Football (Soccer) Thread

[mongers]

Man this place is dying, yours and Norgy's post are the only ones today, in like about 10 hours.

I was busy today, with a movie/blu-ray/DVD fair and a screening of Boorman's Excalibur in one of the last cinemas in the Champs-Élysées. 

 

Nice.

[Josephus]

I like Canada's chances of getting out of their group.

32 of 48 teams make it to the next round, so yeah, odds are with them. they really need to beat Qatar and that should be fine. That said, everyone said Canada would beat Morocco last time and that did not happen.
Canada will struggle both against Switzerland and certainly Italy, if that's who they play.

Looks like I'll be going to see Germany v. Ivory Coast.

[Josquius]

The 3 team groups are so ridiculous.
They really should just have the lower seeds have a straight knockout round before we go into the groups.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Alternately, FIFA could expand the field to 64, drop the group stage entirely, and structure the tournament as one large single-elimination bracket, similar to the way the NCAA basketball tournaments are structured.  The biggest problem is that they would need some means of ranking all the teams in the field in order to properly construct the bracket.

It's too radical a change to actually happen, but it would be interesting.

[frunk]

I think it would suck too much for teams to only get to play a single match.  I'd make it a double elim tournament (with 2 draws counting as a loss and 3 draws counting as 2 losses) until there are 16 teams or less left, then reset to a single elim from that point on.  If there are less than 16 teams at that point the ones with the best records get byes in the first round of the single elim.

[Norgy]

Alternately, FIFA could expand the field to 64, drop the group stage entirely, and structure the tournament as one large single-elimination bracket, similar to the way the NCAA basketball tournaments are structured.  The biggest problem is that they would need some means of ranking all the teams in the field in order to properly construct the bracket.

It's too radical a change to actually happen, but it would be interesting.

The group stage is really a post-war thing. The worst was probably Spain '82 with two group stages. FIFA already has the FIFA ranking system for seeding, so it would not be that much of an issue except what frunk mentions. Nobody wants to go home after a single game.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Understandable.  Double elimination until they get down to 16 would still be an interesting alternative.

[Valmy]

Understandable.  Double elimination until they get down to 16 would still be an interesting alternative.

Do it like the College Baseball playoffs!

16 double elimination four team playoff brackets.

8 best two out of three series.

2 double elimination four team playoff brackets

One best two out of three series for the championship.

The only downside is...nobody knows whether the championship will be won in game 2 or game 3.

[Josquius]

I wonder whether the seeds like the groups for giving them some semi serious games to get in the swing of things.
Certainly the players domestic clubs could do without those games

Have extra knockout rounds for lower seeds at the start and more teams get the chance to actually go to the world Cup.
Nice for them and I'm sure for fifa as well in drawing more eyes to the tournament.

[mongers]

Cut the teams down to 32 in 8 groups of four, only the top two go forward to the knockout games.


All the losers of the group stage get to go home with a prize, a random Nobel prize of some description, simples.