*Soccer post*...why didn't we get to play...

[SLUdog]

New Zealand and Iraq? I guess it's good to play the two of the best countries in futbol history for practice...but got smoked.

 

[patdog]

Or if you want to be cynical, the African teams were placed in the easy group because the tournament is being played in Africa. Either way, it sucks. They do seed the top 8 teams in the World Cup and place them in different groups, but even there they need to seed at least the next 8 also.

 

[o_1984Dawg]

I like the World Cup groups. Don't they spread out the UEFA teams too? Seems like that helps. I can see the argument for the next 8, but I do like to see a few groups where you're thinking there's 3 teams that should definitely make the knockout stage, but only 2 slots.

 

[patdog]

They may have intentionally kept the top 2 teams in separate brackets. Here's the brackets with their FIFA and relative rankings:

Group A
Spain - 1 - 1
South Africa - 6 - 72
Iraq - 7 - 77
New Zealand - 8 - 82
Average rank - 58

Group B
Italy - 2 - 4
Brazil - 3 - 5
USA - 4 - 14
Eqypt - 5 - 40
Average rank - 16

 

[o_1984Dawg]

I was thinking they probably kept Italy and Spain apart and South Africa and Egypt. But that could have just been coincidence. Would have been nice if they'd separated N and S America too.

 

[patdog]

They wouldn't have kept North and South America separate though since they're two different continents and two different federations. Although that didn't stop at least one FIFA official from trying to combine them back when FIFA was using a rotational system for awarding World Cups.

 

[lawdawg02]

of course, i ain't no soccer expert. i assume 2 move on from each group, so south africa is in the best spot to be second in their group.

 

[patdog]

And, although it's supposedly a random draw, that's exactly why I said earlier that if you were cynical you'd think they did it this way to put the host team in a ridiculously easy group.

 

[Uncle Leo]

Procedure

Forgive the nerd-dom, but here goes...

Teams were divided into two "pots" before the draw. Pot 1 contained South Africa (being the host) and the three highest ranked teams according to the FIFA rankings (Brazil, Italy, and Spain). The remaining teams were in Pot 2.

Then they drew the teams into groups so that:
1. only two teams from each pot went to each group (presumably to even out the groups... 2 of the "best" and 2 of the "rest" in each group)
2. the two African teams weren't in the same group, and
3. the two European teams weren't in the same group.

The problem with #1 above is that you force South Africa into Pot 1 since they're the host. That ensures that the groups will be uneven, but it gives the host nation a better chance of advancing out of the group stage (which means more money for FIFA). We were just unfortunate not to be drawn with the hosts. Although our draw gives us a better chance to see where we stand, which is better in the long run.

While I'm at it, this brings me to the 2006 World Cup draw. We were essentially guaranteed to be drawn into a difficult group:

The eight seeded teams for the 2006 tournament were announced on 6 December 2005. The seeds comprised Pot A in the draw. Pot B contained the unseeded qualifiers from South America, Africa and Oceania; Pot C contained eight of the nine remaining European teams, excluding Serbia and Montenegro. Pot D contained unseeded teams from the CONCACAF region and Asia. A special pot contained Serbia and Montenegro: this was done to ensure that no group contained three European teams.

We'd liked to have been drawn into a group with an Asian team. But since we were forced into the same pot as the Asian teams, that possibility was eliminated. So, we were assured of drawing a top 8 team, a (or perhaps another) European team, and either a South American or African team. Who'd we draw? Italy, Czech Republic, and Ghana... a nightmare of a group.

If FIFA does something similar for 2010, we can fully expect another "group of death"-like group next summer.

Seeding teams 9-16 would go a long way toward evening out the groups.

 

[o_1984Dawg]

would to have been seeded instead of Mexico. Since we did lead the Concacaf qualifying I believe. And the FIFA rankings that were used for seeding reached back to results some ridiculous amount of years back I think. At least I think that's how I remember it going down.

edit: FIFA rankings considered 8 years worth of results back then according to wiki. Apparently it's different now. Reminds me of us getting to play Texas in Dallas and then they start to protect the top seeds.

 

[patdog]

You're right that the FIFA rankings did go back I want to say 12 years at the time. But the main flaw in the rankings was that they gave points for every international tournament a team played in. Since the CONCACAF Gold Cup is held roughly every 2 years, while the Euro Cup is only held every 4 years, the USA and Mexico essentialy got double the points for regional championships than European teams did. Actually, they got even more because it's a lot easier for the USA or Mexico to reach the finals of our regional championship than it is for a European team to reach the finals of theirs.