Uefa alters World Cup qualifying

[gw]

Uefa has tweaked the qualifying system for the 53 European countries who will bid to reach the 2010 World Cup.

The teams will now be separated into eight groups of six and one of five to fill the 13 places available for the tournament in South Africa.

The group winners will automatically qualify before the top eight runners-up go into a round of play-offs.

They will be determined after the bottom team in the eight larger groups is erased and the points recalculated.

"It's a good compromise solution, because I wasn't really happy with the format for the last qualifying competition with groups of seven and eight teams," said Uefa president Michel Platini.

The system is different from the Euro 2008 qualification process which sees the top two in each group go through without any play-offs.

[ovechkin8]

Seems a good idea to me. It'll be less hassle for all concerned with travelling & what not.

However I would like to see Azerbaijan & Armenia called into the Asian Federation & the minnows like Luxembourg San Marino Andorra excluded or have a preliminary qualification for one entry spot.

[Neko Bazu]

ovechkin8 said:

Seems a good idea to me. It'll be less hassle for all concerned with travelling & what not.

However I would like to see Azerbaijan & Armenia called into the Asian Federation & the minnows like Luxembourg San Marino Andorra excluded or have a preliminary qualification for one entry spot.

Can't exclude the minnows - on what grounds can you say it's fair? - but they'll doubtless end up being discounted anyway once they've finished bottom, effectively meaning the players played a friendly on those dates instead (which, let's face it, is probably what would have happened anyway).

Seems like a decent enough set-up to me - I'm just waiting for the controversy when removing the bottom team means a team goes from top to second!