ml1dch Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 Why are Gilbraltar allowed to compete again? They shouldn't be, because they're not even close to being a country, even historically, and they are palpably playing at a dismally low level. Pre-qualifying remains an idea whose time has come. Nah. When Turkey were getting routinely annihilated during the 80s they didn't need to be put in a pre-qualifying tournament to get better. Nor did Iceland. Azerbailjan spent most of the last decade getting thrashed - the other year they finished fourth in their group, ahead of Northern Ireland in qualifying. When Wales were ranked as the lowest seeds along with San Marino and Andorra back in 2011, should they have gone into pre-qualifying? How about the Faroe Islands? Always lumped in as the sort of team who should have to pre-qualify, have now twice in the last year beaten a team that got out of their group at the last the World Cup It's a silly idea, and fortunately one that isn't going to be seen anytime soon. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 3rd place looks like some tricky trips with best going through, at moment in order it is 1. Hungary 2. Scotland 3. Netherlands 4. Russia 5. Albania 6. Norway 7. Ukraine 8. Slovenia 9. Israel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 Why are Gilbraltar allowed to compete again? They shouldn't be, because they're not even close to being a country, even historically, and they are palpably playing at a dismally low level. Pre-qualifying remains an idea whose time has come. Nah. When Turkey were getting routinely annihilated during the 80s they didn't need to be put in a pre-qualifying tournament to get better. Nor did Iceland. Azerbailjan spent most of the last decade getting thrashed - the other year they finished fourth in their group, ahead of Northern Ireland in qualifying. When Wales were ranked as the lowest seeds along with San Marino and Andorra back in 2011, should they have gone into pre-qualifying? How about the Faroe Islands? Always lumped in as the sort of team who should have to pre-qualify, have now twice in the last year beaten a team that got out of their group at the last the World Cup It's a silly idea, and fortunately one that isn't going to be seen anytime soon. Pre qualifying will never happen, it'd be voted on and the vote would be a no by a huge margin, those at the bottom won't slit their own throats and those near the middle, the Scotland's and Ireland's etc won't want to give up their big confidence boosting victories Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 Ireland get 1 confidence boosting victory every 10 years, we struggle against minnows more than most nations Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 There's already something selfish about seeding. Let's not go even further to prevent upsets or fair chances with pre quals. How much more interesting would it be to simply put all the names in a bag, and potentially have a group with Germany, Italy and Spain in it and another group with Northern Ireland, Finland and Malta. Much much more interesting. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Why are Gilbraltar allowed to compete again? They shouldn't be, because they're not even close to being a country, even historically, and they are palpably playing at a dismally low level. Pre-qualifying remains an idea whose time has come. Nah. When Turkey were getting routinely annihilated during the 80s they didn't need to be put in a pre-qualifying tournament to get better. Nor did Iceland. Azerbailjan spent most of the last decade getting thrashed - the other year they finished fourth in their group, ahead of Northern Ireland in qualifying. When Wales were ranked as the lowest seeds along with San Marino and Andorra back in 2011, should they have gone into pre-qualifying? How about the Faroe Islands? Always lumped in as the sort of team who should have to pre-qualify, have now twice in the last year beaten a team that got out of their group at the last the World Cup It's a silly idea, and fortunately one that isn't going to be seen anytime soon. Well said. Snobbery of the highest order when it comes to some of the smaller nations and "pre qualifying". How many of the African nations who were considered a joke in the 70s or 80s are now producing world class players? Involvement in these tournaments is what inspires football associations to improve infrastructure and inspires kids to take up the game. Shit, there must be school age kids waking up in the Faroe Islands this morning who feel ten feet tall because their team has just done the double over the 2004 European Champions. Football is for everybody. Lets not take that away because some multi millionaires can't be arsed to play San Marino once or twice in their career. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Why are Gilbraltar allowed to compete again? They shouldn't be, because they're not even close to being a country, even historically, and they are palpably playing at a dismally low level. Pre-qualifying remains an idea whose time has come. Nah. When Turkey were getting routinely annihilated during the 80s they didn't need to be put in a pre-qualifying tournament to get better. Nor did Iceland. Azerbailjan spent most of the last decade getting thrashed - the other year they finished fourth in their group, ahead of Northern Ireland in qualifying. When Wales were ranked as the lowest seeds along with San Marino and Andorra back in 2011, should they have gone into pre-qualifying? How about the Faroe Islands? Always lumped in as the sort of team who should have to pre-qualify, have now twice in the last year beaten a team that got out of their group at the last the World Cup It's a silly idea, and fortunately one that isn't going to be seen anytime soon. I think the only thing you can say for the likes of Turkey is they had the population and structure of league to improve over time, when Gilbralter are picking from about 15 players they're not going to magically improve over time, in 20 years time they'll still be tonked 10-0 like San Marino have been for the last 20 years. I do agree about the pre qualifying though, how many rank bad nations are there nowadays. When we have Faroes doing the double over Greece, Iceland who were regularly finishing 5th in groups about to qualify and the likes of Estonia and Armenia have been in contention for play offs in recent times so there's only really the likes of Andorra and San Marino who you know will lose every game. Not worth changing for 4-5 teams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 The seeding for 2018 will show you the change Wales expected to be 1st seed (not long ago they were in bottom 2 pots) Bosnia and Iceland Pot 2 Sweden, Albania in pot 3 Ireland, Turkey, and Faroe Islands in Pot 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Shame Russia are hosts as would've been amusing to see them in pot 4 or wherever given how abysmal they've been in the last year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 they looked OK last night in 2nd half but like in the World Cup they are all good technical players but no pace to cause any damage. Though werent helped last night their experienced defenders were injured Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Love Capello skilfully getting a new 4 year deal in January 2014, he's an expert at getting long contracts before major tournaments, Russia have spent the last year trying to work out a way to actually sack him. Is he playing anyone under 30 in their team? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 only 2 players over 30 started yesterday and 1 of them came off after 12 minutes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Ah was just looking at their squad on wiki and it had just the one Berezutski twin at the back (32), the captain Shirokov is 34 next month, Yuri Zhirkov is 31 and Kerzahkov is 32 so think that is a problem for them building up to 2018 as that's pretty much the spine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 (edited) Why are Gilbraltar allowed to compete again? They shouldn't be, because they're not even close to being a country, even historically, and they are palpably playing at a dismally low level. Pre-qualifying remains an idea whose time has come. Nah. When Turkey were getting routinely annihilated during the 80s they didn't need to be put in a pre-qualifying tournament to get better. Nor did Iceland. Azerbailjan spent most of the last decade getting thrashed - the other year they finished fourth in their group, ahead of Northern Ireland in qualifying. When Wales were ranked as the lowest seeds along with San Marino and Andorra back in 2011, should they have gone into pre-qualifying? How about the Faroe Islands? Always lumped in as the sort of team who should have to pre-qualify, have now twice in the last year beaten a team that got out of their group at the last the World Cup It's a silly idea, and fortunately one that isn't going to be seen anytime soon. Well said. Snobbery of the highest order when it comes to some of the smaller nations and "pre qualifying". How many of the African nations who were considered a joke in the 70s or 80s are now producing world class players? Involvement in these tournaments is what inspires football associations to improve infrastructure and inspires kids to take up the game. Shit, there must be school age kids waking up in the Faroe Islands this morning who feel ten feet tall because their team has just done the double over the 2004 European Champions. Football is for everybody. Lets not take that away because some multi millionaires can't be arsed to play San Marino once or twice in their career. Wow, 'snobbery of the highest order' indeed. Probably worth highlighting, considering the tone you've chosen to take there, that Africa has four rounds of qualifying for the World Cup and three rounds of qualifying, with one explicitly called a 'Preliminary Round', for the Africa Cup of Nations, despite having a very similar number of national members as UEFA. In fact, the only federation apart from UEFA that doesn't have graded qualifying is South America where there aren't enough countries to justify it. So it seems fairly clear that most of the rest of the world doesn't actually regard graded qualifying as stamping on schoolchildren's dreams. Who knows, maybe those nations who were being laughed at thirty years ago got better because they developed winning habits against other nations as a result of playing nations at their own level. Edited June 16, 2015 by HanoiVillan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Pangloss Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 No chance of Gibraltar ever achieving that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 There's more chance of them beating San Marino/Andorra/Faroe Islands/Cyprus/Malta etc than there is of them beating Poland, Germany, Scotland or Ireland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodders0223 Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 Turkey's population as of 2013 was 74.93 million. Gibraltor has 30,000. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOF Posted June 16, 2015 Moderator Share Posted June 16, 2015 I completely agree that nations should not have to pre-qualify. The worry is that 50 'no's and 1 yes means yes and once it ever comes in it'll be a bastard to get rid of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 Turkey's population as of 2013 was 74.93 million. Gibraltor has 30,000. Good luck. just did a quick check, both teams only allowed to use 11 players at any one time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 There's more chance of them beating San Marino/Andorra/Faroe Islands/Cyprus/Malta etc than there is of them beating Poland, Germany, Scotland or Ireland. So you want Faroe Islands to be in this group that aren't allowed to play against better sides. Greece probably agree with you, I bet they wish they didn't have to play against them as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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