To be fair ... Oceania simply isn’t a viable confederation..... the free entry into FIFA tournaments aside from the senior men’s WC creates the greed to keep Oceania … it should be folded into Asia …. and give Asia Five full spots ….
The sooner this happens, the better.
Won't happen.
Why?
A mod said so.
Could be worse. Leggy could have said so.
Problem for Oceania teams is the cost. Not so much paying for the men's national, but also having to pay for all the womens and all the age group teams to compete in the Asian Confederation. Australia receives approximately $6 mil a year from the government to help pay for these costs.
The asian World Cup qualifiers starts with most the weaker nations playing home and away qualifiers against each other. By the time pool play starts most of the weaker and poorer nations have been eliminated.
Spot on - many Pacific Island countries struggle to afford to play even in Oceania tournaments as it is.
What could work is the Oceania Confederation conducting a preliminary round of World Cup qualifying with the winner of that joining the final round of Asian qualifying. This is NZF's current preference they are communicating to FIFA I believe.
To me, this seems the most workable solution.
By the way, the Solomons don't even currently have a football association after it self-destructed last month - FIFA have stepped in and appointed an interim body headed by an Aussie and a few Oceania officials to sort out the mess and run their football until a new body is formed next year:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-16/fifa-takes-control-of-solomon-islands-football/5025246
October 17 - FIFA and the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) have appointed a normalisation committee to take control of the Solomon Islands Football Federation (SIFF) after the federation's funding was put on hold whilst an investigation looks into poor accounting by the federation's administrators....
According to the OFC's General Secretary, Tai Nicholas: "For one reason or another the former administration, for the amount of activities they're involved in both internationally and domestically, weren't able to fund everything.
"The best way forward in order for football to grow in that country is to install a new administration, which was done by FIFA appointing a Normalisation Committee to run the affairs of football, and to call for new elections in a year's time."
....With funding having stopped, until the normalisation committee has put in place better administration and sorted out the accounts, Solomon Islands, which have a total population of about 500,000, may have to scale back on participation in some youth tournaments..."