Is the Asian Football Confederation’s revamped World Cup qualifying system a step forward or backward? We present both cases:
FOR: PAUL FREELEND
For those whose interest in Asian football begins and ends every fourth summer, Thursday vindicated their preconceived notions.
Just look at the scores from World Cup qualifying – 15-0, 10-0, 9-0, 8-0, 7-0, and so on. Why is Asia wasting time with such uncompetitive matches?
People need to slow down. One wild night does not mean Asia has only a half-dozen decent sides and a horde of no-hopers, and neither does it mean the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) needs to scrap its new qualifying set-up.
Look at the recipients of the drubbings. Bangladesh, Laos, Malaysia, Bhutan, East Timor – all from South and South-East Asia, two traditionally weak regions, and all playing on the road. None are in the top 160 of the Fifa rankings. Did anyone expect those teams to do well against the likes of Australia, South Korea, the UAE, Qatar or Saudi Arabia?
Moreover, not all minnows are created equal. In June, people were singing the praises of Guam, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore. Palestine thrashed Malaysia and were seconds away from earning a point against the Saudis. Hong Kong, incidentally, still top Group C after their 0-0 draw in China. One night of silly scores elsewhere should not overshadow the progress made by these teams.
Most of the criticism, though, will fall on the AFC and its revamped qualifying set-up. Why, some may ask, should Asia’s best risk injury against teams who are nowhere near their level? Surely there should be a preliminary qualifying round to avoid such mismatches.
While this may sound like common sense, it ignores some basic facts, most importantly that smaller nations do not get better by not playing. Shunting developing nations into their own ghetto and leaving them to fight among themselves will slow their progress, not encourage it.
When the AFC reconfigured World Cup and Asian Cup qualifying, the idea was to get lower-level teams more competitive games. In previous World Cup qualifying cycles, there were two rounds of two-legged knockout ties before two rounds of group play.
That meant 23 teams were out of World Cup qualifying after two or four matches. Now, six teams are eliminated after two matches while the remaining 39 (minus the suspended Indonesia) have at least two full rounds of meaningful matches.
It is true Bhutan might find it difficult to glean much from losing 15-0. Defeats of that magnitude are rare, though, and any embarrassment must be weighed against the benefits of increased funding and exposure to high-level international competition for sides who often struggle to even arrange friendlies. Raising the standard of football in a country, let alone all of Asia, requires a longer-term view than the next qualifying cycle.
The AFC’s revamped qualifying format is a step toward raising the standard of football in Asia, even if it increases the risk of lopsided results in the short term. Having developing nations challenge themselves with more meaningful matches against better competition will benefit Asia as a whole in the long run.
AGAINST: PAUL OBERJUERGE
September 3 always loomed as the day the Asian Football Confederation’s new World Cup qualifying scheme could turn ugly. To nearly no one’s surprise, it did.
It was the date when the second round of competition pitted teams from the top two (of five) “pots” against those from the bottom two, in each of the eight second-round groups.
The aggregate score from those 15 matches? Big Kids 73, Runts 3.
The blame for this competitive abomination can be laid at the feet of the AFC, which chose to break into “group” play far too early – with 40 teams still alive – in a region with an enormous rift between its competitive and non-competitive football nations.
Asking the likes of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia, all ranked in the world’s bottom 40, to play eight group matches against their betters borders on the sadistic. Yet that is where the AFC went.
Four years ago, the plan was sound and should have been reprised. Ahead of the 2014 World Cup, the AFC eliminated 23 teams in two-leg, home-and-away ties, leaving 20 nations still standing.
Only then did the AFC begin the rigours of group play: five relatively equal groups of four. How equal? Three of the 10 nations from the lower two pots advanced to the final round of qualifying: Iraq, Oman and Lebanon, and only the latter was a surprise. Nearly all of the weak sides had been weeded out and most of what was left was consistently competitive.
Not so, this time around. The AFC still has 18 to 20 competitive sides, but 39 are still playing games. (Indonesia have been banned by Fifa.)
Of those drawn from the bottom two pots, only the erratic North Koreans (suddenly formidable again) appear to have a chance to survive to the final qualifying round of 10.
Several of the matches on Thursday were horribly unequal, with correspondingly bloated scores: Qatar 15-0 Bhutan; UAE 10-0 Malaysia; Kuwait 9-0 Myanmar; South Korea 8-0 Laos; Saudi Arabia 7-0 East Timor; Iran 6-0 Guam.
Only five of 14 matches were competitive. North Korea surprised Bahrain 1-0. Hong Kong and Kyrgyzstan held China and Jordan, respectively, to scoreless draws. Yemen and Singapore lost only 1-0 to Uzbekistan and Syria.
Two other continents with equally extreme gaps between football’s rich and poor, Africa and North America, do this much like Asia once did.
In Africa this time around, 13 teams are shed, then 20 more, in two-leg ties, leaving 20 nations, five groups of four, playing for five berths in Russia. Tidy, sensible, merciful.
North America, under the awkward acronym Concacaf, lops off seven, then 10, then six more nations in two-leg ties before breaking into three groups of four playing for a place in the final six, with 3.5 berths to Russia sorted. Works fine.
Does every country get equal treatment? No. Not every side deserves that reward, or punishment. Better to suspect you do not belong with the elite than to have it brutally confirmed, as it was in the AFC on Thursday night.
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