Preliminary Round for UEFA qualification zone

ILikeBananas

The North American, African, Asian and Oceanic football associations all have preliminary rounds in order to weed out the weakest teams before later group stages determine who qualifies for the World Cup.

Europe and South America do not hold preliminary rounds. In the case of the South Americans this would be unnecessary since they only have 10 teams and all of them are relatively competitive (or have been in the past).

In Europe though, this is not the case. There are 53 nations in UEFA and some of these countries are perennial whipping boys who, due to their small populations, will never be competitive.

There isn't many positives gained from matches between these countries and the larger countries. For the larger countries these fixtures are lose-lose scenarios. If they win well, they get no credit and if they don't win or just manage to scrape a victory they get huge criticism. Goal difference isn't the primary means of separating tied teams anymore so these games against the minnows don't even serve a purpose in this regard. Instead they clog up the fixture list and often make for poor viewing spectacles.

For the small teams their only hope really is to nick a point here or there but for the very worst of them it's to just keep the scoreline respectable.

I believe there is an argument for introducing a preliminary set of seeded home and away play-offs for perhaps the 10 lowest ranked teams. For the recent World Cup draw this would have meant:

Seeded: Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Wales, Liechtenstein, Iceland

Unseeded: Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Malta, Andorra, San Marino

Obviously in the above, Wales stick out but then they probably would advance to the group stages easily enough and so UEFA wouldn't have to worry about losing a 'bigger' team.

UEFA could then organise a second-tier tournament for the five losers in order to give them an opportunity to play competitive football with the chance of some silverware.

This could also be adopted for European Championships qualification.

SantryRed

No way. How do teams get better if they only get 2 games in a qualification campaign? What do they do for the 2 years if they're out in the pre-lim stage?

ArmaniJeanss

UEFA's policy of 'everyone has an equal chance' is one of the best things about it. Leave well alone.

briany

I'd say players from the bigger teams would be for it because it would mean not having to travel to far flung places like the Faroes or Kazakhstan. On the other hand, these teams usually represent good, oftentimes valuable point-fodder for a mid level team like Ireland. It's something that UEFA have probably looked at, weighed up the angles on and said "......No".

ILikeBananas

SantryRed wrote: »

No way. How do teams get better if they only get 2 games in a qualification campaign? What do they do for the 2 years if they're out in the pre-lim stage?

Of the 5 bottom ranked teams 4 have tiny populations. They simply do not have the pool of players to ever get up to a level that would make them anyway competitive.

Faroe Islands, I believe are a great example of a team who are getting the maximum return from their tiny population. And where did it get them? 4 points and bottom place in the group. I think Brian Kerr realised that he couldn't do any more with them which led to his decision to quit.

Simply put if the current format stays the same way for 100 years these teams will still be minnows.

v3ttel

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

UEFA's policy of 'everyone has an equal chance' is one of the best things about it. Leave well alone.

Every has an equal chance?

If top seeds in a group finish second in qualifying, they are given a second advantage by being seeded for the playoffs.The rigging of the playoffs by UEFA/FIFA is completely farcical, even if it worked in our favour this time. Far from equal, having the odds completely stacked for certain countries. Not only do they have the best teams, but also they get every advantage going.

The smaller nations are never going to improve by not playing, getting points on the board is like their World Cup/Euros. Why alienate a bunch of countries and completely kill football there? It doesn't make sense.

losthorizon

The remit of FIFA is to Promote Football and to help football so I think these countrys should be allowed compete the same as everyone else.

In the 50s Ireland would have been in Danger of being at this level.


BTW I think Kazakhstan has the potential to become a fairly big force in European football.

Look at Montengro last night - they pushed the Czech Rep. all the way yet its a tiny country with a poulation of less than a million. Yets its stilll handy in football, basketball and handball.

ILikeBananas

losthorizon wrote: »

In the 50s Ireland would have been in Danger of being at this level.


BTW I think Kazakhstan has the potential to become a fairly big force in European football.

Look at Montengro last night - they pushed the Czech Rep. all the way yet its a tiny country with a poulation of less than a million. Yets its stilll handy in football, basketball and handball.

I agree with all of this. Montenegro's achievements are colossal given that their population is only 625,000. And with a population of over 16 million the Kazakhs certainly have plenty of potential if they spend some of their oil and gas money in developing their football.

However the teams that I'm specifically referring to are dwarfed by even Montenegro. Let's look at the populations:

Andorra - 84,000
Liechtenstein - 36,000
Faroe Islands - 49,000
San Marino -31,000

And remember that these teams could still win the play-offs and get to the group stages. And if not as I said in the OP UEFA should organise a tournament amongst themselves so that they are not cast into the wilderness.

The best chance the very weakest teams have of improving is by playing teams that are only slightly better than them. If they are playing teams who are far too good for them then they're not going to benefit from these games, apart from perhaps learning how to play a 9-0-1 formation effectively.

_blank_

ILikeBananas wrote: »

The best chance the very weakest teams have of improving is by playing teams that are only slightly better than them. If they are playing teams who are far too good for them then they're not going to benefit from these games, apart from perhaps learning how to play a 9-0-1 formation effectively.

This is the clincher here for me.

At the moment, the bottom two pots only play one other team on average once a year from in and around the same level as them in a competitive fixture, this is not a good way to measure improvement, or even to encourage improvement, when in 80% of your other fixtures you are starting out with six or seven defenders, two holding midfielders and a lone striker who is not so much a footballer as a tall lad with broad shoulders who might hold up 5% of the hoofs up to him, basically these teams are in damage limitation mode from the get go.

I think that there should be a two year cycle implemended, with "promotion" and "relegation" the Pot 1 and Pot 2 group.

Lump all of these teams into a league, or even two round-robin groups, then at the end, promote the two group winners and relegate the two lowest ranked teams from the actual qualifier groups.

They all get to play each other and develop, and even win games - winning competitive is as important in development as tactical and skill development, teams also have to learn how to win.

Now, it does mean that most of these teams don't get a chance to qualify for the tournament (Euro/WC) which is taking place in 2 years from now, but it DOES give them a 4 year developmental program.

Seeded: Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Wales, Liechtenstein, Iceland

Unseeded: Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Malta, Andorra, San Marino

Take San Marino, in the first two year cycle they could plan to be competitive in games against Andorra and Luxembourg in group games, maybe pick up max points at home, and draws away, and losing to Azrbaijan and Wales - then in the next cycle try and better that by maybe taking max points in all games against the other unseeded teams in their group, and maybe a home draw against the seeded teams - this is the kind of continual, year on year improvement that can be planned, coached and developed, eventually leading to maybe becoming good enough to firstly move up a pot, and then top a group and get "promotion"

I also thing FIFA have a role to play here, in that they could maybe organise some kind of parallel World Event to encompass and encourage the smaller, lower ranked teams that at least one of these two-year cycles could be the qualification route to.

ArmaniJeanss

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

UEFA's policy of 'everyone has an equal chance' is one of the best things about it. Leave well alone.

Rooney10 wrote: »

Every has an equal chance?

If top seeds in a group finish second in qualifying, they are given a second advantage by being seeded for the playoffs.The rigging of the playoffs by UEFA/FIFA is completely farcical, even if it worked in our favour this time. Far from equal, having the odds completely stacked for certain countries. Not only do they have the best teams, but also they get every advantage going.

OK then, bar the fact that there is seeding to overcome everyone has an equal chance.

But everyone has an equal number of games, home and away, with the same time between games, no marquee teams given automatic qualification. Basically UEFA does everything right that for example the Rugby people do wrong.

Thats what I meant by 'everyone has an equal chance', and I'd hate to see UEFA abandon this.

***********
The merit of playoff seedings is a different debate - personally I've heard very few complain about seedings in the final tournament itself, or in the initial qualifiers, so why there is such a ballyhoo about them in the playoffs I don't know. Probably best kept to one of the other 27 threads about it though.

tolosenc

I think, like Des said, that by playing teams of their own standard regularly, the minnows will be able to gradually build up some level of competitiveness. What does San Marino gain from being tonked by Moldova?

Given that TV revenue sharing has come in, they wouldn't even be at a disadvantage. It;s important that a second tier officially competitve competition is put in place for them, though.

aidan24326

Of those ten teams, only Andorra and San Marino tend to get really spanked on a regular basis. The others are at least reasonably competitive in at least some of their games. The Faroes have had a couple of notable results in recent years, drawing 2-2 with Scotland and beating Estonia this time are two that spring to mind.

But overall I like the promotion/relegation setup. That gives those teams competitive games at their own level while ensuring that the improvers get rewarded with a step up to the real qualifiers, while we get to avoid ridiculous results like Germany 13-0 San Marino, as much as possible.

Dotrel

I'm in favour of a preliminary league. For one thing you could create proper group numbers so that this ridiculous play-off system can be scrapped.

Teams like San Marino and Andorra are just wasting peoples time. I don't buy into the "how will they improve" if they don't get games. Come back in 50 years time and you'll still see them parking 10 behind the ball and losing practically every single qualifier.

I'm not against encouraging the wealer teams to improve. Ireland used to be whipping boys in groups all the up to the 1970's and now we're going to another finals. However there's certain teams out there that are never going to get their act together and the rest of us shouldn't have to sit thru games against them when they're clearly 1000 miles off the pace.

ILikeBananas

Watching San Marino and Gibraltar tonight has been painful. These teams really shouldn't be playing at this level.

Diabhal Beag

Can we stick Ireland in there too after the Germany game?

dreamers75

What do the teams you dont like do after the pre lim qualifying is over?

Its fine as it is, they get 10 competitive games over 2 years.

ILikeBananas

dreamers75 wrote: »

What do the teams you dont like do after the pre lim qualifying is over?

Its fine as it is, they get 10 competitive games over 2 years.

As stated in the OP they go into a separate competition amongst themselves. Give them competitive matches and something to potentially win.

ArmaniJeanss

2020 qualifying and its UEFA Nations League divisional element is probably a step towards what the OP wants.
Gives the weaker nations more games against each other, whilst still putting them all into the main draw. Everyones a winner.

Rikand

dreamers75 wrote: »

What do the teams you dont like do after the pre lim qualifying is over?

Its fine as it is, they get 10 competitive games over 2 years.

I presume you re using the term "competitive" loosely

losthorizon

Turkey used to be woeful at international football level.

Indeed I remember England beating them 8-0 at one stage in the 1980s.

Now, they are a fairly useful side.

Cyprus although not great at a club level were fairly crap but constant competition has improved their league standard.

Its crazy as someone suggested to put Kazakhstan into a preliminary round - its a massive nation who can but only improve.

Last night was only Gibs second competitive game. While I'm sure they will never be world beaters I would be fairly confident they will improve. Qualities of different nations go up and down all the time.

I mean in nearly 100 years of competing in the Euros, the World Cup and the Olympics we have never won the competition maybe there is a better argument of why we compete in it at all? If we havent won it now its likely we never will.

Mint Sauce

ILikeBananas wrote: »

Watching San Marino and Gibraltar tonight has been painful. These teams really shouldn't be playing at this level.

Do you not remember San Marino only losing 2-1 to Ireland under Stan, or scoring in the first 30 seconds against England, who couldn't even beat them by the required number of goals to qualify for a WC.

These teams may be extremely poor, but do occasionally get chances, and give moments of entertainment, even Gibraltar got a couple of corners last night, and wouldn't have surprised me if scored.

losthorizon

ILikeBananas wrote: »

The North American, African, Asian and Oceanic football associations all have preliminary rounds in order to weed out the weakest teams before later group stages determine who qualifies for the World Cup.

Europe and South America do not hold preliminary rounds. In the case of the South Americans this would be unnecessary since they only have 10 teams and all of them are relatively competitive (or have been in the past).

In Europe though, this is not the case. There are 53 nations in UEFA and some of these countries are perennial whipping boys who, due to their small populations, will never be competitive.

There isn't many positives gained from matches between these countries and the larger countries. For the larger countries these fixtures are lose-lose scenarios. If they win well, they get no credit and if they don't win or just manage to scrape a victory they get huge criticism. Goal difference isn't the primary means of separating tied teams anymore so these games against the minnows don't even serve a purpose in this regard. Instead they clog up the fixture list and often make for poor viewing spectacles.

For the small teams their only hope really is to nick a point here or there but for the very worst of them it's to just keep the scoreline respectable.

I believe there is an argument for introducing a preliminary set of seeded home and away play-offs for perhaps the 10 lowest ranked teams. For the recent World Cup draw this would have meant:

Seeded: Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Wales, Liechtenstein, Iceland

Unseeded: Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Malta, Andorra, San Marino

Obviously in the above, Wales stick out but then they probably would advance to the group stages easily enough and so UEFA wouldn't have to worry about losing a 'bigger' team.

UEFA could then organise a second-tier tournament for the five losers in order to give them an opportunity to play competitive football with the chance of some silverware.

This could also be adopted for European Championships qualification.

Why would you want to put Azerbaijan into a preliminary round when they didnt even finish last in their last world cup qualifying group for the 2014 world cup. Heck, they didnt even finish second last. They finished in the exact same position in their group as we did ours. Seems a bit harsh. You dont have Cyprus there but they finished last in their group.

Everyone knows international rations are not really to be believed.

UEFA club co-efficients are much more believable but not the international rankings.

For instance, Liechtenstein are fairly Ok but its ironic that FC Vaduz the main club in that country are waaaay bettter than the national team for various reasons. So I would dread the day a LOI club would meet Vaduz and get beaten because most people don't understand the situation there.

When they say Football is a funny old game it really is.

Liechtenstein (30,000 versus India 1 billion plus people). My moneys on Liechtenstein.

TheCitizen

SantryRed wrote: »

No way. How do teams get better if they only get 2 games in a qualification campaign? What do they do for the 2 years if they're out in the pre-lim stage?

They can play in a different level competition if they fail to make it through the preliminary stage. I was told today that Gibraltor has played Jersey 8 times over recent years with Jersey winning 7 out of the 8.

Green Giant

1990: Faroe Islands 1-0 Austria
2004: Liechtenstein 2-2 Portugal, Andorra 1-0 Macedonia
2006: Malta 2-1 Hungary
2008: Switzerland 1-2 Luxembourg

Would any of these results have happened if the 'weaker' nations were dumped into a preliminary stage? While admittedly such results are rarer than hen's teeth, they still constitute massive achievements for the Maltas and Andorras of this world. Why should they be denied a crack at stronger teams because of a fear that they might be embarrassed?

Thankfully I didn't have to add 2007: San Marino 1-1 Ireland to the above list!

CSF

I would prefer if this didn't happen. In the same way that I'm not a giant fan of seedings.

Mint Sauce

Do people still think ireland should be in the pre lims now.

Brussels Sprout

losthorizon wrote: »

Why would you want to put Azerbaijan into a preliminary round when they didnt even finish last in their last world cup qualifying group for the 2014 world cup. Heck, they didnt even finish second last. They finished in the exact same position in their group as we did ours. Seems a bit harsh. You dont have Cyprus there but they finished last in their group.

The OP is nearly 3 years old. It was written prior to the World Cup qualification taking place Those teams were the lowest ranked teams in UEFA at that time. Presumably Cyprus were ranked above the bottom 10 but went on to have a poor campaign.

If Azerbaijan had a decent enough team then they would have had nothing to worry about in a preliminary round as they'd have most likely won thereby ending up in the main draw anyway.

losthorizon

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

The OP is nearly 3 years old. It was written prior to the World Cup qualification taking place Those teams were the lowest ranked teams in UEFA at that time. Presumably Cyprus were ranked above the bottom 10 but went on to have a poor campaign.

If Azerbaijan had a decent enough team then they would have had nothing to worry about in a preliminary round as they'd have most likely won thereby ending up in the main draw anyway.

So that would leave Iceland instead who beat Holland 2-0 last night - seems a bit harsh.

Its not like years ago when weak teams were weak teams - nations do improve nowadays. Mainly because any well organised team can do well to a certain extent.

ILikeBananas

losthorizon wrote: »

Its crazy as someone suggested to put Kazakhstan into a preliminary round - its a massive nation who can but only improve.

Why is it crazy to put them in a preliminary round? If they beat some other team in that then they'd make it through to the main draw. It's not like they're being banished with no hope of progressing.

The champion's of Ireland don't go straight into the group stages of the Champion's league. In fact that scenario is far tougher for the smaller teams because they have to come through numerous rounds and if they lose in the early rounds then they're finished.

In my suggestion it'd just be one round (a 2 legged play-off) and if you lose that then you go into some sort of tournament with the other losing play-off countries. (It could be a round-robin group that runs in parallel with the main groups with a trophy for the winner)

ILikeBananas

losthorizon wrote: »

So that would leave Iceland instead who beat Holland 2-0 last night - seems a bit harsh.

Its not like years ago when weak teams were weak teams - nations do improve nowadays. Mainly because any well organised team can do well to a certain extent.

And no doubt Iceland would win handily thus entering the main draw

roanoke

Whilst the arguments of the occasional shock result or the right to gain experience have some merit, I think you have to draw the line somewhere.

Take the likes of San Marino. They've been at it 20 years now and their results really show no sign of improvement. They're something like 0W-2D-113L at the moment.

Even their 'nearly result' against Ireland back in 2006 was more down to the Ireland team being shambolic that day rather than San Marino doing anything remarkable.

I don't think have this team losing every game year on year is doing them any favors or teaching them anything. A preliminary tournament might actually benefit them.

ArmaniJeanss

One thing a lot of the minnows have going for them (Gibraltar, Andorra, San Marino, Liechstenstein, Malta) is they are nice cheap sunny welcoming places for the away fans, always a decent idea for a 3 or 4 day break in October or March.
Keep them for this alone imo, and try not to get Kazahk as your 6th seed team.

On a less facetious note, 3 years after posting this I'm still 100% of the same opinion, quite unusual for me.

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

UEFA's policy of 'everyone has an equal chance' is one of the best things about it. Leave well alone.

ShaneU

Diabhal Beag wrote: »

Can we stick Ireland in there too after the Germany game?

No