Why UEFA World Cup Qualification is Silly

Some folks are celebrating England's failure to qualify for the 2008 European Championship. I'll admit to joining in, just a little bit. Teams like Croatia can't be toyed with. While England may, in fact, be a superior team, Croatia had played consistently well and already shown it was capable of beating in England in Zagreb.

But do I really and truly believe England shouldn't be at the Euros? No. I think they're definitely stronger than either of the hosts. They're probably stronger than Greece and Turkey. Come to think of it, I think they'd be favorites against half the teams that did make it to the tournament.

So, while it's only fair to call out England's manager and players for a thouroughly uninspiring campaign, the UEFA qualifying system is absolute garbage. Depending on the strength of the group, a team might play only four meaningful matches. And the top teams will never play each other. We know Turkey can beat Greece and Norway, but that's an entirely different task than beating Italy and Germany.

So while there are almost always great teams among the failed contenders in UEFA, there are almost always terrible teams among the survivors-- teams that are almost guaranteed to be flops at the World Cup. We're left with the counter-intuitive situation where some are clamoring for more World Cup spots for UEFA based on the quality of teams that UEFA leaves behind, while others rightly point out that the continent also qualified the worst team in the 2006 World Cup (Serbia) and a couple of the monumental failures in 2002.

Of course, there will always be teams that underperform. And I believe UEFA has the deepest pool of talent of any confederation. But it's their responsibility to get the right teams to the big tournaments.

And frankly, the 2010 qualification draw for UEFA looks to set an all-time record for terrible. The Czech Republic may need to play precisely one meaningful match (against Poland on the road) to advance. On the plus side, Israel's in a very tight, competitive group and has its best shot at advancing to the World Cup in recent years. But the down side is that their toughest matches (against Greece and Switzerland) will not tell us much about their quality against top opponents. Do we really want to see the Netherlands beat Norway and Scotland to go the World Cup?

Now, of course, there will be upsets. There will always be upsets. But there are upsets on one hand, and flukes on the other. You don't want to determine participation in the WOrld Cup based on a couple of fluke results. But that's precisely what's guaranteed to happen yet again.