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Blue ROI

World Cup 2022 Qualifiers

By Blue ROI, in General Football and Sport

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Detroit Blues

Detroit Blues

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

Most of the remaining qualifiers and play-off contenders are to be confirmed either today or in the next 2 days, then. All apart from Wales v. Scotland/Ukraine, I think?

 

Would be good to see one or two first-time or rare qualifiers. Any chance that Solomon Islands could shock the Kiwis to make the play-offs? Or that Mali or DR Congo manage a 2nd leg comeback to beat Morocco/Tunisia to qualification?

 

I hope Iraq pip UAE to the second Asian play-off slot.....Qatar & Saudi is already enough dodgy, wealthy Middle Eastern oil states, thanks.

 

I hope Peru hold their nerve at home to Paraguay so as to grab the S. American play-off slot. Nothing against Colombia or Chile, who would both miss out, but Peru do provide some entertainment on the rare occasions they qualify (as do the other 2, tbf).

 

I have no strong preference between Poland and Sweden - perhaps I'd marginally prefer the Poles to qualify, as Sweden tend to play very dour, conservative football at World Cup finals.

 

Would be amusing to see Portugal cock it up against N. Macedonia, but which team would offer more in the finals? Nah, let's have the Portuguese - but then have some fiasco with Ronaldo at the finals: sent off in the 1st minute of the 1st match for 2 yellow cards - taking his shirt off after scoring, then pouting at the ref, something like that....

From what i've been reading, NZ has been struggling in this tournament (needing 70 minutes to score against Tahiti). It makes sense when you consider how little these Oceania teams have played since the COVID pandemic began. Solomon Islands plays an open attacking play style, so they can score, but unfortunately their defense is really poor as well. The last time they played NZ they lost 6-1. So, is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No. 

 

Also remember the winner of the Oceania final likely plays Costa Rica for a chance to qualify for the World Cup. Though Costa Rica is an older, very much past their 2014 prime team, they are definitely a notch above in quality and have played significantly more competitive fixtures in the last few years.

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Scotch

Scotch

Posted
Posted
41 minutes ago, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

So north Macedonia haven't qualified after beating Italy? Seems a bit harsh on them I don't know the layout at all how many teams are going through? 

Nah, that was a semi final. They were all drawn into 3 groups of 4. 6 semis then 3 finals. 

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The Horse's Mouth

The Horse's Mouth

Posted
Posted
52 minutes ago, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

So north Macedonia haven't qualified after beating Italy? Seems a bit harsh on them I don't know the layout at all how many teams are going through? 

Think they play Portugal, if they pull it off would be a mad qualification campaign to knock out two of the would be favourites

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CosbehFox

CosbehFox

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

I hope Iraq pip UAE to the second Asian play-off slot.....Qatar & Saudi is already enough dodgy, wealthy Middle Eastern oil states, thanks.

 

UAE v Australia play-off - the Aussies should see to that really 

  • Sad 1
Super_horns

Super_horns

Posted
Posted
55 minutes ago, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

So north Macedonia haven't qualified after beating Italy? Seems a bit harsh on them I don't know the layout at all how many teams are going through? 

Bit like the EFL play-offs except one leg semi finaLS.

 

Finals are :

 

Poland v Sweden

Portugal v North Macedonia 

Wales v Scotland/Ukraine 

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Detroit Blues

Detroit Blues

Posted
Posted
15 hours ago, foxes1988 said:

I don't want to piss on your bonfire or be the grumpy Englishman who doesn't want to accept an 'untraditional' footballing nation becoming a force but the notion there's almost an inevitability that the sleeping giant USMNT becoming a team competing regularly for semi finals and finals seems naive to me. Sure it could happen but a lot of things need to go right and an awful lot of luck is required aswell.

 

I would like to be wrong but there is no way USA ever beats Brazil 7-1 at this present time. Its not within the realms of possibility  unless  0.00001% is a considered a 'chance' although maybe this is just a classic case of American optimism and British cynicism/skepticism 

 

Large population, economy and sporting culture doesn't not mean success in football. The sport is way too widely spread, practiced and saturated among all sorts of peoples and cultures.  Portugal regularly are competitive  and won euro 2016 with a small population and economy.  The Netherlands the same. Croatia got to 2018 final.

As I said before if those factors where that important England would have had a better record. 

If the football becomes the 2nd or 3rd biggest sport in the USA (seems years and years off tbh) it would be generating basically the same or a bit more then Premier League generates. The EPL generates over over 4billion dollars a year in broadcast revenue yet England doest have a strong history at international level.

 

Having said all this I do hope USA and Canada both have a good world cup and it is a team sport so generally you can do pretty well with good team cohesion application and strategy which can on some occasions triumph over superior technique and skill so maybe with a favourable draw US could get to a quarter finals or semifinal.  I do definitely agree that the US will do well in 2026 got a decent young team and hosting will of course give them a boost and think that it'll be great to have a continent wide tournament.

 

Putting my entitled arrogant english hat on again. When the hell is the damn world cup going to held in the UK again:mad:. The US will have hosted it twice and the Mexico 3 Times yet England have held it only once. Ridiculous really.

 

Let me preface this by saying, you are entitled to your opinion, no matter how grumpy lol and i will not hold anything against you for it. In fact, the grumpy / self deprecating nature is one of the things i appreciate most about the people of Leicester. Also, I am self aware enough to understand how arrogant a lot of this sounds. I know most American Leicester fans hate when I say optimistic stuff about American Soccer. That said, I'm not actually dumb enough to think we could beat Brazil 7-1, I was just using that as a joke/benchmark for the best possible result in football (Germany 7-1 vs Brazil in the semifinal of the 2014 world cup). 

 

I do want to debate the impact of economics on football. You say that football success has little to do with the size, economy and investment in youth development, sighting the premier league as an example. I'm baffled because, didn't England just make it to the world cup semi-final on the back of having a very good youth system subsidized by the giant money cannon that is the premier league? Haven't you noticed a substantial increase in quality and quantity, of young English players? 

 

I think the same thing will happen as "soccer" becomes a bigger sport in this country. We are already seeing the fruits of the development of youth talent in this country. Some people in this thread think Pulisic, Reyna, etc. are not that great compared to the best players in the world, but nobody would debate that they are not significantly more talented the generations that came before. With less talented players, the US still managed to get out of the group in 1994, the same year MLS began. They made it to the quarterfinals of the world cup in 2002, and came damn close to beating Germany. They won the group England was in at the 2010 world cup (had to bring that up), and got out of the group of death in 2014. We can agree the US is less talented than the "best" 16 countries in the world, yet when you look at the knockout round, we typically are among the last 16 teams remaining. 

 

America has never had more players playing abroad in terms of quality and quantity. The export of American talent abroad will only ramp up as the infrastructure to develop youth talent increases. You have to remember that MLS was in its infancy when our current players were born, and many (if not most) current players did not have the benefit of being able to play in a MLS academy, as they were either not in that geographic area or the MLS academy did not exist yet. The only players who "made it" in Europe either benefited from having rich parents that could afford to finance their careers, or had a connection/passport to Europe where they could move to other areas like Germany for development. That is no longer the case, and now there is a way to professional football without having to grow up as a rich suburban kid or have some vague family connection to Europe in order to get a EU passport.


So all that is tangible stuff that has already happened. Let me get into what might happen. Stick with me for awhile, because i will eventually get to the point. I am at the age where most of my friends are having kids. None of us feel comfortable letting our children play (American) football, even though most of us did growing up. The science on football is very scary. It's not even the fact that occasionally kids get massive/life threatening injuries, it is that fact that repeated impacts to the head develop CTE and have negative neurological consequences. Youth participation in American football will drastically decrease over the next 50 years, and the NFL's bubble could quite easily burst. Think of the legal liability of the NFL if current/former players create a class action lawsuit, and how much money the NFL might have to settle for. If it can be proven that the sport is too dangerous, the NFL would be put in a position to drastically alter how the game is played to make it more safe. How many fans are ready to see the violent aspects of the game go away? 

 

Think about how NFL will market to a population that no longer grows up playing the sport. The NFL also has other challenges to deal with in terms of the evolving demographics. Each NFL game is roughly 4 hours long with tons of commercial breaks. Soccer is a 90 minute game with one 15 minute halftime break. Soccer is more popular now among Millennials/Zoomers, having grown up in a more global/internet connected society. You also can't discount how big a factor the Premier League and the FIFA video game has in terms of making the sport popular among younger folks.  If i was a betting man, i would think that soccer is going to make huge inroads into the NFL (and baseball's) market share. That is part of the reason why MLS franchises have such a high value, even though their revenue is not at that level. Think about it like buying telsa stock. The growth potential is huge, which is why it is so expensive to buy into the MLS even though the revenue payoff is so little.

 

I'm not one of those whackos that think MLS will replace the NFL. That's never going to happen. But in the next 50 years, could it be the 2nd or 3rd biggest sport in the country? I think so. If that happens we would have an explosion of clubs/franchises and youth academies. My state does not have a MLS team, yet we have roughly the population of Sweden and the surface area of the UK. If soccer was remotely as popular as football we could support several professional soccer franchises. We have 3 football stadiums in this state that would be considered large in Europe (Ford Field - average attendance of 62k, Big House at the University of Michigan at 110K +, and Spartan Stadium at Michigan State University with avg attendance over 70k). Now remember that this state is only the 10th most populated state in the country. How many more clubs could the US support? What would the TV deal for MLS look like if it was drawing numbers that would compete with the NFL and the NBA? How much of that additional money would find its way towards developing American youth players? That is the part of the iceberg that is beneath the water, in terms of America's soccer potential.

 

It's not as crazy as you think lol 

 

Remind me to look back on this thread in 2072. 

Detroit Blues

Detroit Blues

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Bit like the EFL play-offs except one leg semi finaLS.

 

Finals are :

 

Poland v Sweden

Portugal v North Macedonia 

Wales v Scotland/Ukraine 

So the Ukraine/Scotland semi-final, and the final against wales are taking place after the draw on Friday? Does that mean it will be like the FA Cup where you could draw the winner of Derby County and Liverpool? Would all 3 teams be put into the same pot?

Super_horns

Super_horns

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Detroit Blues said:

So the Ukraine/Scotland semi-final, and the final against wales are taking place after the draw on Friday? Does that mean it will be like the FA Cup where you could draw the winner of Derby County and Liverpool? Would all 3 teams be put into the same pot?

Looks like they will be in the lowest ranked pot.

 

Everyone will want Qatar out of the top ranked sides!

 

https://uk.style.yahoo.com/qualifier-scotland-wales-play-off-150857727.html

 

 

StanSP

StanSP

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, frakenfox said:

Senegal v Egypt is a bit, er, heated. Seems to be lazars (or lazar-like lights) trained on Egypt players, dunno what that's about.

Seems to be lasers trained in Egypt players. I think that's what it's about :ph34r:

StanSP

StanSP

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, frakenfox said:

Are you here all week?

Sadly for you all, probably. Might get run over by a bus tomorrow though! Who knows... 

moore_94

moore_94

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Jaspa said:

The amount of lasers aim out on the Egyptians is crazy

Took me a second to notice when they zoom our from the player for them to take it that those things that look to be flying around are not flies or insects but the laser pens haha

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