Does anyone really benefit from San Marino’s trip to Wembley, and is the plethora of these kind of mismatches damaging for international football?
International football’s popularity seems to decrease further every an international break occurs. At the moment the common moan is that is there any need for two international breaks to come so early in the domestic season, disrupting the start of the league? But does the dissatisfaction run deeper than that, that it’s simply not very exciting to watch teams play a series of usually quite poor qualifying matches?
This is especially bad in Europe, where there are so many teams that nearly all groups are left with one or two half decent sides, resulting in most games being mismatches. Compared to the cut and thrust of the regular league, it is deeply uninspiring, and more like a chore than something to look forward too.
The malaise around international football seems to also affect the players, who pick up mysterious little knocks that keep them out of a trip to Moldova but allow them to play three days later in the league. This shouldn’t be surprising, it is a great honour to play for your country, but is it Luxembourg who you dreamed of playing against as a child? The matches against other international teams of a high standard are consigned to friendlies and tournaments, so it is only every couple of years at best that you can see your country pitted against the best in a competitive game (a match up England invariably loses). These are the games that can rouse real excitement, but they barely ever happen.
One way this could be combatted is if FIFA introduced a pre-qualifying round for smaller countries. This would pit some of the smaller nations against each other and allow a certain amount through to the qualifying proper. There would then be smaller groups, maybe of 4-5 teams, so the sides involved would only play a certain amount of hopefully more competitive matches. These would also allow the bigger sides to better prepare for tournaments. How much can you really know about a side that has waltzed through a weak qualifying group, are those players really going to stand up when the big occasion finally comes around?
This may seem harsh on the minnows but are they really benefitting from repetitive drubbings in group stages? In the pre-qualifying round all of their matches would be against similar level sides, allowing them a chance to play more even matches, and not just practise backs against the wall defending. What can a manager of a team like San Marino really do other than hope for the best against stronger sides, if they had a run of 6-10 more even games perhaps they could build up some confidence, try some attacking football for a change.
However it happens, a change needs to take place in international football. To really mix it up, you could just make the qualifying draw unseeded. But a sensible approach that, if implemented well, could benefit all parties might be to introduce a pre-qualifying round.
image: © whereareyousimon
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