haven’t been tested yet. If Uruguay and Brazil had their groups switched pre-tournament, Uruguay would have either not made it or lost to Spain.
Paraguay is even luckier. They got into the softest group in the tournament, and Italy played slow and weak soccer. Paraguay wasn’t inspired or amazing; hell, they tied New Zealand. They were just the least mediocre team in their conference. And they got lucky against Japan. You can’t count on missed penalty kicks in regulation or victory through penalties.
Chile was actually pretty good, too, but even with Spain’s unlucky and unremarkable game against Switzerland, they were still destined to become fodder for Brazil. For what it’s worth, Brazil beat Chile worse than they beat any other team so far.
Thlayli
How sneaky of them, scheduling games in the country’s capital!
Some immigrant guy
To answer the headline question…
Brazil and Argentina, okay, barely any WC goes by when they don’t do well.
Uruguay – two top quality strikers and a well organised defense. Plus they came through a soft qualifying group thanks to France’s non-appearance.
Paraguay – benefited from another soft group, as with Uruguay mainly because the big European nation in their group flopped. (though kudos top you, Randinho, for predicting this!)
Chile – second in the South American group, don’t think it came as a huge surprise that they have been competitive.
Each Euro-flop has it’s own explanation, but it doesn’t add up to an indictment of Uefa as a whole. Uefa is no more responsible for Domenech’s asshattery, Lippi’s geriatrics, Capello’s dysfunctional prima donnas, Loew’s explosive young side or Del Bosque’s possession-gluttons.
I guess in the end it’s a question in the end of how you want to measure the balance of power, but Holland-Brazil and Germany-Argentina this weekend will be taken as important proxy measures. As will the outcome of the tournament as a whole, if Spain end up justifying their tag as pre-tournament favorites, you know how the argument will run.
I suppose it’s fair to say that the traditionally second-tier South American countries have outperformed their Euro-counterparts, and the main question remaining is whose top-tier is the best of the lot.
Paula
@handsmile:
Well, I guess this assumes that both Italy and France will be back up to full strength and expected to contest the next WC. I have no idea what the u-20 situation is in either of those countries.
Sadly, I also wasn’t particularly impressed by Paraguay in their match w/ Japan. Though I doubt that they will roll over for Spain.
As for CONCACAF, the popular theory seems to be that neither USA nor Mexico are getting the kind of competitive play they need to be regulars in the knockout stages of the WC.
Calouste
In addition to everthing said above:
1) This is the first time that a South American team other than Brazil or Argentina made the last 8 since 1978. It’s not like they have been waiting in the wings all that time, just this time Paraguay and Uruguay have good teams and a lucky-ish draw and perform. Don’t think they are massively ahead of Colombia in the 1990s who never got anywhere.
2) The South American qualifying certainly is a test, but the UEFA qualifying was preceded by Euro 2008, which is a decent level tournament. 2 of the 4 semi-finalists from that tournament (Russia and Turkey) and another quarterfinalist (Croatia) didn’t manage to qualify for this World Cup.
And of course there are the Liechtensteins and Andorras, but 17 different teams from Europe have made the semifinals of the World Cup, and another 2 were European Champions. They probably could do with rejigging the qualification, not only to make it more competitive, but also because it is now very dependent on the draw of the groups. The European clubs will never allow the number of international matches that are played in South America, so 12 matches is the maximum really. Probably the way to go is some preliminary round and then 4 groups of 6 or 3 groups of 8. Of course half of the teams qualify from that, so dead matches might be another problem there.
Randy Paul
@Thlayli: The capital with the greatest height about sea level in the world. It’s also one of two capitals in the country as Johanessburg is one of two in South Africa. It aslo happens to be where they beat Argentina 6 to 1 in qualification.
Bootlegger
@Silver: I’m a big believer in the demographic argument. I’ll also give some props to the “Euros don’t travel well” argument. Real Madrid used a 7 hour bus ride as an excuse for crashing out of the Champions League. Finally, the rest of the world is simply catching up and the Euros have the leagues where all the world gets trained up to the same level.
I think this is a good development for world football. Now, if only the US could find its boots.
A Guest
@Paula: CONCACAF and CONMEBOL join forces. Makes a pool with almost the same number of countries as UEFA. Now that’s a spicy qualifying meatball.
A Guest
@Thlayli: They could also do it in Sucre. Which is at just 9,000 feet.
Blue Neponset
I think we are just seeing the results of parity. South America has been a lot more stable in the last 20 years and the global economy now means any South American player can play anywhere he wants. As a result, a South American nation of 16 million (Chile) can compete with a European nation of 16 million (Netherlands).
The day we see Africa achieve parity, Eurpoe will be lucky to have five teams make it out of the group stage.
When that day come I will be curious to see how many qualifying spots Europe loses. Knowing FIFA, they probably won’t lose any spots and the tournament will expand to 64 teams. That may be a good thing.
Frank
I guess you could have asked the same question about South America after the last World Cup, which was dominated by Europe.
Sarcastro
@Mark S.:
I’m surprised that Finland has never qualified. Is football not very popular up there?
For a nation of five million you really have to choose what you’re good at. Finland chose motor sports (and I believe hockey, basketball and netball also beat soccer for popularity there).
The question is why China, India and Indonesia (which account for 40% of the world’s population) don’t even register in international football.
Some immigrant guy
@Randy Paul: We actually have three capitals, but Johannesburg isn’t a one of them. It’s Cape Town, Pretoria and Bloemfontein.
Peter J
Both the US and England are ranked a lot higher than they should be. Consider what these teams were able to do, or rather unable to do, against Slovenia and Algeria, and in the case of the US, against Ghana, all lower ranked teams.
Chad S
@Randinho: Yes, but they grew up playing on Brazilian fields(and played qualifications on SA fields). Brazil is also the only country to cross hemispheres and win a WC title also.
Tractarian
Easy. Make the minnows play an opening qualifying round or two. That way, instead of Finland, Azerbaijan, Wales and Lichtenstein in the same group, you could have, say, just Finland and Wales. This system (giving better teams byes until later rounds) or a variant is in effect in all other confederations aside from CONMEBOL.
Then again, I wouldn’t attribute UEFA’s struggles at this tournament to their qualification system. Instead, I’d say they’re just tired because of the fixture congestion during the European club season. Yes, most of South America’s best players play for European clubs, but a lot of them don’t, and that extra depth is very important in a tournament where you don’t have a lot of rest time in between matches.
Ecks
Looks like someone should have told Brazil about your thesis before they went out against Holland.
Bender
The style of football develops from many factors in a given country, but one is the natural attributes of its players. Northern Europeans are generally the tallest footballers, and so they developed the high-ball, cross-and-head type of soccer. It makes no sense for the generally smaller players of South America (and Italy and Spain to a degree) to cross into the box to 5’5″ strikers, so they have tended to play the intricate passing game along the ground.
The Jabulani ball takes the long-ball out of your playbook unless you are very used it (see Germany). How many free kicks did we see wind up going 15 feet over the bar because of the lightness of Jabulani, especially at altitude? How many crosses went waaaaay over all heads, how many high balls played in went straight to the keeper or over the touch line? These are the best ball-strikers in the world, and we didn’t have goals from distance or free-kicks until the last round of the group-stage games (and still not many). It took awhile for the players to adjust to that superball, and England (which is exclusively a cross-from-the-wings, high-ball team under Capello), France, and Denmark never got untracked offensively.
This doesn’t affect the low-ball clubs nearly so much (Italy should’ve done well with Jabulani, but they were old, unwilling to replace their 2006 heroes), so you have more low-ball passing teams still in the tournament, and the Germans, who played with Jabulani all season (smart move, Bundesliga!).