FIFA Ensure World Cup Play-offs System Favours the Big Fish
Image by footyfactor.com
What happens when Sepp Blatter and his cronies see millions of dollars and plenty of prestige in danger of disappearing? They change the system.
That’s the conclusion drawn by many after FIFA last night announced they were altering their planned World Cup 2010 qualification play-offs system to seed teams based on their FIFA world rankings, a decision which clearly favours the traditionally strong nations.
The One Team in Ireland blog responds by calling it U-Turn by FIFA to benefit the more successful teams, many of whom have surprisingly fallen into the likelihood of having to go through the play-offs system.
By using the FIFA rankings to seed the play-offs into two pots of four teams, it’s much less likely that (say) France would have to play Germany and much more likely they’d play (say) Ireland.
From FIFA’s report on their Executive Committee deliberations, it’s not clear that FIFA actually changed any procedures — people had just presumed they were not seeding the play-offs as they had never stated they were going to until last night.
FIFA will argue that the World Cup final group stage is seeded in part based on FIFA ranking, thus making this seeding consistent with that.
But either way, by only announcing this now, the motivation for the ruling is open to the obvious interpretation taken by many that FIFA is fixing it for the big fish. To avoid this in future, FIFA ought to state the full procedures and rules for all parts of World Cup qualification before the qualification tournament begins. To announce such a key deliberation ruling at this stage shows very little concern for even the image of FIFA or the tournament, as it’s so easily taken as being done to benefit the bigger teams.
So we have another strike against Sepp Blatter and his complete disregard for even bothering to pretend to care about transparency and fairness.
Update: A reader has pointed out the 2006 World Cup play-offs were similarly seeded — whilst this supports FIFA’s precedent, it makes it even more bizarre that FIFA didn’t announce they were following that precedent again in the first place. Again, why the need for such a lack of transparency?
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Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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- FIFA’s casual approach to the rules demeans the World Cup draw
A completely shambolic way of dealing with things. Sadly, from FIFA, this is no surprise. It’s a scandal that the world’s most popular sport is administered so badly, particularly at the highest level.
I am sickened by the lack of “fair play” in the corridors of FIFA. I’m horrified but sadly not surprised, we are talking about Sepp Blatter here. But I have to give it to the chap on this one! The hypocrisy of this announcement takes it to another level. Since he came to power in 1998 he saw himself as the Robin Hood of the footballing world, well kind of. In fairness to him and FIFA, they have given millions to small, poorer nations to improve their facilities and help them to get their act together. I think it’s no surprise that under Blatter’s time, teams like Honduras, El Salvador, Bosnia to name a few have come on leaps from where they were 7 or 8 years ago. It’s not a coincidence that with the help of FIFA’s money and support that Venezuela has gone from being the laughing stock of South American football to a well respected team in the space of 3 years and could even qualify for the world cup!!!
This is why I am so dumbfounded on the play-off announcement. FIFA preach that football is for “everybody” but we now know it’s for “everybody” with a big powerful nation with lots of money and lots of friends in FIFA! To be honest I would prefer to see Russia, France, Germany and Portugal in the world cup then Bosnia, Hungary, Latvia and Northern Ireland. But that’s not the point it’s all about fairness and a “big” team finishing 2nd should be treated the same as a “small” team who finished 2nd as well. What’s the point on helping the small nations out and when their on the verge of something great pulling the rug underneath them. Why punish Bosnia and Rep of Ireland for being professional and consistent and reward France and Portugal for having a “car crash” of a campaign.
An open draw would be the democratic thing to do but this football and sadly football is a democracy. A world cup without France, Germany and Argentina would be a disaster for FIFA but if the don’t qualify for the finals they don’t deserve to go it’s crazy I even have to say that. Look at England in 2008 and 1994, Holland in 2002 and France in 1994.
Fair enough if Ireland gets France and Bosnia draws Russia then ok because that’s fair and everyone can live with that. But to change the system solely to help undeserving, sluggish big teams that’s not on Mr. Blatter.
Shame on you !!!
Is it really any surprise that Blatter has zero sense of how to communicate with the general public? Overall the system is fair, the main issue is that it was just revealed now rather than before the qualifiers. Once again Blatter demonstrates that while his ideas and direction are usually for the good, he lacks any sense of communication.