And some crowd trouble too it seems. With players getting involved . There could have been a tragedy - Messi
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that they do not qualify. Away games are tough no matter who you play, so your home form needs to be near immaculate.
Yeah they're lucky with the expansion meaning 6 qualify automatically with 7th place also getting a playoff. They'd have to be breathtakingly shite by their standards to fail to make the top 6. Under the old format with the top 4 qualifying and 5th place going into the playoffs then they'd be in trouble right now. Ecuador having points deducted is also a help for them.
Ridiculous. Why don't they just give a bye to the whole continent while they're at it! Can't see Brazil staying at home even if they seem to be in a right state.
It's ridiculous and it's happening everywhere to ensure that the biggest and most commercially valuable teams are always taking part in the biggest competitions. It started with the Euros around a decade ago where that was expanded so that it's now very difficult for the biggest nations to fail to qualify. They're almost always going to finish in the top 2 in their groups, and if they don't there's usually the insurance of the playoffs to fall back on. The Champions League is expanding again for the same reason so we don't end up with teams like Liverpool being in the Europa League like this season. And now the World Cup too. The difficulty of qualifying for the World Cup was always part of its appeal. It was the elite world tournament and qualification wasn't easy, there would quite regularly be top European teams missing from the tournament. And decent teams like Uruguay, Columbia etc would often miss out from South America. Now with the expansion the biggest countries from each world region will pretty much always qualify which is ultimately what the broadcaster's want.
Italy have failed to qualify for the World Cup to be fair under the tough old rules where only the group winner goes through automatically. Which is basically my point. European World Cup qualifying used to be tough with lots of good second placed teams forced into the playoffs and inevitably you'd get the odd one or two big teams missing out. European Championship qualifying with the top 2 going through is far easier and Italy have always qualified for the Euros. As have most of the big teams. Especially now there's the safety net of playoffs for the best third placed teams.
Can't say I particularly agree with you. Apart from Holland missing out in the 2002 WC & England not making it to Euro 2008, which big sides do you reckon missed out on major tournaments over the last 20 years. Qualification was tough... ish. If the big guns delivered and took the qualifiers seriously, they usually qualified with games to spare imo.
