Tbf RoI had a great run from post 1986 world cup to 2016 Euros. I think they qualified for as many tournaments in that time, if not more, then NI, Scotland and Wales combined. Massive overachievers. 2016 is the only time I have seen NI qualify for a major tournament, and I likely won't see us ever see us qualify again, so would love to have had a record as good as RoI.
To be fair they seemed to have rested everyone bar Alisson and Bruno? But, yeah, thats their 6th loss in the group, thats not usual Brazilian form.
Finished 5th. They are the 2nd best team in South America according to the FIFA rankings. To this day i have no idea how they calcuate the scores.
I'm old enough to remember their participation at 1982 World Cup in Spain, though I was only at matches in Barcelona.
FIFA claims to have an official ticket 'exchange' or re-sale site afterwards. I jumped into the VISA-sponsored pre-sale lottery, just for grins, yesterday. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if tens of thousands of Visa accounts were HACKED?!?
Spain 82 is probably still our greatest moment. Ironically I would argue in my time one of our top 3 moments was ending their undefeated streak in 2008 qualifiers (Healy hattrick).
They did finish on the same amount of points as 4 other nations, and only finished 1 point off 2nd (albeit due to Ecuador getting deducted 3 points). Ecuador finished 2nd, managing to get 8 draws, all 0-0 & failed to score in 10 of 18 games, so I'd guess it did to there being a closer level of quality between the nations after Argentina than the 5th place finish looks on the face of things. Chile managed to finish bottom, after winning the Copa America a decade ago and being assigned the ominous dark horse tag at the 2014 World Cup, quite the fall off they've had.
I feel like they need to switch up the way they do the European qualifiers. It's stupid having Andorra, Moldova, Faroe Islands, and San Marino playing against sides stacked with top level footballers. International football really is the dark ages.
I agree. Put them all in a group together and then the winner could go into a playoff or something for a spot at the tournament. So pointless otherwise.
It should be sorted how they've sorted the Nations League. They aren't going to get any better playing sides that are lightyears ahead of them. It's like putting an U16s team in a men's professional league. England's group is an utter waste of time. They're devaluing the tournament the way they've expanded it, and the way they get teams to qualify for it.
No it's not. The whole point is you get the best matches between bigger names at the World Cup and Euros and it makes it worth waiting for. The last thing you want is to devalue the major tournaments by having big names playing outside of the tournaments and eliminating each other from qualifying. The Nation's League exists for those who want to see bigger names play each other and smaller names play each other outside of tournaments - qualifying doesn't need changing.
They've already devalued it by expanding it. The qualifiers 100% need changing. They should do away with the teams in pot 5 to start.
It'd be devalued even more if you forced big names to play each other in qualifying and made it easier for the likes of San Marino and the Faroe Islands to qualify as absolute no-hopers over higher ranked teams like Germany and England. The highest ranked teams have the best chance of making the finals; that's the way it should be and the way it is in all federations. You can't kick teams out of qualifying, the teams of Pot 5 have every right to attempt to qualify as UEFA members - every federation includes all teams in their qualifying (except suspended teams) albeit some do use preliminary rounds for lowest ranked teams. The current qualification system is exactly how it should be. The Nation's League exists for those who want teams to be limited to only playing teams ranked similarly to them and it works for that competition - but it would be an absolutely awful way to run World Cup qualifying. We've seen how much of a joke that would be already with San Marino (winners of a League D group) being ahead of Italy (runners up in League A group) in the runners up queue due to the utterly stupid Nation's League group winners nonsense.
Also, now that 428 teams qualify for the finals, the winner of a European ‘minnows’ group might have have a chance of an upset against one of the smaller teams from the Asian/American/Oceania qualifiers.
The Oceania qualifier is New Zealand, who are hardly going to be dragging down the quality of the tournament.
You're talking utter bull-crap. Only one team qualifies from Oceania - and it'll probably always be New Zealand so not a minnow. The Asian qualifying campaign is highly competitive and the smaller/worse nations have already been eliminated or are likely to be eliminated in the next round. Even the Asian teams to qualify for the first time for a World Cup have decent histories at federation level competitions. That leaves the only smaller nations as the 3 that qualify from the North and Central American qualifiers as the only opportunity for any real minnows to qualify and those minnows are fighting with respected footballing nations for those spots.
The solution is simple, UEFA should just follow the AFC, OFC and CONCACAF qualification process and put the lowest ranked nations through a preliminary round, with the winners getting a place in the main qualifiers.
