From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

Am I the only person in the World that can think of good formats for
football tournaments? Seriously, someone should give me a job coming up
with formats for football tournaments. CONCACAF, AFC, UEFA, FIFA etc
don't seem to be able to do it well.

The top 2 teams in the FIFA Women's world ranking have qualified
automatically. The remaining 29 teams were split into 5 groups of 5
teams and 1 group of 4 teams, with the group winners qualifying.

Well why not just 1 team qualifying automatically (if any at all) and 6
groups - OK, that would produce 7 qualifiers; I was going to say 6
groups of 5. Why not no automatic qualifiers and 1 group of 3 teams and
7 groups of 4 or something then? As I haven't got the job yet I won't
spend any more time thinking about it just now.

Then the final stages of the tournament (which they still haven't
decided on dates or a venue for) are straight knockout, which increases
the risk of the best team in the World not qualifying for the Women's
World Cup or the Olympics. If USA suffer a 1-off defeat in the
quarter-finals, they don't qualify for the Olympics, and at best
they'll have to go through the inter-confederation play-offs to get to
the World Cup. Surely 2 groups of 4 with the top 2 going through to the semi-finals would make more sense?

Actually the USA qualify for the Olympics automatically as host
country, but the point remains. Canada or whoever North America's 2nd
best team is might not qualify.
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From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

Mark wrote:

Am I the only person in the World that can think of good formats for football tournaments? Seriously, someone should give me a job coming
up with formats for football tournaments. CONCACAF, AFC, UEFA, FIFA
etc don't seem to be able to do it well.

The top 2 teams in the FIFA Women's world ranking have qualified automatically. The remaining 29 teams were split into 5 groups of 5
teams and 1 group of 4 teams, with the group winners qualifying.

Well why not just 1 team qualifying automatically (if any at all) and
6 groups - OK, that would produce 7 qualifiers; I was going to say 6
groups of 5. Why not no automatic qualifiers and 1 group of 3 teams
and 7 groups of 4 or something then? As I haven't got the job yet I
won't spend any more time thinking about it just now.

Then the final stages of the tournament (which they still haven't
decided on dates or a venue for) are straight knockout, which
increases the risk of the best team in the World not qualifying for
the Women's World Cup or the Olympics. If USA suffer a 1-off defeat
in the quarter-finals, they don't qualify for the Olympics, and at
best they'll have to go through the inter-confederation play-offs to
get to the World Cup. Surely 2 groups of 4 with the top 2 going
through to the semi-finals would make more sense?

Actually the USA qualify for the Olympics automatically as host
country, but the point remains. Canada or whoever North America's 2nd
best team is might not qualify.

Having had a bit more time to think about it, maybe 1 group of 7 and 3
groups of 8 in the qualifiers would be best, with the top 2 qualifying.
Or would that be too many matches?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2