Continuing the football theme

World Cup qualifying.

Some Americans (one in particular in the Guardian today, although he's Canadian) have long been critical of UEFA and the format used for qualifying games for world cup and European Championships. This is because 'minnows' such as San Marino and Faroe Islands are included.

They appear to forget that their own qualification process includes the Virgin Islands 'derby' or Montserrat. Or Turks and Caicos Islands with their 10-0 aggregate defeat to 'giants' Bahamas.
Or El Salvador v Cayman Islands; Canada v Saint Lucia; USA v Antigua and Barbuda.

For some reason it's seen as different because they have an earlier round of games to eliminate their minnows. Well, most of them anyway. I'm not quite sure why they don't see the Cayman Islands (196 in world), Saint Lucia (140) or Antigua and Barbuda (118) and others as minnows while Northern Ireland (119) Cyprus (123) and Luxembourg (148) are considered less worthy.

Most bizarrely of all they think European qualification is easy because there are games to play against minnows. They brag about their 'Hex' stage as being 2 very good teams and 4 decent ones.

Last time these teams were the USA, Mexico (both always guaranteed a WC place, such is the competitive nature of qualifying - sarcasm off) Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago.

Current world ranking positions are 29,16, 50,48, 85 and 82.

Half qualify and a fourth gets a play off opportunity. So a world cup place guaranteed for the 29th best team right down to 50th.

Meanwhile, in Europe, three top 20 teams are in the same qualifying group with just the one automatic place available and a possible play-off for another. Not even a guaranteed play-off.

Sweden fight Germany for the one place. Russia and Portugal, Spain and France. All three pairs going for the one place. In another group, there's England, Poland and Ukraine with surprise package Montenegro - ranked 27.

As things stand right now Denmark, Czech Rep, Sweden, Russia, Portugal, England, Poland, Ukraine, France are teams who will "do well" to come second in their groups. At least three of them will not get a play off spot. It's impossible.

The 4 play off matches are generally seeded. But there are still 6 teams in that group to be added by two others. Quite likely to be Greece and Croatia. Ranked 13 and 4.

So we'll get half a dozen teams ranked higher than the USA and as high as 4th NOT qualifying for the WC because 3 into 1 just won't go.

But European qualifying is "easy" because they'll all have played a minnow.

Just what kind of 'thinking' is this?