oceania to get full spot?

I hear all of these arguments but I haven't heard anything from news sources to back any of this conjecture up. You talk of FIFA and UEFA as if they are totally seperate from each other; UEFA is a huge voting block in FIFA and they haven't got themselves more WC places have they? You guys are saying they've got less.

Utopy,Oceania has just a professional team who plays in AFC,so it's very difficult to get a full spot...

if nz was locked between france and germany we would be good at football and even qualify for the world cup once every 20 so years - oh yeah that's what happens now

None of this is conjecture, or even recent (why do you think the automatic spot promised by Blatter was taken away?). The battle for World Cup spots is one of the fiercests fought by Confederations and FIFA, and will continue to be because no-one is ever satisfied with the number of spots they have (other than perhaps CONMEBOL, although they'd probably prefer 5 instead of 4.5, but know they have it pretty good so don't tend to rock the boat as much).

And of course UEFA care about what's going on elsewhere - the aim for every confederation is to get a best deal for its members. If, for example, there was serious discussion of NZ/Oceania winner entering the AFC qualifying route, there'll be a huge fight over what happens with Oceania's 0.5 spot.

The dream would be, All whites goes to Asia while age group teams stay in Oceania.

Cake. Eat. Can't.

I can dream, or how about we stay in oceania, but the winner of oceania goes to the group stage of Asia?brettdale2010-08-18 21:13:21

Try reading more than the last 5 posts of the thread.

Actually brett try reading full stop.

I wouldnt be surprised to see it go to UEFA for an intercontinental play off with Asia

Do you honestly think you're going to get news reports on how all this happens? This is football politics...it is patently not transparent, and works through patronage/incentives/threats and often results in illogical compromises...and you're expecting this to be reported on by the Dominion Post? If you want to think this is just fancy and Oceania will get its full spot, that's fine. But it ain't happening - just ask yourself this question: where's that half-spot going to come from?

Remember also there is nothing automatic about World Cup spots - they are not 'owned' by the confederation, but are rather allocated by FIFA on what is far from a transparent formula. If the Oceania winner were to conclude its qualifying process through Asia, undoubtedly OFC and AFC would want their overall spots combined (bringing it up to 5, this would be a common sense approach too), but there's every chance (and this is a conjecture now) that the other four confederations (and again, particularly thinkig of UEFA here) would argue that going through Asia should mean qualifying for the spots allocated to that confederation, and that Oceania's half spot could be free to go elsewhere. el grapadura2010-08-19 11:04:00

I can see UEFA pushing for this if we go down the AFC path.

Still not convinced. Unless you are tapped into FIFA I'd imagine that you are no more qualified than anyone else in voicing an opinion on this. This isn't meant to be a put down EG [I usually agree with most of what you say] I'm just not convinced and I do have some experience of the dirty politics in international sport.

brettdale2010-08-19 14:29:50

The problem here is that one of the "Oceania" teams has defected to Asia, so to use this case may be difficult.