A fantastic result for Australian football overnight with Japan defeating Cameroon.
Why?
Well, given that the 2014 WC is scheduled to take place in Brazil, this means the play-off place afforded to the 5th-placed CONMEBOL nation will probably be re-allocated.
Africa have six entrants at this tournament, but will of course lose the host-nation spot. Blatter clearly likes his football the same way he has his coffee, so the tendency might be to simply swap that spot with South America's play-off berth, but a poor tournament for African nations might see him think differently.
And when you look at the draw to see Ivory Coast and Ghana in such tough groups, and Cameroon, Nigeria and Algeria having already lost, then Japan and South Korea's success could perhaps see Asia awarded the additional half-place, meaning five spots in our own right. And that can only be good!
So, Hosts 1: Europe 13, Africa 5, Asia 5, South America 4, CONCACAF/Oceania 4.
It makes sense.
Forza Japan!
3 comments:
Didn't realise the 2018 host decision had been made already. And I thought I was on top of most things in international football.
Must be those connections that told you Wilkshire is going to be the next Australian captain...
I thought they ditched auto quali for host teams?
Thanks Jamie - error now fixed. Sid, they ditched auto-qualification for the holders not the hosts... otherwise South Africa would have been missing from this event...
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