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How does this thing work? Can someone boil it down to the basics. Is it a best of 7, single elimination, ... what?

jim wrote:How does this thing work? Can someone boil it down to the basics. Is it a best of 7, single elimination, ... what?

Before Thrill writes you a novel:

Pool play with 4 teams in 8 pools. Top 2 of each go on. Single Elimination from then on. America has sucked for forever. If we make it out of pool play, be happy. If we win anything beyond that, go [expletive] crazy.

So it's round robin in your pool? How do you get into a pool, just random?

jim wrote:So it's round robin in your pool? How do you get into a pool, just random?

The top team in each pool is based on FIFA Rankings. After that, it's more or less random, making sure that the groups are as geographically diverse as possible. That's the short version, at least.

It's all based on height and girth.

JackofDiamonds wrote:

jim wrote:How does this thing work? Can someone boil it down to the basics. Is it a best of 7, single elimination, ... what?

Before Thrill writes you a novel:

Pool play with 4 teams in 8 pools. Top 2 of each go on. Single Elimination from then on. America has sucked for forever. If we make it out of pool play, be happy. If we win anything beyond that, go [expletive] crazy.

++ good summary

jim, when you get crotchety, pissed, and bored at the low scores...go watch the batter step out of the box for the 5th time in an at bat after the pitcher steps off the rubber to adjust his balls for the 3rd time of that same at bat.

jim wrote:So it's round robin in your pool? How do you get into a pool, just random?

Global qualification for the tournament is through regional qualification tournaments. Each region is run by a confederation of nations. Our region is CONCACAF. It covers North America, Central America and the Caribbean. UEFA is Europe. CONMEBOL is South America. AFF is Asia. CAF is Africa. The amount of team that gets in is weighted by how good the region is. We get 3 guaranteed and one playoff with the 7 lowest South American team. Asia gets 4. Europe gets a butt load. South America gets I think 6 guaranteed and one playoff with the 4th from our region. This year that playoff was Uruguay v Costa Rica. Uruguay won.

So basically every country that fields a squad that meets FIFA sanctioning requirements is allowed to try to qualify for the World Cup through the regional tournament. These regional tournaments start out about 2 years prior to the World Cup. As TT said, what pool you are drawn in and what seed in that pool you are for the World Cup is based on FIFA's ranking system which is basically a convoluted power ranking of sorts.

I can think of about a thousand things I would rather do than watch the world cup such as clean the gutters, watch the lifetime network with my wife, or count the leaves on the trees in my yard.

M1IRONMIKE wrote:I can think of about a thousand things I would rather do than watch the world cup such as clean the gutters, watch the lifetime network with my wife, or count the leaves on the trees in my yard.

That's going a little overboard, no?

M1IRONMIKE wrote:I can think of about a thousand things I would rather do than watch the world cup such as clean the gutters, watch the lifetime network with my wife, or count the leaves on the trees in my yard.

Thanks for stopping by, appreciate the input.