World Cup 2018 Qualifiers - Draw

[Adar]

Arrgh, Jakob Johansson is down and we now turn to Gustav Svensson in midfield. A 30 year old with 9 caps for the national team and currently playing for the Seattle Sounders in the MLS. Apparently he is quite a late bloomer and got a good reputation by those who have seen him play but I know nothing about him.

Commenters have commented on the Italian fans booing during the Swedish national anthem while being cheered on by Buffon. Personally I think it is great that they provide some extra motivation for the Swedish team and its not like I expect Italian football fans to be stylish even when they come from Milano.

Edit: Yellow cards on Barzagli and Chiellini despite the ref ignoring two handballs. Sweden seem to be doing quite well even if Italy dominate possession as expected.

Edit 2: Not it feels worse...

[Basil II the B.S]

Congrats to Sweden. I think Italy did 2 shots on goal in the entire game, not enough despite the effort. Sweden defended as orderly as they could and did well. Their GK sucks though.

[Adar]

It was not a pretty victory but it was a victory that really underlines the value of "character players" as we had to rely on players like Gustav Svensson and Marcus Rohden.

Something that however does worry me is that Swedish youth-21 team that won the European Championshop in 2015 does not seem to transition into the senior national team. Many of them have been injured but today only Victor Nilsson Lindelööf and Ludwig Augustinsson made it into the starting XI while Isak Kiele Thelin came on as a substitite. Sweden seems to shape up to be the horror pick in seeding group 3 for the world championship but I got a hard time seeing us do well in the WC unless we can combine the defensive resilience with some innovation as well. Getting Albin Ekdal back into central midfield will be crucial and we will probably need some kind of three way rotation between Marcus Berg, Ola Toivonen and Isak Kiele Thelin on the forward side for this to work out. Berg and Toivonen are seasoned veterans but Kiele Thelin got a pace they lack.

[Basil II the B.S]

What's missing is an offensive phase of counter-attacking if you want to play defensively like that. Italy won world cups doing defense and counter-attacks and there's hardly a more successful country in the world doing that kind of play.

Yesterday Sweden didn't need to do it, but if Immobile had scored in the first half (I think Granqvist saved it), then I think Sweden would be out now. You can't always rely on one lucky shot like in the first game.

[Sir Adrian]

Romania's dutch complex continues unabated.

[Adar]

What's missing is an offensive phase of counter-attacking if you want to play defensively like that. Italy won world cups doing defense and counter-attacks and there's hardly a more successful country in the world doing that kind of play.

Yesterday Sweden didn't need to do it, but if Immobile had scored in the first half (I think Granqvist saved it), then I think Sweden would be out now. You can't always rely on one lucky shot like in the first game.

Without Albin Ekdal the Swedish passing game falls apart completely. I think Ekdal and Victor Nilsson Lindelööf are the only guys in the team who got an average pass completion rate above 85 % in the team (Granqvist may have it as well but mainly due to playing a Skrtel style game where he gives the ball to the other centre back) so without him we cannot control the ball as everyone else prefer high risk/reward passing. Augustinsson, Larsson and Lustig are good at crosses/long balls while Claesson, Toivonen and Forsberg are all players who constantly look for incisive through balls to the feet of the forwards.

But at least Kim Källström is no longer playing in the team. Against weaker teams he would look like a more physical version of Andrea Pirlo but against any team which could press above a certain level of intensity he would become a liability as he lost the ball. Early in his career Lars Lagerbäck got a lot of criticism for not playing him in place of Anders Svensson but I think that it just shows that Swedish football culture really fails to appreciate the importance of creating a good passing rhythm.

[Pinarius]

Here are the pots for the Final Draw:

POT 1		POT 2		POT 3		POT 4
Russia	 	Spain		Denmark		Serbia
Germany		Peru		Iceland		Nigeria
Brazil		Switzerland	Costa Rica	Australia
Portugal	England		Sweden		Japan
Argentina	Colombia	Tunisia		Morocco
Belgium		Mexico		Egypt		Panama
Poland		Uruguay		Senegal		Korea Republic
France		Croatia		Iran		Saudi Arabia

The Final Draw will take place on Friday 1 December at Moscow’s State Kremlin Palace.

[Basil II the B.S]

Collusion!

[Adar]

Nightmare from a Swedish perspective: Brazil, Spain, Sweden and Nigeria.
Dream group: Russia, Peru, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
Nostalgia: Argentina, England, Sweden and Nigeria.

[Basil II the B.S]

Spain is in the second pot? The .

[Adar]

Spain is in the second pot? The .

The pots are kind of skewed due to the spread of European teams. This mainly hurts Argentina and Brazil as no group will contain more than 2 teams from Europe and 1 team from each other qualification group.

I tried to divide the teams into "danger levels" per below as there is no really scary team from outside of Europe in pot 3 or 4 that is likely to upset one of the great powers of football. This means that if the top ranked "non-great" teams like Poland or Portugal ends up with Spain or England in the group, then they will only be eligible to face the weaker teams from pot 3 and 4. Brazil and Argentina on the other hand are guaranteed to get a good or great team from pot 2 and then a 42 % risk of getting a "dangerous team" from pot 3. Meaning that if they do not beat their main competitor from pot 2 then they got a reasonable risk of going the same way as Italy when going up against a defensively organised Scandinavian team. On the other hand Spain and England got some really great opportunities from this system. They got a 38 % chance of drawing a team from pot 1 that is weaker than themselves and sharing group with any of these teams also makes them immune from the risk of facing any of the dangerous teams in pot 3 or 4 as they are all European.

In summary this means that:

Brazil and Argentina got a 42 % risk of getting into a really tough group.
Spain and England got a 10 % risk of getting into a tough group but at least 38 % chance of being the strongest team in the group (depending on how you count the relative strength of great teams and/or teams with great potential).
No European team wants to be drawn into the group with Brazil or Argentina.

Pot 1:
4 Great teams (Germany, France, Brazil and Argentina).
1 Great potential (Belgium).
2 Good teams (Poland and Portugal).
1 Weak team (Russia).

Pot 2:
1 Great team (Spain).
1 Great potential (England).
5 Good teams (Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Switzerland and Croatia).
1 Weak team (Peru).

Pot 3:
3 Dangerous teams (Sweden, Denmark and Iceland).
4 weak teams (Costa Rica, Tunisia, Egypt and Senegal).

Pot 4:
1 Dangerous team (Serbia)
7 Weak teams

[Basil II the B.S]

Poland being in pot 1 and Spain in the second makes no sense whatsoever. Even the host country being in pot 1 makes no sense. We had South Africa there, they sucked. Russia is weak too.

Perù shouldn't be in pot 2 either. Great job FIFA as always. It'd be legitimately better if pot 2 was all the second tier European teams, pot 3 African/South American, pot 4 the weaker ones.

[PikeStance]

You make it sound like it was arbitrarily done. The seeding is based on FIFA rankings with one stipulation. Teams in the same confederation cannot be placed together with the exception of UEFA which can have no more than 2.
The Host nation is always in Pot one with the strongest team. The point is to give the host nation the best chance of advancing to final round.

The rankings are imperfect, but what is the alternative?

[Basil II the B.S]

The host being in pot one is... arbitrary. Why do they get a pass on the ranking just because they are the host? Why should they be given a better chance than the others, just because they are the host? It's a competition, it's not like because you paid you should get favouritism.


And the ranking is anyway, main reason: friendlies count. Friendlies are.... friendly matches for testing purposes, if it's a test, it should not count. Then you have Poland making tests against let's say Luxembourg, Spain making tests against Argentina, Poland wins, Spain draws, Poland goes higher in the ranking. What a system.

Also, who says that the ranking should be based on the previous 4 years, instead of 5 or 3 or 6 or 10? Purely arbitrary.

[Wulfburk]

Hosts already get classified automatically, and for me its the right thing to do. However i think its fair that they should go to the pot they actually deserve in the ranking. While it being based on the last 4 years makes total sense... after all, the world cup happens from 4 to 4 years.

[PikeStance]

The host being in pot one is... arbitrary. Why do they get a pass on the ranking just because they are the host? Why should they be given a better chance than the others, just because they are the host? It's a competition, it's not like because you paid you should get favouritism.
And the ranking is anyway, main reason: friendlies count. Friendlies are.... friendly matches for testing purposes, if it's a test, it should not count. Then you have Poland making tests against let's say Luxembourg, Spain making tests against Argentina, Poland wins, Spain draws, Poland goes higher in the ranking. What a system.

Also, who says that the ranking should be based on the previous 4 years, instead of 5 or 3 or 6 or 10? Purely arbitrary.

It makes perfect sense to me that the host is in Pot 1.

FiFA Ranking gives different weight to different competitions and quality of opponent.

1. Calculation of points for the FIFA World Ranking. The basic logic of these calculations is simple. Any team that does well in world football wins points and lays the foundations for climbing the world ranking. However, the number of points that can actually be won in a match depends on the following factors:
• Was the match won, or did it end in a draw? (M)
• How important was the match (friendly match to FIFA World Cup™)? (I)
• How strong was the opponent in terms of its ranking position and the confederation to which it belongs?(T and C)
These factors are brought together in the following formula to ascertain the total number of points (P).P = M x I x T x C x 100

The following codes and conditions apply to the calculation of points:

M: Points for a victory (3 points), a draw (1 point) or a defeat (0 points). In a penalty shoot-out the winning team gains 2 points, the losing team 1 point.

I: Importance of a match with the following weighting:
Friendly match (including small tournaments): I = 1.0
World Cup qualifier and continental qualifier: I = 2.5
Continental final competition and FIFA Confederations Cup: I = 3.0
World Cup final competition: I = 4.0

T: Strength of opposition calculated according to the following formula:
[200 – ranking position of opposition] ÷ 100
Only the team at the top of the ranking is assigned the value 2.00 (teams ranked 150th and below areassigned the minimum weighting of 0.50).
The ranking position is taken from the opposition’s ranking in the most recently published FIFA World Ranking.

C: The strength of a confederation. When calculating intercontinental matches, the mean value of theconfederations to which the two competing teams belong is used. The strength of a confederation iscalculated on the basis of the number of victories by confederation at the last three FIFA World Cup™competitions.
Their values are as follows.
Confederation After 2006 FIFA WorldCup™ | Up to and including 2006FIFA World Cup™
UEFA: 1.00 | 1.00
CONMEBOL: 0.98 / 0.99
CONCACAF: 0.85 / 0.88
AFC: 0.85 / 0.85
CAF: 0.85 / 0.85
OFC: 0.85 / 0.85

It is arguable that the weighing can be different, but is there a better alternative. Do we have sports writers and coaches give their ranking and take a composite of that. Wait,... we have that one and NO ONE likes that either.

[Basil II the B.S]

As Wulfburk said, the host already gets a pass on the qualifiers, putting them in the first pot is too much, especially if they are a mediocre team. Next one will be Qatar, which never even managed to qualify on its own. A crap tier team in pot 1? Makes sense!

Also look at those coefficients: 0.85 for the OFC? Really? Like Asia and Africa? We are talking about teams that lose by 20+ goals to New Zealand... and then New Zealand doesn't go through whoever they are put against.

And then UEFA gets 1 always? A game against Andorra should not give you a full 1. Friendlies should not count because they are not competitive games.

The whole system is a semi-farce. It's one of those cases where they put in a mathematical formula to give it a parvence of ''science'' but everything is actually arbitrary.

[Ludicus]

This means that if the top ranked "non-great" teams like Poland or Portugal ends up with Spain or England in the group

We will win - again.

with...with...

[Basil II the B.S]

Hmm, the Euro competition tends to be weird. From Denmark not qualifying in 1992 and then winning the competition, Greece winning in Portugal in 2008, Portugal winning last year after all the other top teams kicked each other out. Italy eliminated Spain, Germany eliminated Italy, France eliminated Germany, Portugal kicked France as the last man standing.

[Knight of Heaven]

Yeah you have a point. I would just like to point out, Portugal eliminated good teams too. At the time Croatia, and Wales were full of hype. And Poland is actualy a good team nowadays.

At anycase there has been an influx of new blood in the Portuguese national team since, and talented one of that.
Still we usualy tend to dont fare so well in World Cups... we will see.