Only one European team out after first two matches

[Ayo Akinfe]

[1] Has it occurred to you guys that only one European team is out of the World Cup after the first two matches
[2] In Uefa, only Poland has crashed out, compared with three teams from Africa, two from Asia, one from South America and two from Central & North America
[3] These European teams have found a way to grind out results, even when they are not playing well. They somehow avoid being eliminated easy on the big stage when the chips are down
[4] Ask yourself if Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Peru and Costa Rica are really the worst eight teams in the tournament?
[5] uefa teams just come more prepared and this is something Caf needs to look at
[6] By the end of the European qualification series, their teams are more or less ready for the World Cup
[7] In contrast, African teams are nowhere near set and have to begin a process of preparing their teams
[8] Unfortunately, there is simply not enough time between the end of the season and the start of the tournament to get your teams ready, so something has to give
[9] In think Caf has to revisit qualification. Maybe have a league format in which teams play more games and have more time to get ready. this will also eliminate those who are lucky to just win matches by fluke
[10] Conmebol and Uefa have shown us the way to go. We need to do something similar of this disgrace will continue. Three of Africa;s five representatives cannot keep crashing out after two matches in every World Cup and us deny that we have a crisis on our hands!

[Next]

Ayo please tell us how many teams from uefa do you have in the wc compared to other federations? So that tells you why the already "out" teams from other federations are higher than uefa...

[Odas]

Ayo please tell us how many teams from uefa do you have in the wc compared to other federations? So that tells you why the already "out" teams from other federations are higher than uefa...

Chief NEXT! I don't think I get your point in this case. If a continent has more teams and are NOT doing well, will that continent not lose more teams? In the case of Europe, if they are not doing well and based on the number of teams they have in the World Cup (WC), about six or more should have been getting READY to go back home at moment.

Africa has five teams in the WC, three are getting ready to head back home. The other two, we don't know how they will fare at this point, so I think Oga Ayo is correct - in general.

[Ayo Akinfe]

Saudi Arabia just beat Egypt 2-1. Ask yourselves why South America, with the same number of representatives as us is not doing so badly. Uruguay has already secured nine points and Brazil will almost certainly get seven.

[mate]

I'll rehash what I wrote at the last WC when we discussed this. Western European nations like Italy, Germany, and Spain have a distinct advantage. Stable societies, top football program management & sports science, great leagues, a CL, and a few teams on which to base their NTs...playing with the best players in the world, honing a NT style and familiarity with one another. They also are sizable enough, with football opportunity reaching everybody.

Even a small nation like Croatia has top academies. A serviceable league. Proximity to Europe. Our kids get to play and also hone a national style, stewarded by an FA wanting to produce a pipeline of players...on which to extort and skim their money, but that's another story. You can compare Uruguay and Croatia here, 2 small countries with a similar situation and approach.

Even Argentina and Brazil are challenged by the major Western Europeans too. They obviously produce to players, but don't get the same benefit in keeping them on a few teams. They need to rely more on outlier stars like Messi and Neymar, whereas the aforementioned Western Europeans leverage more complete and honed teams with not as many stars.

As to Africa in this context, the gap to me seems even greater, correct me if I'm wrong. There are some decent local leagues, but how good are they and the comparative CL competition? How good are the academies and program management around youth, players, and maintaining a good NT?

Finally, it takes time regardless. Many decades. Look how long to took France & Spain to win a WC. England won only once. Holland has never won. All this countries have had disastrous WC outings even relatively recently.

[Next]

Ayo please tell us how many teams from uefa do you have in the wc compared to other federations? So that tells you why the already "out" teams from other federations are higher than uefa...

Chief NEXT! I don't think I get your point in this case. If a continent has more teams and are NOT doing well, will that continent not lose more teams? In the case of Europe, if they are not doing well and based on the number of teams they have in the World Cup (WC), about six or more should have been getting READY to go back home at moment.

Africa has five teams in the WC, three are getting ready to head back home. The other two, we don't know how they will fare at this point, so I think Oga Ayo is correct - in general.

@odas:

What l meant was that uefa has more teams hence the number of those teams out after two matches are likely to be lower than those from federations with lower representatives. It's like saying a caf team will win the won wc (not saying this can't happen) which is near impossible because of the numerical disadvantage of the federation. If situation were to be reversed you might see many uefa teams already out after two matches (you never know)...

[cchinukw]

None of you lot has talked about the sheer game of numbers in representation.

By that alone, Europe has an unfair advantage over other continents. FACT!

[mate]

True on the numbers from the get go. But even so, European teams do well in later rounds with more evenly distributed representation. If memory serves me correctly, I've seen 1/16 and 1/8 rounds in this context, only for European teams to win out and overrepresent from that point.

Europe puts a lot into it and reaps accordingly. It is what it is. I for one always look for Croatia to learn from Germany, Spain, and such lead countries.

I don't know what else can be done.

[folem]

[1] Has it occurred to you guys that only one European team is out of the World Cup after the first two matches
[2] In Uefa, only Poland has crashed out, compared with three teams from Africa, two from Asia, one from South America and two from Central & North America
[3] These European teams have found a way to grind out results, even when they are not playing well. They somehow avoid being eliminated easy on the big stage when the chips are down
[4] Ask yourself if Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Peru and Costa Rica are really the worst eight teams in the tournament?
[5] uefa teams just come more prepared and this is something Caf needs to look at
[6] By the end of the European qualification series, their teams are more or less ready for the World Cup
[7] In contrast, African teams are nowhere near set and have to begin a process of preparing their teams
[8] Unfortunately, there is simply not enough time between the end of the season and the start of the tournament to get your teams ready, so something has to give
[9] In think Caf has to revisit qualification. Maybe have a league format in which teams play more games and have more time to get ready. this will also eliminate those who are lucky to just win matches by fluke
[10] Conmebol and Uefa have shown us the way to go. We need to do something similar of this disgrace will continue. Three of Africa;s five representatives cannot keep crashing out after two matches in every World Cup and us deny that we have a crisis on our hands!

Korea still in it. A win may put them through.

[10] is not true.

[Ayo Akinfe]

None of you lot has talked about the sheer game of numbers in representation.

By that alone, Europe has an unfair advantage over other continents. FACT!

How come South America which also has only five spots like Africa matches Europe when it comes to winning the World Cup? Even Concacaf with four teams tends to do better than Africa.

[Eaglezbeak]

African teams where invited to the so called World Cup in the mid 70s despite the fact Egypt played
1 World Cup in the 30s but didn’t qualify via playing other African teams (a Middle Eastern qualier),so by the time African nations started to qualify their numbers were few and so it wasn’t till recent that Nigeria and the faded Cameroon became consistent contenders at the tournament,consistency is good for a countries generation of footballers so that they learn and improve both on and off the pitch and also go around their duty with more determination.
Away from the above fact there is a lot of money involved and that money isn’t coming from Africa so any manipulation will not be in our favour!

[theYemster]

Ayo please tell us how many teams from uefa do you have in the wc compared to other federations? So that tells you why the already "out" teams from other federations are higher than uefa...

I disagree. It's actually the opposite. The more teams UEFA has means they have more teams that can be eliminated just like it gives them more teams that can qualify.

That said, in 1990 Africa had two slots, three in 94 and I think five (same as CONMEBOL) since then (six in 2010 more than CONMEBOL). Yet no team has surpassed Cameroon's record. South America had the same number of slots (except for when break hosted) yet regularly outperform us. So personally I don't think there's a strong correlation between the number of slots and performance. CONMEBOL nullifies that hypothesis.