All Whites' Oceania/Asia Confederation Conundrum

Marto

AFC is too big. It needs to be split in half. 

East Asia and OFC should be combined. If that happened only Japan, S. Korea and Australia would be hands down better then us. N. Korea can be decent on their day but I’d rate us the fourth best side in that situation.

The dream! Would surely make some of the AFC comps (Champions League for example) a bit more meaningful too.

You'd imagine a lot of politics and money in the way behind the scenes. But then again you'd reckon some East Asian football associations would be a bit fed up with the gulf states.

Footy_Fella

Marto

AFC is too big. It needs to be split in half. 

East Asia and OFC should be combined. If that happened only Japan, S. Korea and Australia would be hands down better then us. N. Korea can be decent on their day but I’d rate us the fourth best side in that situation.

The dream! Would surely make some of the AFC comps (Champions League for example) a bit more meaningful too.

You'd imagine a lot of politics and money in the way behind the scenes. But then again you'd reckon some East Asian football associations would be a bit fed up with the gulf states.

It really is the oddest of FIFAs confederations. Jordan, Syria etc have nothing in common whatsoever with Korea or Japan. EUFA bar Türkiye and Israel (both of whom should be in Asia anyway) have a common history and culture, Africa, the Americas and OFC are similar if not quite the same but Asia is completely different.

Marto

Footy_Fella

Marto

AFC is too big. It needs to be split in half. 

East Asia and OFC should be combined. If that happened only Japan, S. Korea and Australia would be hands down better then us. N. Korea can be decent on their day but I’d rate us the fourth best side in that situation.

The dream! Would surely make some of the AFC comps (Champions League for example) a bit more meaningful too.

You'd imagine a lot of politics and money in the way behind the scenes. But then again you'd reckon some East Asian football associations would be a bit fed up with the gulf states.

It really is the oddest of FIFAs confederations. Jordan, Syria etc have nothing in common whatsoever with Korea or Japan. EUFA bar Türkiye and Israel (both of whom should be in Asia anyway) have a common history and culture, Africa, the Americas and OFC are similar if not quite the same but Asia is completely different.

Israel and Türkiye (and the Caucasuses) will never leave UEFA - no one will - it's the financial and competitive dreamland, hence why even Kazakhstan left AFC in 2003 to join UEFA. Not to mention Israel will never be allowed to join AFC. Not even Russia are convinced on leaving UEFA and they'd be the least detrimentally affected by a move to AFC.

CAF would be just as culturally disparate as AFC; Morocco would have just as much cultural alignment with South Africa as Syria would with Japan. It's geographical not cultural.

As for this whole OFC-AFC debate, the question that always comes to my mind is 'Who actually benefits from making the change?' Besides us, I reckon it would detriment everyone else and be a massive amount of work for FIFA with arguable end utility. 

- Other OFC teams' chances of qualification will go down and their costs will go up. 
- There would be a power-tussle for the World Cup qualification spots (how many go west vs east)
- Travel would be more difficult in the east. (Travelling to ME is easier than to the Islands given Qatar/Dubai/Abu Dhabi's centralised hubs; not to mention Australia, Japan are having players come via Europe so it's a stopover anyway)
- East Asian teams have no fundamental need/desire to have us and especially not Vanuatu/Samoa/Tonga etc.

If there was going to be a confederational realignment you'd surely also include the African football confederation. Have an (east) Asian & Pacific confederation, Middle East & North African confederation, and have the 50 country behemoth that is the African football confederation be shrunk down a bit. 

 I don't want NZ to leave OFC. 

I would like either of -

1. Top qualifier from OFC qualifying, which will be the AWs basically eternally, join last round of AFC qualifying. However is zero motivation for AFC to allow that to happen - unless OFC's 1 spot at World Cups was now thrown into the AFC mix. However then why would the OFC Confed want to lose their guaranteed spot. 

2. My preferred idea, of a combined East AFC/OFC Nations League running somewhere in the first 1-2 years of a WC cycle. AWs in Division 1 with Aussie, Japan & Sth Korea. 6 games H/A, with a final. Relegation straight to Division 2 for the bottom team.

So just 4 FIFA windows required. 3 for the 6 H/A games and 1 for the Final.
Would give AWs 3 actual competitive home games (Socceroos, Blue Samurai & Koreans). Then if AWs are down in Division 2 it's likes of China, Thailand, Vietnam, Nth Korea - and the buzz of trying to get promoted to Div 1. ie actually winning something worthwhile. And the other OFC teams the same down the Divions playing East Asian minnow nations, pro/rel as well

A bit tricky as in the first 1-2 years of a WC cycle is Asian Cup qualifying for AFC teams plus the Asian Cup itself. But again I'm only proposing 4 windows of games. The first year of a WC cycle, the FA like to try source big name friendlies for the Socceroos - like Ecuador x2, Argentina, Mexico & England played Aussie last year. But that could get harder to organise as UEFA & CONMEBOL are looking to setup a combined Nations League playing all games in Europe from memory, ie teams outside those 2 Confeds will need to look elsewhere for matches

I reckon the most likely confederation realignment would involve West Asia buying their way in to UEFA. Sure the AFC is odd and unwieldy, but do the Middle Eastern countries just want to play each other over and over? The only way to solve that problem from their perspective is merging with UEFA, and imo that’s not as crazy as it sounds given how much money they’d potentially contribute (and we all know that’s all UEFA really care about). 

From there why not just go for a massive worldwide realignment. Four confederations - UEFA/West Asia, Africa, East Asia/Oceania, and the Americas.