Frankly, I don’t know whether the pre-qualifying question is particularly meaningful, at least as it concerns Liechtenstein’s development as a team. The draw with Portugal was superb, but surely if they’re limited to a pool of no more than 500 players in the entire country, simple lack of innate talent is going to trouble their advancement far more than inexperience. Ursus, I take your point about a team like Hungary, but Hungary has a population nearly 300 times the size of Liechtenstein’s, and I would think that simple genetic dispersal would give Liechtenstein a much lower ceiling of potential. I agree with you about the principle, I’m just not sure it matters for a team like this.

That’s one more reason to cheer for them, though, and I look forward to doing so whenever I get my hands on the movie…

I also disagree about pre-qualifying. Teams like Lichtenstein deserve the chance to improve by playing better opposition. And the question of just where one would draw a pre-qualifying line is a difficult one in practice. Are Lichtenstein, for instance, really that much worse than say, Hungary? And were you not to include a meaningful number of clubs, is the resulting marginal improvement in the overall quality of groups and a reduction of two qualifiers really worth sacrificing the principle?