England's FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Euro Qualifiers.

[AjcW]

I see replacing Aidy Boothroyd with an experienced, attack minded, forward thinking coach Lee Carsley is going well....

 

 

 

[Corky]

7 hours ago, RonnieTodger said:

Agree with those saying that there should be a preliminary round. No, football shouldn't exist to appease the top nations but this is pointless nonsense. 

Asia, North America and Africa all have preliminary rounds to stop ridiculous mismatches like these. 

 

That said, it's mental to suggest Albania shouldn't be in here with England. Those feelings have been enhanced by us having Andorra AND San Marino in the same group, but the prelims should purely be for the bottom 10 or so nations. 

The Nations League has been great for the minnows, they can play four/ six competitive games alongside the qualifiers.

[CosbehFox]

22 hours ago, coolhandfox said:

I just think football could take some lesson from how cricket deals with minor nations in WC qualifiers.

 

It need to be reorganised so there are more meaningful games and less meanless games.

Do you mean completely closing them out? Because that’s virtually what cricket did for its 50 over World Cup 

[coolhandfox]

1 hour ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Do you mean completely closing them out? Because that’s virtually what cricket did for its 50 over World Cup 

No, look at the recent T20 WC, which had a pre-qualifier for the main event. 

 

Simply have a preliminary rounds before actual qualifying, bit like the FA Cup does.

 

Group team ranked over a certain rank and get them to play each other and the best place reach the current stage.

 

Give team like San Marino, Andorra a chance of scoring goals and improving, remove meaningless game like the other day from the calendar. 

[Lionator]

A lot of weaker teams have actually improved quite dramatically over the past few years. Iceland were traditionally whipping boys, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Armenia, Georgia for example are now all massively competitive whereas 15 years ago they weren’t. Even look at Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland 👀
 

The likes of San Marino, Andorra and Gibraltar will never be competitive due to the size of their countries.