The Teams that didn't qualify/ Haters thread

[Royal Blue Jersey]

To all you Oceania haters, I direct you to this...



Haven't been able to see it, but by all accounts, it's the ultimate underdog story. Looks amazing.

 

[Allezfan]

Anyway, the real ofc scandal is this.

In 2010 and 2006, the qualifying campaign for ofc was the previous ofc cup. In 2014 it was announced that this would still be the case

The winner of the OFC cup would go into the play off for the world cup. So in 2004 Australia beat the solomon islands and won both the ofc cup (for a confederations cup place) and also a shot vs Uruguay (for a world cup place), in 2008 New Zealand beat fiji and both won the ofc cup and a shot vs Bahrain. In 2012 New Zealand lost their ofc semifinal to New Caledonia, Tahiti won the final and got the trophy, the confederations cup place and, according the preannounced rules of the tournament, the place in the world cup play off vs Mexico.

And then OFC changed the rules, and made the 4 ofc cup semi finalists play out a 4 team group stage for the play off spot instead. Meaning New Zealand, who had already been knocked out of qualifying, got a second chance at making it through, which they took.

Basically they cheated and bribed their way into a play off spot that was Tahiti's by right, lost that and are now whining about unfair rules.

Kopites of the south.

 

[RaleighBlue]

But, who cares about confederations? Why does that matter? If Ukraine got England's place would that feel any different to Mexico getting it?

The point, surely, is that every individual team has an equal chance of getting there. And they do. New Zealand had to play as many games as Spain did.

This is spot on.

New Zealand and the other OFC nations had a chance to make the World Cup. Just like Egypt did. They fell at the last hurdle and didn't make the World Cup. Just like Egypt did. But the pro-automatic place argument is that they still deserve to be in the World Cup due to an arbitrary distinction that was invented solely to make it possible for these small nations (other than NZ) to even compete for a chance.

The logical thing to do is to include them in the Asian or North American federations. However, travel time and cost makes that an impossible argument. As such, they would have a significant advantage over every other nation on Earth in reaching the World Cup simply due to fuel costs.

That's silly to me.

Why aren't you arguing that Jamaica deserves a place? It's the World Cup after all. And no Caribbean island is in the World Cup. Is it just because of the fact that the Caribbean islands are close enough to the American continent that fuel costs aren't a problem?

If NZ want to make the world cup - beat Mexico in the playoff.

 

[Allezfan]

I think we can all agree that the only fair course of action is to ban New Zealand from ever playing football again and then nuking the entire country just to be sure.

 

[RaleighBlue]

I think we can all agree that the only fair course of action is to ban New Zealand from ever playing football again and then nuking the entire country just to be sure.

Probably New Caledonia as well.

And all other places that begin with 'New'.

We have to be certain.

 

[Allezfan]

Anyway, in terms of teams who didn't qualify who could consider themselves unlucky how about Cape Verde?

If you didn't follow this story, they're a tiny african island nation who were going to win their group and play cameroon in the play offs after a 4-3 loss to equatorial guinea, where they had a man sent off for unsporting behaviour (he attacked the ref), was deemed invalid because the hattrick scorer for equatorial guinea was spanish and not eligable to play for equatorial guinea and so fifa ruled the game was a 3-0 win to cape verde.

Cape Verde, then under the assumption that the equatorial guinea game didn't count at all, played their red carded player in the group decider vs tunisia, which they won. Which secured a spot in the play offs and a chance for qualification. At which point fifa got involved again, saying that the red card stood and so that match wasn't valid either and tunisia would play, and lose to, cameroon instead. Gutting.

 

[Allezfan]

Didn't realise Zlatan was Bosnian. If he'd chosen to play for his country he'd be at the World Cup this year!

Born in Sweden, tbf. I think a lot of the children of immigrants are very loyal to the country they grew up in, for obvious reasons.

Especially given what happened to a lot of the people who couldn't leave bosnia about that time.

 

[Elong]

MODS????