World Cup Qualification

Hello, apologies for going silent over the last month but I've been busy with other things going on. However, this time has enabled me to think up several more topics and November was certainly an eventful month, particularly in international football! Much has been made of the 'Hand of Frog' involving squeaky clean Thierry Henry who once launched a tirade at Barcelona for cheating (would you believe it?), but to be honest I'm pretty bored with that incident and it would appear everyone apart from Ireland would agree.Instead, I would like to investigate the World Cup qualification process (well, the European part anyway).

I think there are a number of issues which need resolving or at least improving for the better in the near future. For me there would appear to be flaws throughout - starting at the number of games and strength of the teams in the group stage through to the seeding of the playoffs, the use of extra time for second legs (something Giovanni Trapattoni alluded to in his post-game press conference) and lastly the seeding of qualified teams for the tournament itself.

The current way that the groups are drawn for qualification is that based on their world rankings and recent performances, teams are split into 6 pots with the strongest being Pot A and the weakest being Pot F. One team is drawn from each pot so that there are 9 groups of 6 (with one smaller group of 5 as there is one less team in Pot F than the other pots. This means that most countries play 10 games in qualification in the group stage. The first placed team in each group qualifies automatically for the World Cup Finals and the best 8 2nd placed teams (take from their results against the rest of the top 5 teams in their group) to allow for the single 5-team group go into the playoffs.

The playoff teams are then seeded into Pot 1 (stronger) and Pot 2 (weaker) depending on their ranking, and then for each of the 4 games one team from Pot 1 meets a team from Pot 2 with the winning team over 2 legs progressing to the World Cup Finals. Away goals come into effect in the playoffs and if the score is equal on aggregate and unable to be separated by away goals at the end of extra time in the second leg, the tie is decided on penalties.

Once the qualification process is complete, yet another seeding process occurs for the World Cup Finals Group Stage. The top 5 placed European teams in the rankings, plus two from South America (usually Brazil and Argentina) and the hosts (South Africa) are placed in the top pot (Pot 1). Pot 2 consists of 5 teams from the AFC, 3 teams from CONCACAF and one team from the OFC. Pot 3 has 5 teams from CAF and 3 teams from CONMEBOL, leaving the remaining UEFA nations in Pot 4.

The first issue I have is with regards to the make-up of the original

qualification groups. Players and coaches alike are constantly complaining of fixture congestion and the strain it puts on a player. If you look at the teams in Pots D, E and F, only Slovakia, have qualified for a World Cup Finals in the last 12 years (and even that was just this campaign), so surely it stands to reason that less of these teams should be playing the likes of Spain, Italy, England, Germany and France in pointless qualification games where there is only likely to be one outcome? International Football has suffered at the hands of the domestic game over recent years, particularly in Europe where people would much rather see Manchester United V Chelsea than Andorra V England on a Saturday afternoon. Also, if you are an Andorra or San Marino fan, is it really that enjoyable to see your team spanked in every group in qualification for every tournament?

My solution would be to keep the existing Pot A, move one team up from C to B and another from D to C based on the nations' FIFA World Rankings at the start of the qualification draw (leaving the first 3 pots all with 9 teams). To encourage more competition between the poorer quality teams and reduce the number of games the top players in the world are forced to play, I would make the poorer teams in Pots D to E play each other in a preliminary qualification stage.

There are 26 teams falling under the existing Pots D, E and F, which would go down to 25 under this new system. I would split these 25 into 5 groups of 5 teams with each team playing the other home and away. The top team from each group, plus the 4 best second-placed teams would then progress to the final qualification stage to play the teams from Pots A, B and C.

The final qualification stage would then comprise of 9 equal groups of 4 teams (one from Pot A, one from B, one from C and one from the Preliminary Qualifiers Pot), which would have been fairly seeded. This would reduce the number of games for the elite teams by 4 in most cases and increase the intensity of this part of the competition, generating more interest. The top teams from this Final Qualification Stage would qualify automatically as they do now in the existing system, with the top 4 second-placed teams also qualifying for the World Cup Finals automatically, abolishing the playoffs.

One could argue that the playoffs add something to the qualification process as they provide a knock-out 'cup' element which excites the neutral, but I would point to the fact that the likes of England, Holland and Spain had qualified from their groups 2 games or more before the end of the groups this time around, which rendered at least 20% of their games pointless. This is not to mention the games played between the two bottom-placed teams in the groups after the 6-game mark. Under this new system, due to the reduced number of games and the battle for second place, it is more than likely that every game will count, making for a much more exciting spectacle.

Into the World Cup Finals Group Stage seeding process...I feel this needs altering slightly also. Firstly, although I agree that the host nation should qualify automatically for the tournament, to have them as a top seed in Pot 1 in South Africa's case is laughable and devalues the competition. The host should, in my opinion, be allocated a Pot based on their FIFA World Ranking and recent performance in major tournaments, meaning South Africa would be in Pot 3.

In addition to this, to avoid the debate and disagreement of the last week regarding England and France's seeding, I would seed the UEFA teams purely upon how many points they assembled in the Final Qualification Stage, with goal difference being the decider after that. So this year the way UEFA's seeds have been allocated, the teams with the best 5 records in qualifying would be in Pot 1, with the remaining 8 in Pot 4.

Lastly, I noticed FIFA chose to separate teams from certain continents - Brazil and Argentina couldn't be drawn against the three other South American teams. Give me a break! So the South American teams are being prevented from playing arguably the best team in the tournament for geographical reasons? I guess it would be crazy to place teams on merit!

Thoughts anyone?

Premier League Home Grown Player/Squad Size Ruling 2010/11

Proposals

Last month the FA Premier League announced that it was to introduce a new home grown player and squad size ruling, to be brought in for the start of next season (2010/11). The league's Chief Executive Richard Scudamore confirmed that "as of next season clubs will be required to have a squad named of up to 25 players, of which no more than 17 can be over the age of 21 and not home grown. The definition of 'home grown' is trained for three years under the age of 21 by somebody in the English and Welsh professional system. Clubs will have to declare their 25 at the end of August when the window shuts and then again at the end of January."

This is in a similar vein to the ruling UEFA brought in a few years back which stipulates similar limitations in terms of maximum squad numbers and a minimum of 8 'home grown' players in each squad. The idea behind this is to protect the interests of each country's domestically-trained assets and give them every chance to progress through first team football, or so Michel Platini says. The question is though, does it really work?

Is this really the root of the problem?

Looking at the Dutch, who many would agree are the masters of bringing their own through, you begin to see other problems which may be more prevalent in terms of the production of young footballers. PSV Eindhoven, known for producing the likes of Van Nistelrooy, Philip Cocu and Jaap Stam in the past, have complained that the main problem facing them is that they are not being able to hang on to their prized assets due to the Bosman Ruling. There is no doubt that there is still a lot of good young talent in Holland, but its clubs are losing the incentive to nurture them for fear of losing them - nothing to do with home-grown 'quotas' and everything to do with money as they cannot afford the same wages some of our rich oil industry billionaires can.

Aside from this point that the FA (and FIFA/UEFA) could be targeting the wrong source of the problem in the first place, is this going against the grain of freedom of trade and everything the EU stands for? Surely in a place of employment, it is wrong to discriminate against a player not born here if they are good enough to do a job in the eyes of their prospective employers? FIFA/UEFA/the FA's product is based on entertainment and quality which then draws in the money through gate receipts and television revenue, and the game appears to be flourishing and healthier than ever, so why the need to go back to the old days?

Speaking of money, let's take a look for a second at the millions upon

millions of Pounds, not to mention the time and effort invested into our academy systems (and we're not alone, the model was taken from abroad where it has previously been implemented in places like France and Holland). The academy systems are beginning to finally show signs of fruition in this country with players such as Theo Walcott, Aaron Lennon, Glen Johnson and Wayne Rooney all becoming familiar figures in the English national team having come through them.

Where are football clubs getting all the money from to fund these academies and the future of our game? That's right, TV revenue and other income streams directly linked to the high quality of the product on offer - thanks in no small part to the foreign influences in the Premier League. Would so many people from across the world tune in without entertainers like Arshavin, Drogba, Torres and Robinho appearing as regularly, instead being being replaced with unspectacular, if steady home-grown players all over the pitch? Of course, we have our own talents in those I've mentioned and Joe Cole (who is as close to a Brazilian as we have in terms of technique and tricks), but surely the natural balance between Brits and foreigners can find itself without the intervention of governing bodies in this manner?

One thing I've yet to touch upon is a rather puzzling additional ruling with regards to academies and home-grown players which the FA have, in their infinite wisdom, seen fit to pass. This ruling is the '90-minute from home' rule which in short means that clubs are no longer allowed to draft in players who live more than a '90 minute commute' from them to play in their academies. So hang on a second, the Premier League want to bring in a rule which 'encourages' youth development through forcing clubs to name home-grown players in their squads, yet restricts their movement within our own country, thus restricting their development in the process? Good thinking.

Opposition from a couple of friends

Two men who are also slightly miffed by this are those best of pals Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. Ferguson said, "The 90-minute rule is the most ridiculous rule I have ever known. 90 minutes could be 5 miles up the road. I would have thought it was illegal to deny a young boy the chance to come to a club like Manchester United but it is something we can do nothing about." Wenger shared Fergie's concerns and when taking into account his own good work at bringing youngsters through at Arsenal, he added that:

"It will make that policy virtually impossible. If you cannot add any players under 18, and you have the home-grown rule, and on top of that English clubs are limited to bringing in young players who live less than 90 minutes from the training ground - how can we produce home-grown players? Personally, I don't know. So it's vital that this under-18 transfer rule is not implemented because English clubs would have a domestic limitation and a foreign limitation, making it harder to produce home-grown players.

"In England we accumulate disadvantages. We cannot buy (an academy player) outside our 90-minute radius, so already we cannot take a player from Manchester or Southampton. We cannot take a player from Asia, North or South America. What can we do? We can only pray that somebody next to London Colney is as gifted as the next Maradona and says, 'please can I play for you?' We want to be the best league in the world and that is why we have to open the doors to the best players in the world. The first signs, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka going to Spain, are not very good for us. You have to accept that the best have to play with the best."

Going back and focusing strictly on next season's new ruling, I could understand limitations placed upon squad size years ago, but surely this is shooting our own clubs in the foot nowadays? Cup competitions are already being devalued as it is without extra incentive to rest players for vital league and Champions League games as the latter increase in number. This is damaging the domestic game to a large degree, so why impose such restrictions? Are Chelsea going to risk Drogba in an FA Cup game knowing that if he gets injured they may be forced to play Daniel Sturridge on his own at Old Trafford the following week if he gets injured? No disrespect to Sturridge, but there is no comparison between the two - at this stage in his career anyway, so why put him under unnecessary pressure when he could be sent out on loan to gain vital experience instead of this self-imposed nonsense?

So far I've only really looked at the top clubs, but the effect may hit the Hulls, Birminghams and Blackburns of this world even harder. These clubs muddle through as it is scouring the world for bargains on cheaper wages than their English counterparts - what would happen to them if they were being prevented from doing so and in addition English players' transfer fees and wages were artificially inflated as a consequence of the new ruling? Supply would not be equal to demand in terms of the players required and average players like Kevin Davies and Mark Noble could be fetching 8-figure fees in the not-too distant future with the gap between top and bottom widening yet further. This would make for a less competitive league and attendance figures and revenue could again fall as a direct result of this.

Proposed solution

As crazy as this may sound, I think that UEFA may have hit the nail on the head with their recent proposition regarding spending. A big reason for over-inflated salaries and teams looking abroad for players is the influx of foreign ownership in our game and clubs spending far outside their means in business terms. European Football's leading body recently put forward plans to prevent clubs from spending over what they take each year in terms of revenue. After careful consideration, this is not as daft as it seems...

Under this new system, the likes of Real Madrid, Manchester City and Chelsea would be forced to rethink their foreign policies and look to use their facilities to bring through more players from their own countries. Madrid have already proven they can do it with Raul and Casillas, City with Wright-Phillips and Stephen Ireland and Chelsea with England captain John Terry. In my opinion this would be preferable to an imposed salary cap per player, or squad restrictions and would force clubs into becoming more efficient in terms of their operations as well as perhaps restoring some identity. Of course this would still leave the door open to bringing in top quality foreign players, but in partnership with a healthy production line of British youngsters. Naturally, we'd also scrap that daft 90-minute rule as it is denying our youngsters the chance to gain top coaching and experience, which is what they'd want in a new system.

Thoughts?

Goal-line Technology - The Debate Rages On

Geoff Hurst's second goal in England's victorious World Cup Final of 1966, Pedro Mendez's long range pot-shot spilt by the red-faced Roy Carroll at Old Trafford the lino failed to pick up on. Reading's frankly ridiculous goal at Watford last year, Freddie Sears' effort that hit the stanchion and bounced back out at Ashton gate which sparked outrage from the ever-lovable Neil Warnock...goals change games and history (or not in some cases!).

Bad refereeing decisions are one thing (I'll get to why I think our referees aren't up to standard and why that is at a later time), but whether or not the whole of a football has crossed a white line or not is black and white (green if I'm being particularly anal), is it not? Football is the greatest game on the planet, but as the quality (and pace as a result) of the game increases, the technology being used continues to lag seriously behind. Cricket has Hawkeye, an excellent proven system for judging the flight of the ball and whether or not it would have hit the stumps in LBW appeals, rugby has video-refs and football has...stupid-looking walky talky headsets as modelled expertly by Mr Pedantic himself, Rob Styles.

Various pundits, managers, officials and governing bodies alike have agreed that in the 21st Century, these poor levels of accuracy and lack of common sense through implementation of new systems are unacceptable. Even England's chief of the Professional Game Match Officials Board Keith Hackett has called for technology to be introduced, saying: "I think the major issue centres around the fact that for a number of years PGMOB have been calling for goal-line technology to be introduced. In fairness the Premier League worked with Hawkeye to achieve a product that the Premier League wanted to put into an operation as an experiment with the full support of the Football League, FA, LMA and PFA. All the parties were in favour, but at the international board meeting in Gleneagles a year ago, FIFA and Sepp Blatter decided the experiment could not go ahead."

Hackett's comments with regards to FIFA are concerning given that the game's governing body are supposed to be the ones with football's best interests at heart, and unfortunately this appears to be nothing new - just ask Guus Hiddink. Hiddink of course recently spent a period in charge at Chelsea and saw his then employers denied a clear goal against Juventus in the Champions League by a lack of technology. Hiddink stated that "technology must be used on this - then there won't be a dispute, it's a yes or no. We did it with Phillips in my very early days at PSV in the 80's and it worked really well. But the people who were deciding didn't want to know and that was 20 years ago. Now I think the technology is so perfect that, for me, it must be done."

So wait a minute, Phillips tried to develop this a 5th of a century ago back in the days when Manchester United fans thought that Sir Alex Ferguson was useless, Margaret Thatcher was in power and the Berlin Wall still stood yet during a period where so much change (much of it good) has happened, FIFA have chosen to remain in the stone age? I find this rather absurd and frankly extremely concerning when I come to the realisation that these clowns are entrusted with the future of the game.

Right, mini-rant over...so which technology or new systems should be used?

Potential Systems

Extra officials: UEFA have trialled the addition of two extra officials (one at either goal) in the Europa League (UEFA Cup for those who can't keep up with the annual faffing around, re-naming and re-formatting process Michel Platini seems to have become obsessed with). The idea is that this will solve the problem whereby a linesman is unable to keep up with play in order to make a decision if there's a long shot (a la Mendez at Old Trafford) which crosses the line.

This is all well and good in my opinion, but just as referees can make mistakes and fail to see what's right in front of them (hey, we can't all see everything and be perfect), this system is still open to human error and the officials still only have a split second to make a decision in some cases. What people tend to forget is that the WHOLE ball has to be over the goal-line, not some or most of it, and this is often harder than it seems to pick out, especially at high speed. You have to allow for things such as goalkeepers diving and in some cases obstructing the officials' view of the ball - I was watching an NHL game the other night (granted, an ice hockey puck is a lot smaller and harder to spot, but the principle is still there) and there was an instance where the goalie fell on top of the puck. Even though it appeared that he'd saved the goal and this was deemed to be the case, it was still impossible to tell 100% as his pad was covering the puck and it could have been at the top (outside the goal) of his pad or the bottom (in the goal).

A third disadvantage of UEFA's trialled system involves its influence on play itself. Recently I was lucky enough to watch a game at Wembley in the top tier and some may be aware that they have a camera there which is suspended from the roof. Obviously it has nothing to do whatsoever with the outcome of the game, it is just there to observe and record, but when the ball was played from one end to another, I (and others around me, I made sure I wasn't cracking up!) often got distracted by it as it often appeared as if there was a defender playing someone onside or an attacker who was unmarked. The relevance of this is that the extra officials on the pitch are at the side of the goal and this could throw the goalkeeper and defenders a bit as they might be drawn to their movement with officials moving in and out of their blind spots. It is for these three reasons that I don't believe that UEFA'S new method is the best way to move forwards.

Video Technology: As I mentioned to begin with, sports such as rugby deploy a video ref system whereby the game is stopped when contentious incidents take place and video evidence is examined during a short delay in play, before a decision is made. The idea in football would be for the referee (or alternatively an official in the stands) to look at a camera angle from level with the goalposts and determine whether or not the ball had crossed the line.

To begin with this would seem to be an excellent idea - referees being given perfect evidence with which to extract a decision from...but is this really perfect? The ice hockey 'was it? wasn't it?' debate springs to mind here and often on TV, pundits take a look at 3 or 4 different angles of an incident and are still arguing among themselves as to whether or not it was a goal. Football is a brilliant sport to watch, and much of that is due to the way in which it tends to flow as a spectacle and I feel that this has the potential to affect it. Large delays in play could kill momentum as teams push for a late goal and give defenders chance to rest and detract from the action, dampening the 'live experience' for supporters in the process.

Thinking further into the future, I also fear that the introduction of video replays now could escalate into it being used for EVERY slightly contentious incident such as mistimed tackles, offsides and so forth, which would completely kill the game in my eyes. Games could potentially take hours upon hours to complete and that's even assuming that the appropriate time is added on. As it is referees appear to struggle with regards to timekeeping and I would worry that we'd lose even more time in terms of the ball being 'in play' if this was introduced without proper consideration and control devices.

I guess that means another no from me then!

Computer Chips/Adidas Teamgeist 2: This is perhaps the most interesting thing I have investigated. Basically FIFA and other footballing bodies had looked into the idea of a computer chip system whereby chips would be inserted into the goalposts and also different parts of a football. The idea is that if all the chips in the ball pass through the 'field' between the two goalposts then all of the ball must be over the line, meaning that a goal must have occurred. I suppose you could look at it sort of like the laser beam anti-theft traps in films (Ocean's Eleven springs to mind here) where an alarm is triggered if an object passes through them, except the only things able to set the alarm off here would be the chips in the ball. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

This technology was trialled at the World Club Championships in 2007 and was thought to be FIFA's preferred approach to solving the goal-line issue - Adidas were working in partnership with scientists and FIFA to develop this further in order to ensure it was 100% accurate and workable, but FIFA then moved away from the idea last year. This was a decision which was opposed by many top level clubs across Europe who voiced their concern that this could spell the end for goal-line technology and also that it would be a step backwards.

To me it seems very strange that FIFA have invested a lot of money, time and effort into an idea which seemed very promising and easy to implement at the expense of putting more bodies onto a football pitch, leading to the potential for over-complication. One point which football's governing body raised was that the Teamgeist 2 technology with goalposts might not be financially viable at the grass roots level of our game (but is the five-man officials system viable either given the decline in the number of referees as it is?!). I personally find this rather bewildering as you don't see video refs for park rugby or Hawkeye being used for Sunday league cricket, yet either sport does not seem to have collapsed!

The difference of course at the top level is the money at stake with millions and millions of Pounds being decided over split seconds, which surely increases the need for something to be done? Of course it's upsetting coming into work on a Monday morning having lost to your mates thanks to a dodgy decision, but could you imagine being denied a place in history or a new house by such a thing, (some people might call it a disgrace and even go as far as launching a tirade at a TV camera, but I personally think that's a bit much) isn't it a bit different?

The Verdict

I think FIFA are seriously missing a trick by holding back on the computer chip/magnetic technology. This could potentially eliminate the problem once and for all and wouldn't delay the game at all - surely it would be the perfect solution for everyone involved? The only doubt I would have over this would be the durability of the technology in terms of robustness given how hard a football can be struck (a Roberto Carlos free-kick perhaps) - could this knock the chips out of place or damage them? That said, we've managed to put a man on the Moon and invent beer so surely this is achievable?

Once again I look forward to hearing your comments...