Reuters Soccer Blog

Usual suspects will be at the World Cup, but would we have missed them?

So now we know which European teams are in the World Cup playoffs and we have a pretty good idea of the seedings, though FIFA’s updated rankings out at the end of the week will provide confirmation ahead of Monday’s draw.

It looks like Russia, France, Greece and Portugal will be the seeded teams with Ukraine, Ireland, Bosnia and Slovenia playing them. After Argentina’s qualification in the final match against Uruguay, it looks increasingly likely that all the big teams will be there in South Africa.

But four days on from my blog on Sunday, the decision to seed the Euroepan teams in the qualifiers doesn’t look any fairer.

Doctor Mario, in a comment on that blog, said seeding was a reward for credits earned but it will take a long time for a new nation like Slovenia to earn enough credits to start a qualifying campaign on a level playing field.

That’s one of the reasons why it tends to be the same old faces making it to the finals. If you are Italy, France, Germany or Spain you know that in your qualifying group will have no other “elite team”, just a couple of second or third tier nations and some also-rans.

If you are someone like Wales, Israel or Finland you know you will have to pull off a series of upset wins even to finish second in your group. And if you do it your reward is to be seeded in the bottom half again in the playoffs.