San Marino v England

[Gritstone Ram]

For once in ITVs ***** career of broadcasting football they said something right. The bottom 8 or so teams in Europe/world should play there own tournament, that way they can actually improve and maybe win some games. There is no point in then competing with teams that are 201 places higher than them in the rankings.

I'm all for that. I've not seen england win anything yet. we might get further than a couple of semis and win on penos for once.

[BrysonsBoys]

Watched the game last night and must say had the most interesting debate with my dad ever about the WC qualification process. In my eyes these sorts of games benefit no one and that to avoid these sorts of nothing games FIFA should revise the qualification group selections in a way in which this is achieved. My argument revolved around how its unfair on teams such as San Marino who are never ever going to have a chance of qualifying in a group which contains teams in the top 50 (granted, every team they play will be better than them). Instead I suggested to my dad that FIFA should introduce one or two qualifying groups that contained the lowest ranked nations. This would give them a chance of actually qualifying for the WC, meaning they would attempt to raise their game in order to achieve qualification and have the glory of representing their nation at the finals, rather than finishing their qualifying group last with zero points etc. 

 

My dad's counter argument to this would be that only 1 or 2 teams would progress at the expense of others, and that this would be unfair as for these nations, getting thrashed by teams such as Spain and Germany is in their eyes as good as they'll get, and for them is like a cup final. My suggestion would deny the majority of teams this opportunity to say they have played against and swapped shirts with some of the best players in the world and got nothing in return (a point I agree with). 

 

I have played football as a youngster for a side who regularly lost 10+ nil and can confirm it is incredibly demoralising, and that when a fixture against a side who we deemed 'beatable' or even just 'drawable' we gave that extra 10% in order to try and get a result. Invariably we still lost but it was less embarrassing and we came away feeling proud that we'd tried and nearly got something out of it - a similar mentality that i'm sure most of these minnow nations also hold. 

Anyway, I found this an interesting point of debate and was just wandering what other people's views on something like this are; agree with mine or my dad's argument?