Subject: Leveling the World Cup Qualifying groups

+1!

Because 98-4=94
4 teams for a prequalification round to qualifiy 2 teams the 94+2 = 96 teams in groups.
So only 6-teams-groups and 16 groups for 32 wc qualified teams

The matter is there will be 2 teams without official matchs left
They will be forced to play friendlies only each other during 10 weeks !!!

---

A better idea where (perhaps) keeping actual organisation, ie 13 x 6-teams grups and 4 x 5-teams grups.
But
if the 17 first team in each groups will come in WC,
for the 15 places left will be played a qualification match with 30 teams like that:

17 second placed in all groups and 13 third placed in 6-team-groups.
Match would be calculated by ranking on the last day: 1 vs 30; 2 vs 29 etc ...

But it means that at the begin ... the third team placed in all 6-team groups have to be better in ranking than third team placed in the four 5-teams groups.
(edited)

Another idea...

Playing the WC with 32 countries

Have the qualifiers played with 64 teams, divided in groups of 4. All first 2 of each group will play the WC.

During the WC the remaining teams = 98 - 32 = 66 play play offs in groups of 6 = 11 groups of 6.
All 1st and 2nd placed teams will ''qualify'' for the qualifiers in the next season.
All thirth placed teams, except the worst one, will also qualify to have the remaining 32 teams to play qualifiers for the WC together with all 32 teams who played the last WC.

This has 2 advantages:

1) ALL teams can compete on equal grounds, meaning all groups will have equal size.
2) ALL teams who don't qualify for the WC also have official matches (first qualifiers) during the WC and will be friendly free for 10 weeks (which is even more than the WC participants)

Also, I would make the WC with the same rules as Sviktorovs U27 EURO Championship cup.
ALL teams will play for their place within the tournament for as long as the tournament goes on.
This means... AFTER the group stage, you have 2 kind of WC participants
1) Those who still compete for the WC
2) Those who don't compete for the WC

Within both groups, all winners will continue in a separate group, as well as all losers.
So after the group stage, 16 teams proceed in group 1, still competing for the WC and after the 8th finals, the 8 winners compete further and the 8 losers will play each other in order for them to compete for the highest possible remaining place within the tournament. The same goes for the 2nd group teams between place 17 to 32!
This will give all WC competitors 3 group stage games and 4 final stage games.

Maybe, looking at how this is, it might be a good idea to play the WC group stage with 2x3 games, where all teams play each other team within their group 2 times.
This also gives the WC competitors 10 weeks of guaranteed official, friendly free, NT / U21 football, as well as the non-competitors.

Then, during the qualifying games, there will be 98 - 64 = 34 teams who don't play qualifying games

Generate 6 random official games between all 34 teams and have those games ranked like groups stages (kind of like the current youth system)
After those 6 random generated games, the best 16 play a ''small WC'' with only 4 final stages.
The 18 worst teams of the 6-leg random stage will be dropped out of the table and able to play friendlies, as well as all teams who lose their final stage game in the weeks after.

And very important... make sure all these games are official sokker games and not player organised tournaments like Sviktorov did!

Not that Svik didn't do a great job, cause he did! But because the NT and U21 deserve their own IN-GAME system!

Lets hope Devs have already find a good solution. If not there will be a lot of angry people....

There are already angry people since the Netherlands did not participate in the U21 World Cup.