Fixing World Cup Qualifying

My favorite sporting event is two weeks away. What makes the World Cup so magical? Is it the four year wait, the sporting equivalent of waiting for a delicious brisket sandwich? Is it the blending of cultures, a world market played out in the frame of sport? Is it the individual brilliance of stars, new and old, shining on the biggest stage? In fact, the more that I think about it, the best thing about the World Cup is...not the qualifying process.

Sorry, I misled you. I love almost everything about the World Cup, but the qualifying sucks. Not only does the process take several years, occurs in the middle of club soccer season, and consists of large league-like play rather than a knockout tournament like the Cup, it draws little fan interest (compared to the Cup itself). So I'd propose a new format that increases excitement and acts more as a continuation of the tournament rather than a drawn-out, years long qualifying process. Besides, there's a strange disconnect between winning a continental championship and World Cup success. While Argentina cleaned up in Copa America and is barreling toward the World Cup (edit: won the World Cup. Hopefully, you heard), Italy are champions of Europe, but won't be present in Qatar. What? Of course, it's on them to actually, you know, qualify, but it's just odd that a regional championship wouldn't have any relation to the larger tournament. I guess this is how smaller domestic champions feel when they're forced into a pre-tournament knockout round before the Champions League. Finally, current qualifying processes vary wildly based on region, from a ten-team round robin in South America to the staggered process favoring the giants in North America to a brutal format in Africa where teams must win a group stage against three other nations before playing in a do-or-die playoff against another group winner. FIFA also doles out spots at the World Cup based on perceived quality of the continent, providing Oceania a measly 0.5 qualifying spots and Europe 13 (to be fair, Europe has slightly outperformed Oceania at the tournament).

So, what would make the World Cup qualifying process more interesting, less time-intensive, less disruptive to the club game, connected to the continental champions, and fairer? I'll tell you one option that doesn't make sense - expanding the World Cup. That's a blog post for a different day, but one day, I'll make the case that the world isn't ready yet for an expanded cup. Besides, we'd still have to qualify for that, right? Instead, I'd propose something else - a qualifying tournament involving every nation in the world. Yes, I'm serious. I'm so serious, I had to use bold lettering. Let's break down the logistics, then see if it achieves the intended goals. 

In order to get to 32 teams from 211 FIFA nations, I need to eliminate 179. Ideally, I'd be able to have an elimination tournament, but that requires a perfect number (16, 32, 64, 128, etc). Besides, single-elimination seems a little harsh if you get the wrong matchup. I'm instead going for a double-elimination format, ensuring every selection has the opportunity to bounce back from a bad match or matchup. Also, I'm just going to use first-person for this, even though I'm not the purveyor of this tournament. How cool would that be? Alas, I blog in lieu of dreaming. Anyway, the tournament would be held on-site in the World Cup nation (assuming all their stadiums are built in time...) the summer prior to the World Cup. This could be the direct replacement for the Confederation's Cup FIFA's been searching for! Also, no ties. Perhaps this gives away my American sensibilities, but we're going to extra time and PKs in the event of an even score.

First, let's do a little subtraction from our 211. The host nation traditionally gets a free spot, and that continues here. A successful hosts makes for a successful World Cup. Or something like that. I'm not sure; on TV, it hardly matters. Still, I'm giving them a spot. Additionally, remember the stated goal of connecting the World Cup to the continental tournaments? Yep, I'm giving each of those winners an automatic bid, as well. These nations generally make the tournament anyway, and the event is worse without them when they don't. Lastly, for good measure, I'm giving the previous winner a spot in the tournament. The previous champion only once didn't participate in the following World Cup, and that was more about Uruguay not wanting to pony up to ship their players across the Atlantic to play in 1934 than the quality of squad. Let's make this near formality into a...well, formality. If the defending WC champion also won their continent, the second place team in the previous World Cup will qualify. If they also won their continent, the third place team will qualify, and so on until we have an 8th team. If it goes further than fourth place, we might have a problem...but there's no indication of that yet. I'm sure FIFA would just add the next best European team, anyway!

That brings us down to 203 teams with 24 spots to fill. Perfect, right? I'm actually not far off, but I need to get down to 192. To do so, I need to cut 11 teams. Now, I feel bad about putting the weakest nations in a harder spot than everyone else, but I've got to do this somehow. The bottom 44 teams will play against each other. The winners of those matches will make the final 192. The losers will play again, this time in a do-or-die. The winners of those last 22 teams also advance to the final 192; the 11 losers are out. That way, I maintain the double-elimination format, just add a play-in game on top of the tournament. Thanks for the inspiration, NCAA basketball! 

Now that I've got 192, the real fun can begin. Every team comes into the 192 with a clean slate; the teams who played-in see their records returned to nothing. Additionally, we'll start with the top teams seeded, so the best non-continental winner will play team 192. Yes, that's likely to be an incredibly mismatch, but I don't want Brazil and Chile playing in the first round. After that first round of matches, I'll have a whopping 96 winners and 96 losers on my hands. Here's where the double-elimination comes into play - the 96 winners will play a match against another winner while the 96 losers play against each other. Upon completion of those matches, I'll have 48 teams left in the winners bracket, 96 in the losers bracket (48 who won their first match and lost their second, 48 who lost their first and won their second in the losers bracket), and 48 double-losers eliminated. Woof. Lots of huge numbers of nations.

The winner's bracket and loser's bracket will continue on this way - next round, I'll have 24 winners, 72 in the loser's side (24 new entries from the winners side + 48 winners from the losers side) and 96 teams eliminated. After the following round of fixtures, there will be 12 teams left in the winners side and 48 still hanging around the losers side (12 from winners side, 36 from losers side), with 132 gone baby gone. Here, I need to pause and coronate the 12 remaining winners side teams - they've earned their way into the World Cup! With four consecutive wins (maybe five, if they came from the bottom 44 teams), they deserve a spot. That brings us up to 20 total World Cup qualifees once we add in the eight we gave automatic spots to. 

To fill the last 12 spots for the World Cup, I need to pare down the remaining 48. These teams have all lost once, won thrice by now since we went to the last 192. Their sacrifice for getting a second chance after they lost? They've got to win two more times. The remaining 48 play each other, leaving 24 still alive and 24 out. The last 24 play again, crowning 12 World Cup teams and guillotining 12. That leaves us with 32 teams in the World Cup and 179 eliminated. Wasn't that easy? 

Now, to answer the key questions. Does this create a more interesting qualifying process? I'd say yes. As with the current process, you'll still have your England vs San Marino blowouts, but now, elimination is on the table. Besides, I'd argue that knockout tournaments always provide more intrigue than the slower pace of league-style play. Additionally, with all the matches condensed into one summer, it'll be easier to follow than the slow, current burn of qualifying. Would this be less disruptive to the club game? Of course! By relegating it to the summer instead of the middle of the club season every few months, it really won't disrupt the club game at all. Will it be more connected to the continental events? Yep. Those winners automatically qualify for my World Cup. Finally, will this be a fairer process? I'd argue yes, though I'm bummed about forcing the lowest-ranked teams to play an extra round. However, that pales in comparison to the weaker teams playing multiple extra rounds before facing the local heavyweights. Additionally, I believe truncating the process would reduce travel costs and operations costs. I'm but a simple blogger without the spare time to do the math, but I'm sure this would be more cost-effective.

So, there you have it. I'll leave my work below, but I truly believe this to be a better process than what we currently slog through. Feel free to leave feedback; I'm sure I missed something, but I doubt it was especially important. Thanks for reading!

211 - host, champions of continents, previous champion = 203

Bottom 44 teams play. First round winners move on, losers play. Second losers out, second winners in.

192 teams remaining

96 next, 96 elimination 

48 next, 96 elimination, 48 gone

24 next, 72 elimination, 96 gone

12 WORLD CUP, 48 elimination, 132 gone

24 elimination, 156 gone

12 WORLD CUP, 168 gone