Yes, the play-offs exist mainly as a back-up guarantee for England, France & co., not to whittle down an unwieldy number of minnows. As I explained above, UEFA could comfortably have 60-65 teams in its qualifiers without either a) overloading the fixture list, b) excluding anyone, or c) significantly changing most teams' chances of progress.
Survival of the fittest eh? Except maybe not. One of the best encouragements to improved standards is better investment in facilities, coaches etc. If San Marino never progress through pre-qualifying, they're unlikely to find the money for those improvements.And if the minnows want more competitive games, it would encourage them to improve their standards
There isn't for teams (like Guinea-Bissau, say) who only played two games in African qualifying for 2010, losing 1-0 on aggregate to Sierra Leone. After G-B and a couple of other minnows departed, there were two further group stages to reduce 48 to 20 and thus to five. In other words, far too many unnecessary games. Many of them could have been avoided if everyone had a full group's fixtures, and then they used play-offs at the end instead. But as above, of course Africa's (relatively) big boys like Europe's have to be protected.Because they can see the idiocy of too many games. There is far too much football already!
Is that really going to happen? The African Cup in June would be crazy, not to mention a Qatar finals...Plus there's that thing about imminent synchronization of all the international football fixtures all into fixed slots in the calendar
Whatever you think of Gibraltar, it obviously isn't part of either England or Spain. How is England having their own team any more of a joke than it ever was, given that other non-sovereign countries (Faeroes) and tax havens effectively run from nearby bigger states (Liechtenstein, Andorra) have joined recently?Because they're just another pointless colonial outpost...part of Britain and their 'overseas territories'.
Not especially picking on the Brits, but them having 4 teams is now a joke
The hosts, not a problem. They get one of Europe's 13 places. I don't agree with holders getting a bye- each tournament is self-contained. Although having won one you'll almost certainly be top-seeded for the next. What's disgraceful about it?what happens to the hosts? Plus it's a disgrace that the previous winners of any tournament don't get a bye to the next Finals IMO. Or some sort of advantage in kind
I've explained above that- for the purpose of a qualifying tournament if nothing else- they could easily manage 12 more countries, nearly an extra 25%!Except there are now too many countries in Europe
Israel wouldn't, the AFC won't have them. Turkey straddles both Europe and Asia, what's the problem? You could have an equally arbitrary criterion than only peninsular European countries get inThey could start by kicking out Israel, Turkey and the the Kazakhs. Europe doesn't need them. And the first two would find it easier to qualify through Asia anyway
No, I think the analogy's fair, although I could have explained more fully. The FA Cup third round is roughly analagous to UEFA national qualifying in that San Marino have an equal chance of drawing any one of 45 teams, just like Spain, or almost like Donny who are as likely to get ManU at that stage as Chelsea are.Bad analogy. ManU have played Chelsea far more than they'll ever play Donny or other teams from the lower reaches of the top two divisions
Whereas if San Marino are relegated to pre-qualifying, they'll almost certainly never get out of it regardless of whether UEFA has 53 or 65 members.
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