Warner: CONCACAF can stand proudly.

[Winnipeg Fury]

Warner: CONCACAF can stand proudly.

By: Shaun Fuentes.

Warner, in his capacity as CONCACAF President also made a statements to the effect of his confederation being able to hold his own despite the fact that only one of the four nations advanced beyond the first round.

Special mention of course was made of T&T’s fighting performance which continues to get rave reviews and the showing of the Mexicans in their narrow loss to Argentina.

“CONCACAF still has a lot to be thankful for especially over the fact of how T&T performed and this is still the talking point here in Germany and all over the world. It is on the basis of that that several offers have been made by countries for matches against T&T - all of which are being considered now,” Warner said.

“While it is true that we in CONCACAF are disappointed in the performance of the USA and Costa Rica, Mexico still made us proud in proceeding to the next round and playing valiantly against Argentina - so, in a word, CONCACAF's stocks are still very high,” he added.

[amacpher]

Lets compare how the 4 confederations that all receive around the same # of World Cup spots, faired:

Confederation .. GP .... Points ... %age

------------- ... -- .... ----- ... ----

S.America ....... 12 ..... 25 ..... 0.694

Africa ............. 15 ...... 12 ..... 0.267

Asia ............... 12 ...... 7 ....... 0.194

CONCACAF ...... 12 ....... 6 ....... 0.167

Not only did CONCACAF rank dead-last, but I'm curious to know the last time a confederation as a whole, performed this badly or worse? I suspect this might be the worse ever performance for a confederation. Only one win, and it came against Iran!!

[loyola]

Well, Asia has also one win and it came against Togo.......

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by loyola

Well, Asia has also one win and it came against Togo.......

True, Asia did poorly too. But I wonder if the president of AFC is also blowing sunshine up everyone's arse, or is he able to call a spade a spade!? I mean, to go on-and-on about T&T (who didn't score a single goal) and Mexico (who did nothing of note, really) is a bit much, innit? [)]

[Kurosawa1555362267]

And what do you do about Australia, who was'nt officially in Asia for the last World Cup. If you count them then Concacaf is really dead last.

[Gordon]

Lets remember that the 4th place CONCACAF team beat the 5th place Asian team. Also, can't be bothered to look at the COMNEBOL results but how many of their 25 points came from Brazil and Argentina? Europe had home field advantage, but Serbia sucked. Basically, I don't think there are a lot of teams in other Confederations who would do better than the teams that were there.

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by Gordon

Lets remember that the 4th place CONCACAF team beat the 5th place Asian team. Also, can't be bothered to look at the COMNEBOL results but how many of their 25 points came from Brazil and Argentina?

Well, Ecuador and Paraguay still had another 3 wins between them.

quote:

Europe had home field advantage, but Serbia sucked. Basically, I don't think there are a lot of teams in other Confederations who would do better than the teams that were there.

Sorry, but we have: Uruguay, Turkey, Denmark, Russia, Colombia, Norway, Chile, Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon.

[Gordon]

quote:Originally posted by amacpher

Sorry, but we have: Uruguay, Turkey, Denmark, Russia, Colombia, Norway, Chile, Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon.

These are fluff teams who failed to qualify out of regions that sent poorly performing teams to the WORLD Cup. Sengal finished behind winless Togo in qualifying how does their presence make a difference? UEFA always leaves behind a few good teams and sends some weak teams who either underperfom at the World Cup or overperormed in Qualiifying. So replace Crotia, Poland, and Serbia with any of the European teams you suggest and you end up in exactly the same place. Has Norway ever even qualified for the World Cup? The South American teams you list are also traditional filler. So while you might marginally improve the field, just as you would buy giving more spots to the Americas in Basketball and Baseball, the bottom line is that it is a World</u> Cup and you do not add enough to the tournament by subtracting a few dogs and adding instead dogs with fewer fleas to justify the move.

[Bxl Boy]

Maybe let's watch Concacaf against the other confederations, excepted Europe and the two giants from South America...

CR - Ecuador 0-3

TT - Paraguay 0-2

Mexico - Iran 3-1

Mexico - Angola 0-0

USA - Ghana 1-2

4 points in 5 games (4/15 - 26.67%) 4 goals for, 8 goals against

Let's watch the others

Africa :

Mexico - Angola 0-0

USA - Ghana 1-2

Iran - Angola 1-1

Togo - Korea 1-2

SA - Tunisia 2-2

6 points in 5 games (no one from Ivory Coast as they played “too tough” opponents...) (6/15 - 40%) - 6 goals for, 6 goals against

South America :

CR - Ecuador 0-3

TT - Paraguay 0-2

6 points in 2 games (6/6 - 100%) - 5 goals for, 0 against

Asia without Australia :

Mexico - Iran 3-1

Iran - Angola 1-1

Togo - Korea 1-2

SA - Tunisia 2-2

Japan - Australia 1-3

5 points in 5 games (5/15 - 33.33%) - 7 goals for, 12 goals against

Concacaf did very bad during this World Cup

[marktci]

quote:Originally posted by Bxl Boy

Maybe let's watch Concacaf against the other confederations, excepted Europe and the two giants from South America...

CR - Ecuador 0-3

TT - Paraguay 0-2

Mexico - Iran 3-1

Mexico - Angola 0-0

USA - Ghana 1-2

4 points in 5 games (4/15 - 26.67%) 4 goals for, 8 goals against

Let's watch the others

Africa :

Mexico - Angola 0-0

USA - Ghana 1-2

Iran - Angola 1-1

Togo - Korea 1-2

SA - Tunisia 2-2

6 points in 5 games (no one from Ivory Coast as they played “too tough” opponents...) (6/15 - 40%) - 6 goals for, 6 goals against

South America :

CR - Ecuador 0-3

TT - Paraguay 0-2

6 points in 2 games (6/6 - 100%) - 5 goals for, 0 against

Asia without Australia :

Mexico - Iran 3-1

Iran - Angola 1-1

Togo - Korea 1-2

SA - Tunisia 2-2

Japan - Australia 1-3

5 points in 5 games (5/15 - 33.33%) - 7 goals for, 12 goals against

Concacaf did very bad during this World Cup

First off, let me say that I don't disagree with your overall conclusion.

But I do think it's misleading (and I've seen it done in countless places) to use the points achieved out of total possible points statistic. The reason for this is that it is not a zero-sum game. The minute you have a draw and only two points awarded, one point is lost and immediately skews the results of the two teams. The percentage records of four teams that only play one another should add up to 200%. If, in a round robin, the four teams all tie each other, each team will have a percentage of .333 (actually, more of a permilleage, but that's another issue). So while the percentage records of each team will look poor, .667 has gone unawarded to any team.

If we look at the results in this light (i.e., as a zero-sum game, rather than based on an arbitrary system designed to encourage a certain behaviour), Africa and Asia actually look even better compared with CONCACAF.

[/numbers pedant]

[Gordon]

I am not arguing, BTW, with the general conclusion that CONCACAF did not do well this go around. It was indeed a poor performance. I am simply arguing that there is not a whole lot gained by reducing the number of participants from CONCACAF, Asia or Africa. There are always going to be teams that go winless in this type of tournament. UEFA did poorly - relatively speaking of course - in 2002 while CONCACAF and Asia did much better than expected. Africa always promises more than it delivers. The only confederation I have a little sympathy for is COMNEBOL, I'd like to see their playoff be against Asia or CONCACAF and Oceania get an easier (i.e. Asia or CONCACAF) draw for their half spot.

[canso]

"Has Norway ever even qualified for the World Cup?"

Twice in recent memory: drew with Mexico and Ireland, lost narrowly to Italy in 94 and beat Brazil after drawing with Morocco and Scotland in 98 before losing to the eyeties again in the second round.

What was your point?

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by Gordon

These are fluff teams who failed to qualify out of regions that sent poorly performing teams to the WORLD Cup.

UEFA and COMNEBOL sent poorly performing teams? That's interesting. Who knew...

quote:

Sengal finished behind winless Togo in qualifying how does their presence make a difference?

UEFA always leaves behind a few good teams and sends some weak teams who either underperfom at the World Cup or overperormed in Qualiifying. So replace Crotia, Poland, and Serbia with any of the European teams you suggest and you end up in exactly the same place.

Yeah, but that "place" is still better than most CONCACAF and AFC teams performed. Croatia and Poland still did okay in this world cup (maybe not by European standards, but certainly compared to most of the AFC and CONCACAF teams). Serbia... well, they were in the group of death. Hard to say how they would've done in a normal group. But when you send 13 teams (as UEFA does), there's always gonna be 1 or 2 who disappoint, not necessarily because they suck. It's just a mathematical certainty.

quote:

Has Norway ever even qualified for the World Cup?

NOt sure. You can bet they'd qualify everytime if they did so thru AFC or CONCACAF. [^]

quote:

The South American teams you list are also traditional filler.

If they are "traditional filler", then what do you call the CONCACAF and AFC teams? Paraguay consistently makes it to the second-round. And Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia have had great teams in the past too. So better you not mention the word "traditional" in your argument. []

quote:

So while you might marginally improve the field, just as you would buy giving more spots to the Americas in Basketball and Baseball, the bottom line is that it is a World</u> Cup and you do not add enough to the tournament by subtracting a few dogs and adding instead dogs with fewer fleas to justify the move.

Yes, I never said that the best 32 teams should qualify (which would mean probably only 4 or 5 teams outside Europe and COMNEBOL). I'm just laughing at Warner's comments after CONCACAF might have had the worse performance by a confederation as a whole in the history of the world cup! [:0]

[Grizzly]

This was not a great world cup for any of the non-UEFA confederations however the statistics overlook two facts. 1)The European teams disgraced themselves and the sport by open blatant cheating in a tournament in which even the notorious South American teams "played fair" (and we saw how far that got the South Americans but maybe they knew they weren't going to get any decisions in Europe anyway). Even countries like Germany, Holland and Sweden which traditionally played fair were absolutly horrible cheaters. 2)We had reffing more attrocious and biased than in Korea that favoured almost exclusively European teams. It was much easier to criticize the biased reffing in Korea/Japan because it favoured two teams instead of 14 and favoured teams not expected to win as opposed to those who were favourites. Judging from watching the play I thought this World Cup showed that Europe has 6-8 strong teams just like South America has two strong teams and that the rest of their teams were equal to or not much above the standard of those in other conferences. Just like South America, the number of spots given to Europe is based on the performance of a small number of strong teams not on the strength of the average teams. It is the second Cup in a row that UEFA has supplied the worst team and the arrogant EUROs are complaining that they don't have enough spots.