COLUMN-Global qualifiers would enrich World Cup finals
By Brian Homewood (Reuters)
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Finishing fourth out of six in a group containing the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama, then beating Bahrain, was good enough to get Trinidad & Tobago to the World Cup.
Twice former champions Uruguay will miss out on Germany 2006 despite drawing home and away with world champions Brazil and beating Argentina.
If the two sides were to meet directly, Uruguay would almost certainly beat the Soca Warriors, many of whose players ply their trade with minor British clubs.
While Trinidad's first World Cup appearance will add colour to the World Cup and has delighted the small Caribbean island nation, their place in the finals has done more than anything to highlight the anomalies of the regional qualifying system.
Nowadays, when major clubs nip off to Asia for a quick pre-season tour, it is hard to imagine why the World Cup qualifiers still need to be divided into regions.
An alternative system would be for FIFA to organise regional preliminaries to weed out the smaller nations, then throw the remainder into, for example, 15 worldwide groups of six with the top two in each qualifying for the finals. The hosts and champions would take the total to 32.
The so-called Third World countries of Latin America and Africa, whose role in soccer is primarily as suppliers of raw talent for the big-money leagues of Europe, would get to see some of the world's top players in action.
There would be fewer games for the bigger nations, no bickering over how many places each region should receive at the finals and, providing the contest was properly seeded, a much better chance of the world's best 32 national teams all reaching the World Cup.
MORE DIFFICULT
For under the present set-up it would almost have been more difficult for Trinidad & Tobago not to reach the finals.
First came a two-leg tie against the Dominican Republic, before matches against the even smaller Caribbean nations of St Vincent & Grenadines and St Kitts & Nevis.
That took them into this year's six-team final stage where, despite five losses in 10 games including a 5-1 drubbing by Guatemala, they were able to qualify for the two-leg playoff against Bahrain, where a 2-1 aggregate win saw them through.
Meanwhile, Uruguay, who finished fifth out of 10 after 18 games in the much tougher South American group, were forced to travel around the world to face Australia in a playoff when it would have been geographically more logical for them to play Trinidad & Tobago and the Socceroos to face Bahrain.
After two matches of unremitting tension and a 1-1 aggregate draw, Australia won on penalties.
As a result, CONCACAF, a confederation where Mexico is the nearest thing to a major soccer power, will have four finalists in Germany, the same as South America, whose teams have between them have won nine of the 17 tournaments to date.
FIFA has never been, and will almost certainly never be able to keep everyone happy with how they decide how many World Cup slots to allocate to each continent.
South America, for example, will have only one more place at the 32-team tournament in Germany than in 1978, when there were only 16 finalists.
As a major provider of talent for European clubs and the continent which did more than any other to start the World Cup, the South Americans believe they deserve at least five automatic places at the finals.
