Wayne Rooney and England may not have to play San Marino again. Credit: Scott Heavey/Getty Images
One of my favorite (or should I say, favourite) radio shows to listen to is the 606 Football Phone-In, on BBC Radio 5 Live.
The show is formatted as a call-in show for fans to complain, or praise, or just speak about their soccer/football teams performances earlier in the day.
During this, and the previous international soccer break, many of the calls have come from England fans saying they should not have to play the likes of San Marino, or Moldova, two countries in England’s World Cup qualifying group. Both countries are near the bottom of the UEFA (European football governing body) rankings, and have never qualified for a World Cup or European Cup.
And though all Three Lions’ fans believe their team isn’t ever good enough, they’d rather play matches against the bigger and better countries, instead of waste their time with the minnows of the region.
While I completely disagree with the notion that the small countries shouldn’t be given the same chance to qualify for a tournament as anyone else, my dad and I devised a new format for UEFA to adopt for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
**Note**: This qualifying format requires 54 teams in UEFA. Currently there are 53 full member nations, with Gibraltar a provisional member. For this sake, we’ll use them as a full member.
Under the current format, nations are seeded based on their FIFA ranking, and then placed into eight groups of six teams, and one group of five teams, in the first round of qualifying. Each team plays the other five (or four) teams in their group once at home and once on the road (10 games total). The team with the most points in the group automatically qualifies. The eight best second place teams then move on to the second round, where they are drawn against one another in a two game home-and-home matchup. To win, you must outscore the other team over the two legs. The four winning nations move on to the World Cup Finals.
In the new, Karell and Karell format, there will again be two rounds of qualifying, but with a slight twist.
In the first round of qualifying, there will be 18 groups of three teams. For example, England could be grouped with Andorra and Finland. We’ll call this, the pre-qualifying stage.
Each country would play the other two teams at home and away, a total of four games. After the four games, the nation with the most points in their group, as well as the six best second-place nations, will move on to the second round of qualifying. We’ll call this round, the Elite qualifying stage.
In the Elite qualifying stage, the 24 countries will be drawn into six groups of four nations. For example, if England does advance to this round, they could be in a group with France, Greece, and Denmark.
Each country will play the other countries in the group two times, home and away, for a total of six matches. And each of these six matches would carry a lot of weight. No longer would there be any gimme’s with the minnows of Europe. One bad game, and a country could be on the outside looking in.
Keeping with the current UEFA contribution to the World Cup (13 teams), the top two nations in each group would automatically qualify for the World Cup, while the two best third-place nations would battle each other in a two game series for the final World Cup spot.
So what do you think?
Would this work to increase the quality of games in qualifying? Would this help countries develop players as well? Would the minnow countries allow it to happen? Would the British actually be satisfied with anything? Comment below!
Follow Dan Karell on Twitter: @DanKarell15
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