A Fairer World Cup Draw

[E-man]

What do you think of this?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/03/upshot/world-cup-draw-simulation.html

"FIFA seeded eight top teams and drew them to separate groups, but after that, geography, not skill, dictated the rest: teams from the same continent cannot be drawn into the same group, with the exception of European teams – a maximum of two of them per group is allowed.

For instance, Brazil, given automatic elite status as the host country, had an equal chance of drawing the United States (ranked No. 13 at the time) as drawing Honduras (ranked No. 34) simply because both teams are from North America. Or Spain could just as likely have drawn Ghana as Cameroon (No. 59 at the time, lowest in the tournament). Ultimately, this method produces groups with a huge variance in strength, and this year’s tournament is no different.

What if there were a better way?

Julien Guyon, a French mathematician, has come up with a method of drawing World Cup teams that produces more balanced groups. In the table above, we’ve made an interactive version of his method along with FIFA‘s so you can see for yourself. The Guyon method isn’t better every single time, but on average, the groups are much more balanced.

The Guyon method differs from FIFA’s in a very simple way: All the teams are seeded, according to their world ranking, 1 through 32. The teams are then assigned groups in a manner similar to any other large tournament, like the N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, with an attempt to group higher-rated teams with lower-rated ones."

[Tiresais]

His method isn't much of an improvement - it's too dependent on transitory rankings that are only a proxy for a team's quality - in my simulation you had Brazil France and Portugal (along with poor Iran) in the same group, or Germany, US, Russia and Cameroon.

Geography works as a fairly good second proxy for quality at the moment, when teams from Africa and Asia emerge we'll have to change it, but of course by then the number of teams from each conference will have changed too

[Bourbon]

His method isnt any kind of improvement. World Ranking isnt any better. And their classifications of "weak" and strong laughable.

A group with Brazil,Mexico, Cameroon and Croatia defined as "very weak". Using the Guyon method a group with Brazil, Portugal, France and Mexico is still "very weak"?

A group with Switzerland Italy Ecuador and Algeria defined as "strong"?

Lets be real. Its the World Cup. Better we skip qualifiers and have a league with the top 32 ranked teams if we take this method seriously.

This paragraph sealed my suspicions.

Here’s what groups the two methods would have produced for the United States if you had pressed the simulate button above 10,000 times.

The dark blue area represents the Guyon method, and light blue areas represent the traditional FIFA method. The dark blue area is skinnier than the light blue area, which means draws for the United States are more consistent under the Guyon method. The United States is less likely to find itself in a very easy group (toward the left of the chart) or a very hard one (toward the right).

Deal with it. You cant expect an easy draw. France lucky with theirs...but in groups like that...who has more to lose...the so called strong teams or the weak teams?

[KND2]

It does not matter , to win the World Cup you have to beat the best teams you will have to beat them in game 1 or in the finals what difference does it make when you take this view it does not matter