That was an amazing game but someone explain the Mendy thing to me. I was on the treadmill for thr entire game, so I didn't hear the commentating. Absent an injury (which I didn't see), why the F would you switch goalies with a minute left in extra time going into a shootout? Not to mention Mendy made about a half dozen great plays. If there was a pre-game storyline, I was unaware. Fucking stupid is what it was.

That game also illustrates the big flaw in soccer - penalty kicks are too easy for top flight players. About a third of those kicks, the goalies guessed right and still had little to no chance of a stop.

I love the irony of Kepa being the GK brought on to face penalties when not so long ago a disagreement between him & Sarri over the same thing led to one of the more embarrassing moments of recent CFC history: Maurizio Sarri 'Didn't Want' Kepa Arrizabalaga to Face Penalties in Cup Final | Bleacher Report | Latest News, Videos and Highlights

Yeah, it’s worked in the past a few times but I think that’s just been random luck. As a former keeper I can’t imagine anything worse than being brought in cold to face penalties, let alone at this level.

Blame the data analysts!

Kepa Arrizabalaga's path to becoming Chelsea's penalty king after Carabao Cup dispute - Mirror Online



Whoever lost would have been criticized for a goalkeeping decision they made. I liked that Klopp maintained his commitment to Kelleher. Klopp told him he was the goalkeeper for this competition and believed in him all the way to the end

The problem with this kind of data (and this is my presumption on it) is that they will not take into account the other variables at work. You can't blindly go by goalkeeper A stopped 20% and goalkeeper B stopped 24% during their careers. Are penalty kicks during a match the same as penalty shootouts? Was there prior research about whether flipping goalkeepers will improve or decrease the incoming "cold" goalkeeper's chances to stop kicks?

if Goalkeeper A stopped 3 of 15 penalties and Goalkeeper B stopped 6 of 25 penalties, that obviously isn't enough data. And even if we it's 5 times these figures, there are so many other variables. Which teams and players did they face? Which team took the first kick? Were they playing in front of a home crowd? Was this a televised game? Did he break up with his girlfriend or become a daddy recently? Did it rain? Were the floodlights on? Did he play "I know you know so you know I know" mind games with the kick takers? Did lightning strike in a bottle? Was he up for renewal of a contract? Did his team lead or trail for a long time during the game, or was it a 0-0 snoozer? Does he think that the color of the shirt worn makes a difference?

Don't overestimate soccer players in this area, I think you'll find little to no top flight players that never missed a penalty kick.

Sure, but I have to imagine the percentages are vastly in the favor of the players. I just think the advantage from penalty kicks/shootouts is overblown given the game itself. Scoring is at a premium and fouls hardly count for anything... unless you're in the box in which case it's a nearly automatic goal. But teams with the ball in the box on a normal offensive play only score at a fraction of the rate of penalties. It just seems out of whack/proportion to me.

Oh, definitely. Without the desire to dig up actual numbers, my gut feeling says that the average penalty shootout ends up 4-3 after 9.5 kicks, which implies roughly 75% of the kicks are converted.

The Europa League Final last year also went 11-10.

from the 2014 WC. It goes into how to figure advantages to various scenarios (tho nothing about a GK change) but the key point was this

In the history of the World Cup, teams have made 71.5 percent of their penalty-shootout kicks. But the sample size is not huge, and the percentage has been slightly higher — closer to 75 percent — in other major international tournaments like the European Championships.

A Chart For Predicting Penalty-Shootout Odds in Real Time | FiveThirtyEight

I wonder how they'll handle that mini-playoff for the WC spot. Does Slovenia get an invite to play Poland?

The qualifiers are not until the 24th so I would not rule out FIFA reinstating Russia if the war has ended. The chances of that happening are not zero IMO.

Slovakia actually finished ahead of Slovenia on goal difference in that group so they would be more likely to get in. I would prefer to see Norway replace Russia. They were the best third place finisher in qualifying. It also provide another opportunity to get a star like Erling Haaland into the World Cup.

Will Ukraine be able to play Scotland in their semifinal?

Is it wrong to hope they cant? This might be my last chance to see Scotland in a World Cup again.

With the world cup expanding to 48 teams in 2026, surely the odds for Scotland to get their will improve by 1 or 2 percent? And with FIFA's lunacy, it's not unthinkable to see them come up with a 64-team biannual World Cup from 2029 onwards.

2/3rd of the Ukraine national team plays for Dinamo Kyiv or Shakhtar Donetsk and roughly 1/3rd abroad (none in Russia, it seems). They probably have other things on their mind right now though, but if they get a chance to play, you can never know how pumped up or demotivated they will be. Postponement of the foursome with Austria and Wales wouldn't be an unrealistic compromise. The intercontinental playoffs are scheduled for mid-June, the World Cup itself is more than 8 months away. It could clash with the UEFA Nations League, but surely a solutions can be found.

Concerning Russia, in qualifiers there's usually a walkover when a team is disqualified mid-competition. Had they already qualified for the World Cup, their ticket would have pushed forward to the next-best team they beat (which in this situation would be Slovakia). I think there's enough precedent to expect that to happen here.

Roman Abramovich has put CFC up for sale. A Swiss billionaire potentially heading a consortium currently appears to be the likely buyer.

Do what you would like with this information from the statement he released.

Abramovich will not be asking for any loans to be repaid. The club currently owes Abramovich's cmopany £1.514 billion.

A charitable foundation is being set up "where all net proceeds from the sale will be donated. The foundation will be for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine. This includes providing critical funds towards the urgent and immediate needs of victims, as well as supporting the long-term work of recovery."

What a nice little oligarch.

Just goes to show exactly how rich Abramovich is, if he can basically write all this off (to say nothing of the fire sale of his UK properties reportedly going on).

They could just seize the team and sell it at an auction.

I wondered if it would be Slovenia if Russia were replaced, rather than just a walk-over for Poland. Reasoning being Slovenia takes second in group H if all the matches with Russia that led to Russia being the second-place finisher were removed from the group. If Russia remains second, but simply declared ineligible to advance, then Slovakia was third.

There's some room to give Abramovich credit for not forcing the UK to do it themselves. And for the foundation. It's not put-up-a-statue credit (as with Oskar Schindler, a former member of the Nazi party), but he is making a choice that he'd rather be part of a world that condemns the invasion than part of Russia's inner circle. If he was ever friends with Putin, he isn't now.

One day Kepa will save a football again. One day…

My memory is failing me to come up with specific examples, but I know there is precedent these kind of situations with disqualifications. A couple of months ago I've complemented my research on all World Cup qualification results of all countries that qualified for the finals tournament or came a playoff away from it. The sad part now is that I compressed it to final standings or who beat who in a playoff, without all the individual game results and points etc. I've seen the situations, but haven't written them down in detail.

Based on that research, I expect the walkover (precedent points into this direction), but I wouldn't be surprised if FIFA gives UEFA the option to go the replacement route, in that case Slovakia gets preference for having beaten Slovenia in the group on overall goal difference. Had the group been discontinued midway through, the solution would indeed have been to exclude all results versus Russia and let the rest of the games play out as scheduled.

The famous one is Denmark were only playing in the Euros when they won in 1992 because Yugoslavia were DQd because of the war there.

But the qualification process had already completed, so they just selected Denmark in place of Yugoslavia as they finished runners up to them in the group.

And I completely failed to mention that specifically in the UEFA zone, the process of "best third place teams" has been replaced with "best Nations League group winners". That means the next best country is actually Hungary.

Oh fuck. a riot broke out at the Atlas-Querétaro game tonight. Unofficial, unverified report is that there's a number of fatalities. The shots I'm seeing out of mexico look horrid. official reports are of no dead yet, but the shots that I saw on twitter.. *shudder*.

Yeah, unofficially 17 dead. No one is expecting the Mexican authorities to give a factual number. The videos are horrible.

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Don't know much about soccer, but, if, say, this happened at an MLB/NFL/NBA team, I think it would be fair to just say those two teams can take a good month off and they just take Ls in the standing. Or maybe the rest of the season, depending on how long the season is. It would be one thing if this were player instigated like the Malice in the Palace or some of the baseball brawls from the 70s/80s where you could just levy huge suspensions on the team. But this looks like it was the fans doing it, right?

SI

yeah, apparently the hooligans for one group decided to just... attack... anyone supporting the other team, literally stripping the clothes off them in a lot of cases.

The Home Team should be suspended for a few months due to lack of security, and then another season or two because it was their fans who charged the other team's fans.

Looking at some of the stories on that Mexico soccer deal,looks like a lot of the people pictured on the pitch were actually fans trying to escape what was happening in the stands.

Maybe everybody else knew that already, it just wasn't what it appeared to me when I first saw the pic without any clarification.

There's also a pic that shows fans fighting across barbed wire that appears to be in place to separate different seating sections.

Imagine going to a professional sporting event in the U.S. where that precaution was considered necessary in advance.

I think it's gonna be hard to impossible to try to apply standards of U.S. sports to this situation. The existing bar for behavior simply starts out far lower than we can fully imagine.

Not just mexico, but argentina, scotland, and columbia (there was a crush incident at the recent championship of Africa)

Aside from being prompted by today's occurrence, I didn't mean for it to sound like I thought it was exclusive to Mexico but I can see where it might have come across that way.

(I've seen barbed wire & such, hell even military (para?) used as security in other countries IIRC)

Seeing how Mexican soccer fans have behaved for a long time, it's really not that surprising. One of those "only a matter of time" type events. Tragic, but considering they were talking of finishing the match tomorrow, seems like something they just don't take seriously at all.

It is still wild to view as an American. The Malice at the Palace is one of the low points in sports fandoms in this country, and I doubt it would even be a major story in some countries.

Having been in stadiums where those types of precaution are in place, I know many of the supporters there would say that the existing bar for passion for their clubs is starts out much higher that we can fully imagine.

I am not justifying the actions on display last night in any way. I find that behavior disgusting.

This event was clearly spurred on by the lack of & complete inaction of any police presence. If we don’t think this would happen at an NFL game between fan groups who don’t like each other like the Raiders/Chiefs, Ravens/Steelers, Eagles/Cowboys, etc we are sorely over estimating ourselves.

Now I don’t think it would lead to something at this scale but if nobody is there to break up these large brawls that already happen at NFL games they could easily end up tragic as well.

Too easy

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Relegate these chumps. Sheesh

Okay, feel free to explain this quote from the offending side's coach during the Liga MX debacle like I"m completely stupid.


He said what as it's used where?
WTF?

Have I missed something somewhere?

The words "get them" are extremely ambiguous. Is this the actual quote, or was it translated from another language, resulting in this ambiguity? What's the context from wherein this quote was taken?

I think what the context is that the fans wanted to rush the players and the other team's fans in the tunnel, (likely causing a huge crush) and it was more like "If you're going to do it, do it outside the stadium" to try to give the rush of adrenalin a chance to calm down. Not provoke, but redirect. (especially since police in the stadium weren't doing diddly squat

Cristante also explained that comments he made to Queretaro fans on the pitch weren't meant to incite them, clarifying that he was trying to disuade further violence. In a video, Cristante is seen telling fans on the field to "get them outside."

"The [attackers] said 'let's get them' and they wanted to enter the tunnel and I told them there will be a tragedy, I took them to the other side and I said 'yes, yes get them outside' as its used in education and persuasion," Cristante said.

Concerning Russia and Ukraine in WC2022 qualifying: FIFA today announced that Poland will advance to the qualifiers finals (against the winner of Sweden vs Czechia) and the Scotland - Ukraine match, as consequently that qualifier final (against the Wales vs Austria winner), will be rescheduled to June.

Liga MX - Queretaro home fans banned for 1 year 'barras' get 3-year ban, owners must sell club

The loser in this seems like it might be the previous owner of the offending club, who has apparently been given the chore of trying to sell the franchise. Not sure how many people are going to be lining up to buy a club whose are allowed no fans at all inside for one year and without their most diehard supporters for three years.

Looks like I picked the right moment to happen across a soccer game on CBS in the middle of the afternoon.

This collapse was depressingly predictable. Suicidal defending and all completely unnecessary.

Some cliff notes on how the Abramovich sanctions affect Chelsea.

No player transfers in, no contract renewals.

Only season ticket holders will allowed to attend games.

Sponsors can leave.

No merchandise sales.

They can only spend "reasonable costs" to stage matches at Stamford Bridge and to get to away matches.

Explained: How Chelsea are affected by Abramovich sanctions | Goal.com

PSG continues to prove out the hypothesis that it's hard to compete at the UCL level if the vast majority of your league games are complete pushovers. The inability to shut that game down after getting a big lead really underlines it.

Real Madrid & Barcelona at least have each other & Atletico, plus another team or two per year who can play tough. Munich has Dortmund plus, I dunno, they always seem to be able to assemble a complete team.

Maybe PSG should apply to join the EPL or something.

That's quite the decision there.
I wonder what will happen to other football clubs in the EU that are owned or heavily invested in by Russians, the UK is not EU, but it's an interesting example of what could be decided.

I kinda can't believe the Tories actually went ahead and did it. When I posted previously about Abramovich apparently trying to get rid of all his UK assets as quickly as possible, in a fire sale for much of his real estate, I felt he was over-reacting a bit. Turns out no!

Telecommunications company Three has asked Chelsea to remove their branding from their shirts immediately, having now suspended their sponsorship deal with the club. There’s a kit man in Norwich now heading down to Sports Direct to buy 20 plain blue football tops.

— Matt Lawton (@Lawton_Times) March 10, 2022

I was curious.

A quick google says that Bournemouth (English Championship), AS Monaco (Ligue 1), Cercle Brugge (Belgian Pro League), and Vitesse Arnhem (Eredivisie) are all owned by oligarchs. There are no Russian owners in Spain, Germany, Italy and Portugal. I am not sure about major investors but Alisher Usmanov is a former part owner in Arsenal and is a major investor in Everton. There have been questions as to whether he is the real money behind Everton rather than Farhad Moshiri.

I was curious too, thanks for doing some digging.
I expected there to be a bit more, but as you mentioned, it's rarely clear cut whether some 'owner' brings his own oil money or is just a puppet to bring it in from another country.

As U.K. sanctions oligarchs, the question on social media is how Chelsea FC will stick to the travel budget - MarketWatch

From the article.


I doubt it will happen but the idea of the team traveling via Ryanair to get to a Champions League away match is hilarious.

Chelsea's club credit cards temporarily suspended by Barclays | Football News | Sky Sports

Chelsea has to use cash, check, or cash app for the time being.

Wow, thought that should have been red on the goalkeeper.

Yeah, that's a head-scratcher, because it looks a lot like Serious Foul Play (Law 12.3) to me (which is a red card):



The best I can guess is that it's down to a glitch in the VAR rules. As I understand it, VAR cannot rule on whether a foul should be either a yellow or red card, but must pick one and then rule if the foul merits that card.

This would mean that VAR checked to determine if it was a red card and somehow decided it didn't meet the "excessive force" criteria, but then couldn't downgrade it to, say, "unsporting behavior" (commits in a reckless manner a direct free kick offence) which would result in a yellow.

(NOTE: There's no red for Denying a Goal or Obvious Goal-Scoring Opportunity here since the ref played advantage and the goal was scored.)

If this is the case, then the VAR rules need to be revised.

Though, so be clear, I feel the challenge merited "excessive force" (red) vs. "reckless manner" (yellow).

Red card all day long FWIW

Just seen Neves’ goal against Watford from Thursday - literally made me applaud in an empty house. Quality goal

Who told Cristiano that SI lowered his ratings due to his play over the first half of the season?

I'm not a big soccer fan, but, North Macedonia knocking Italy out of the World Cup qualifying just now was unexpected I think.

A bit.

Outshot, 32-4, on the road, too. Italy is ranked sixth in the world, but was also the highest-ranked squad not to qualify in 2018.

I see you could have gotten North Macedonia at around 16-1 odds to win.

That's a massive upset. Last October, Italy saw an end come to a sensational 37-match unbeaten streak, lasting 3 years and including a streak of 11 without a goal allowed. North Macedonia played a so-so qualifying campaign, winning just 5 of 10 matches, with a negative goal difference.

We can't forget that less than nine months ago, Italy won the EUROS.

Certainly this isn't a harbinger reminding us that things could go cataclysmically wrong Sunday against Panama after running our best players for 60-90 minutes at 7300 feet altitude less than 70 hours before kickoff. Surely we will avoid any issues in the critical second and third games in this window.

I don't know what the odds are tonight (surely better than North Macedonia's), but given the US team's historic inability to win in Mexico City and the simple need to avoid finishing fifth among the five teams that still have a chance to advance (I don't think fourth-place will have much trouble with the team from Oceania, given the low rankings and the cancellation of just about every qualifying match due to COVID) I wonder why they're not going with a B squad tonight, or at least a maximum-youth one.

Looking at the stats, North Macedonia clearly looked to park the bus and hope they could score on the counter when Italy got desperate, a plan which worked to perfection.

It helped that the GK (5 saves on 5 Shots On Target) and the defense (16 blocked shots and 54 clearances) stood on their head, but Italy's lack of clinical lethality shows in only 5 shots on target and an xG of 1.98.

Definitely exactly the kind of results you see complaints about on Reddit from Football Manager fans. Mancini clearly should have ticked the "Work the ball into the Box" option at halftime.

By way of comparision, when Man Utd beat Southampton last year 9-0, they had 24 shots, with 14 on target for an xG of 5.23.

I think the US has to take a shot tonight in Mexico. Azteca is practically empty and that gives you a shot. Mexico has not exactly been good of late. Maybe a win is asking much, but a draw is definitely in the cards.

Also, if you can't beat Panama at home, even with a tired squad, you probably don't deserve to go to the World Cup anyway.

Honduras taking a point at Panama is big. But so is Canada getting a rare double-yellow early and looking like Costa Rica will get the full three at home.

So far, not all that impressed with the US effort. I think they're lucky to still be tied at Mexico, though the US has had a couple of decent shots.

Holy shit Reyna.

I thought the US outplayed them until they put 5 in the back near the end. Pulisic missed a point blank shot that should have been a winner.

Beat Panama at home on Sunday and should be good to go for Qatar. Can't complain about a point at Azteca.

Honestly, looking at talent alone, Mexico & the U.S. are pretty evenly matched. A whole bunch of journeymen playing in their national leagues with a sprinkling of folks playing in tougher European leagues and a couple of stars/almost-stars each. A draw, especially away, is a good result for the U.S.

Now there's something I've never seen and heared before: the home crowd cheering happily when the visiting team scores a goal. Christian Eriksen scored 2 minutes into his return to the Danish team in a friendly on the road in Amsterdam. It may have helped that the Netherlands was already 3-1 up after the first half.

This is great.

OK, let's try this again! Updated CONCACAF outcomes map which correctly shows Canada (and Mexico) more likely to clinch a ticket to Qatar than shown in the previous version in this thread. pic.twitter.com/80odwpD2fq

— Alexander Abnos (@AnAbnos) March 25, 2022

Where's Rainmaker at? Is this good enough so far?

USA would have to lose by SIX goals to miss out on direct qualification.

Yes, this is what the most talented team in CONCACAF should do to a vastly inferior opponent at home.

With qualification in the bag, I would really like to see Reyna get an extended run in Costa Rica. I know he's only 19, but there's something very special about him.

Also really happy for Canada. Them turning into a regional power is great for CONCACAF. Makes the Gold Cup and Nations League much more interesting going forward. Gives more high level games for the United States too.

I would be curious to find out when the last time the United States lost by 6 goals or more. It has to be many decades.

The single most impressive game when we needed it. That 3rd goal from Pulisic was magical. I agree on Reyna, he's incredible on the ball with obscene confidence.

1979 Vs France (Friendly)

edit (instead of dola ;)): I think the reason why this was so good for the US is that Panama had to play for the win and had to go all out (especially after the first PK), so that opened up gaps for the US to take advantage of. We're still vulnerable to bunkerball, but if someone tries to play a fast open game, they're going to be matched by the US at least.

Eh, dola:

The USA have something to play for (well, other than obviously, not losing by 6 to Costa Rica). Depending on the results, the USA have a (very) slim chance to be in Pot 1 of the World Cup Draw on Friday: Here's the scenarios:

Last pot 1 spot:
1) Portugal - with any win (Tue) (incl penalties)
2) Next up Ned - with win over Ger (Tue) (1663.64)
3) Next up Mex - with win over Slv (Wed) (1658.83)
4) Next up USA - with win over CRC (Wed) (1658.71)
5) Next up Ned - with draw v Ger (1658.64)
6) Next up Ger - with win over Ned (1655.55)

As unlikely as that sounds, playing against (and even at) the specific team that needs the result to happen, the USA should still prepare for this game as if they still need a draw. Costa Rica can go into this match knowing they can qualify with a big win and otherwise will get a second chance anyway. It wouldn't be the first time a "only if result x happens" scenario plays out exactly that way.

Took Costa Rica 51 minutes to get the first goal... still looking good. No "help" from Mexico, which needed to lose at home to El Salvador by multiple goals to be part of this equation. Watching the Mexico match (up 2-0, 52nd minute) because that's what's on Univision.

Well the US is in, even if they had to squeak by on goal differential. Still think this team has way too much talent to be in the 3rd-5th best team in CONCACAF territory.

Good news is they will have an auto-bid in the next World Cup and the expanded field should make it easier in 2030 (assuming no one else makes a jump like Canada did).

Costa Rica sat many of their best attackers since the yellow card suspensions carries over to the playoff for some reason.

The yellow card rule is really terrible. Two yellows in 14 games gets you a suspension.

We're in and that's all that matters today.

An odd moment to be sure. Celebrating qualifying at your opponent's expense in their home stadium after losing decisively enough that the tie-breakers used in most other sports would have given the tie in the standings to the other team.

But those are the rules and they play to those rules. This team is so young that by the time they actually get to Qatar, they might be significantly better. Of course, I fully expect the 7th significant round of COVID to be spiking with the Rho variant just as the tournament begins.

That's actually a misconception, there is no standard tie-breaker in soccer. Every competition in the world can make their own rules. Most sports (if any) don't have universal tie-breakers either. It really depends on what can be used and makes sense to the consensus of people playing or organizing the competition/league/tournament/event. My perception is that head-to-head is a USA-y thing to apply.

The tie-breaker rules between FIFA competitions and UEFA competitions are different. UEFA flipped to usually applying head-to-head over all games goal difference (I think that happened about 15 years ago). Which is very confusing, because the WC qualifiers in Europe are a FIFA competition organized by UEFA and from cycle to cycle they re-evaluate which tie-breakers they want to use. Sometimes it's overall goal difference and sometimes it's head-to-head. The latter sometimes with away goals rule and sometimes without.
The median sports fan (and probably median soccer player as well) is stuck in the misconception that overall goal difference is the only tie-breaker, anything else or secondary tie-breakers is too much to comprehend.

Another example: the Spanish top flight division currently uses head-to-head as the first tie-breaker. The Belgian top flight division has traditionally used most matches won as the first tie-breaker. The Netherlands has a flipflopped between having no tie-breakers (resulting in additional tie-breaker matches) to overall goal difference and between with or without most goals scored as a second tie-breaker.


The side-effect of this result is the USA ending up in pot 2 and not in pot 4 in tomorrow's draw. It means getting Cameroon, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Wales/Scotland/Ukraine winner or Peru/Australia/UAE winner rather than Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Uruguay, Switzerland or Croatia as an opponent in the first round of the finals tournament. It also means slimmer odds to end up in the group of Qatar (about 1 in 8.4), which on paper should be the easiest group. The odds to get Brazil or Argentina are kind of slim too, if I did the math right, only about 1 in 7 to get either of them.

Concerning that draw, unless FIFA comes up with last minute changes that fool around with the seeding rankings (it wouldn't be the first time), these should be the teams per pot:

pot 1
AFC - Qatar
CONMEBOL - Argentina
CONMEBOL - Brazil
UEFA - Belgium
UEFA - England
UEFA - France
UEFA - Portugal
UEFA - Spain

Pot 2
CONMEBOL - Uruguay
CONCACAF - Mexico
CONCACAF - USA
UEFA - Croatia
UEFA - Denmark
UEFA - Germany
UEFA - Netherlands
UEFA - Switzerland

Pot 3
AFC - Iran
AFC - Japan
AFC - South Korea
CAF - Morocco
CAF - Senegal
CAF - Tunisia
UEFA - Poland
UEFA - Serbia

Pot 4
AFC - Saudi Arabia
AFC vs CONMEBOL winner (Australia, UAE or Peru)
CAF - Cameroon
CAF - Ghana
CONCACAF - Canada
CONCACAF vs OFC winner (Costa Rica or New Zealand)
CONMEBOL - Ecuador
UEFA - (Scotland, Ukraine or Wales)

No teams from the same conference can draw in the same group, with the exception of UEFA, as every group will be forced to get 1 or 2 teams from that zone. FIFA hasn't in detailed explained how they will force that minimum of 1 UEFA team. All in all, it's quite possible that once they get to pot 4, every drawn team will have only 2 remaining options.

by the time Pot 1 is done, 5 of the 8 groups will have a UEFA team, so it's quite possible that by Pot 2 is done, all 8 groups will have a UEFA team. If not, when a Pot 3 UEFA team (Poland or Serbia) is drawn, if three groups are open, then they have to go to one of those three groups. If two are open then the 2nd to last UEFA team must go in etcetera.

Usually how it works is they'll draw a team, and then put into a pot the groups they are eligible for (so, for example, if Uruguay is the first team out of Pot 2, then they will be in one of the six groups that DOESN'T have a pot 1 team from CONMEBOL), and draw the group

I'm aware of what methods FIFA could use. My point is that FIFA has once again decided not to explain in their regulations which method they will use. I know football fans won't take the time to reach these documents anyway, I know I'm one of few, whilst it should be mandatory reading for journalists that cover the event. The lack of transparency is going to once again feed the "FIFA is shady" sentiments.

I'm torn. On one hand, confusing competition rules from country-to-country and region-to-region are fun. On the other hand, it's not fun when FIFA does it, because it's never not shady when FIFA does it.

:+1:

I swear I've watched the draw in the past and I don't remember the Olympic-style theatrics. Maybe I just timed it right so I was only watching the draw or maybe they were only showing that part on US TV as opposed to everything this year.

SI

It's a bit dramatic for pulling some nations out of a hat.

Get on with it.

I think they just have to sacrifice 4 more virgins, and then Idris Elba drinks from a goblet of sheep blood. Then they're good to go.

Alright, I'm tapping out. Good lord FIFA.

This is brutal. I feel like I am watching a game show on public access TV.

Whats happening here? What is the point of slotting all the teams. Isn't group play round robin?

It allegedly roots out any corruption having to do with the order in which matches are played.

Why does that matter if they all play each other?

Is the thought process they don't want the best team in the group to play the 2 weaker ones in the group first so they can then coast game 3?

Seems odd to me.