<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jewell @ Sep 7 2006, 10:27 AM) [snapback]376846[/snapback]</div>
It was a decent performance last night but nothing to go overboard about.
Did anyone see the scoreline in the San Marino - Germany match? 13-0 must be some kind of record. I think it's about time these smaller nations were consigned to prequalifying.
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See a lot of people have been talking about the rubbish teams going through pre qualfying, but in an age of every manager bemoaning the increasing number of fixtures making a number of teams go through one qualifying competition before then starting the proper one seems hypocritical.
I appreciate that 13-0 scorelines make something of a mockery of the notion of competition, but that really is a freak result. All the pundits on TV have belittled Andorra's performance against England, but I dont class 5-0 as a whooping and frankly I expected more.
How are the lesser nations supposed to improve if they are never given a chance to play against the top sides. Furthermore how would you decide who has to go through pre-qualifying? Given the fact that N Ireland failed to score a single goal in the last Euro Championships qualifying presumably they would have been contenders to go into a hypothetical pre-qualifying tourney if one had been created for the 2008 championships, yet they beat Spain this week. Would players like Eidur Gudjohnsen have ever emerged if 106th place Iceland had been confined to a pre-qualifying tournament?
If you look at the rankings you see the following for the european teams:
4. France
5. England
6. Netherlands
7. Spain
8. Portugal
9. Germany
10 Czech Rep
13 Switzerland
15 Ukraine
17 Denmark
20 Sweden
26 Romania
30 Poland
33 Russia
33 Serbia
36 Bulgaria
38 Ireland
40 Scotland
42 Bosnia
43 Slovakia
49 Norway
51 Israel
55 Belgium
56 Wales
57 Austria
58 Slovenia
62 Albania
65 Lithuania
67 Finland
68 FYR Macedonia
69 Belarus
72 Northern Ireland
73 Moldova
78 Latvia
78 Estonia
80 Hungary
90 Cyprus
104 Armenia
106 Azerbaijan
122 Malta
124 Leichtenstein
132 Andorra
141 Kazakhstan
191 San Marino
Now I dont really see where you would draw the line for a pre-qualifying tournament. The fact of the matter is even ignoring the bottom 8 ranked european teams the standard of football ranges from the excellent to the risible. I think looking at the rankings as they stand at the moment that Cyprus would be the obvious cutoff point, but I dont really think that when people talk of pre-qualifying they are necessarily talking about the likes of Cyprus, Armenia and Azerbaijan. I mean we didnt destroy Azerbaijan last time we went to Baku and whilst they dont win often they dont get hammered so regularly that I think they could be said to be undeserving of a place in the Euro qulalifiers and the chance to play top level teams.
So with that in mind we are only really left with five sides to go into a hypothetical pre-qualifying. What would be the point of that, it would not have an effect on the overall number of games played by most European teams as presumably one or two of the five would end up in qualifying properly. So only three groups would benefit by having one team fewer to play.
Furthermore if you set a precedent like that with the Euro qualifiers what would you do with the world cup? I feel you would be forced to do the same thing which raises further problems as that is meant to be a competition for ALL affiliated nations. The arguement that pre-qualifying already exists in Oceania doesn't work at all as the standard of football there is universally dire whereas in Europe whilst there are a couple of very poor teams whose shortcomings have unsportingly been highlighted by the media in this last round of games the overall standard of football is actually much more varied than one might originally think.
PS I agree, Lamps should be dropped, he has been very poor recently, though I have thought he is a little over-rated for a while. Maybe its cos he's stopped getting goals by having the ball take a wicked deflection off a defender following one of his trademark shanks.
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