New FIFA Initiative!

The decision was made by FIFA last autumn that playoff fixtures from the European qualifying groups should be organized with reference to seedings. This meant that the higher ranked teams would play lower ranked teams, thus providing a gentle helping hand to the more established footballing nations. It may have appeared that this decision was taken for commercial reasons, as significant nations such as Portugal and France had failed to acquire automatic qualification. Those with a grasp of ethics may have thought that, as teams had been presented with the same qualification task in principle, teams that had made the playoffs should have been dealt with equally via a random draw.

However, FIFA have decided that this seeding process was a viable initiative and are allegedly considering rolling out this approach so that it applies throughout the forthcoming World Cup. WCC spoke to FIFA’s Ideas Clerk, Wolf Zwick, to obtain some more information*:

“The problem with football is, of course, that sometimes results are wrong. We are all aware of occasions when talented teams from big nations have tragically lost to sides from less celebrated nations. Remember the horror of Greece winning Euro 2004? Pan-national football associations require big names from the big nations to excel at tournaments so that the media can jump up and down in excitement at the likes of Ronaldo, Henry, Kaka and Wilkshire. Teams sans big name players, which win tournaments by adopting a holistic defensive approach, don’t lend themselves particularly well to economic stimulation. Football may be a team game but it is individuals that sell products.

“Therefore at this forthcoming World Cup in South Africa, teams will progress according to seedings rather than results. Football is big business in the era of global commerce, so it’s too great a risk to leave the tournament at the mercy of what happens on the pitch. Matches will still be played of course, but the action will be fairly meaningless as the winners and losers will have been pre-established by rankings conferred by a FIFA committee.

“We do understand that fans may become disenchanted if there is a substantial disparity between results and seedings. For example, if a top nation is trounced in all of its group stage games, but still progresses to the second round, then this could seem a little unfair. To prevent this from happening, we are providing some additional help to the top nations: on each occasion an unseeded team scores, this smaller nation will be granted one goal as per the old rules, but now the seeded team will also be allocated three goals. We don’t want to skew things too much in the favour of the seeded sides though, so when they score a goal of their own it will still only count as one goal. We believe that this will provide everyone with just what they want: the top nations winning high scoring games. Just think, in previous tournaments a 3-2 victory for Honduras over Brazil would have remained 3-2; in 2010 it will be an 11-3 victory for Brazil!

“We hope you all enjoy what is going to be the greatest sporting show ever. And yes, the final will be between Brazil and Spain.”

* WCC has not contacted anyone. If FIFA do have an Ideas Clerk called Wolf Zwick, this is entirely coincidental.