One game left in the group stages and lots of teams getting in and heading out. Who stepped on their plums, and who rose to the occasion?
The updated National Team Rankings can be found here.
Full qualification chances can be found here.
The raw data from each of the 10,000 sims can be found in .csv file format in the following location:
http://vorosmccracken.com/qualsims101209.csv
Once again, if interested in the file, please save it to your hard drive instead of opening it up in your web browser. It’s around 4 MBs so it’s a little large to be using in a browser. Also note that the previous raw data file has been removed from the servers. If you still needed it for some reason, contact me by e-mail and I’ll work something out.
And away we go!
In
Mexico, Chile, Italy, USA, Serbia, Denmark, Germany = 100%. These are all official as well (as will 100%s from here on out will almost certainly be). The Ivory Coast made it official, but the sims already knew that was a foregone conclusion. Allow me a minor non-impartial moment here to be able to celebrate my home country wrapping it up for their sixth consecutive trip to the big dance. It really wasn’t that long ago that this happened:
I’m not sure we’re ready make a run at anything big like the semi-finals yet, but we’ve gotten better since then and you never know. Back to the matter at hand, the Germans not only got the draw they needed to virtually seal it up, but got the win to officially end all drama in the group. Congrats to Alvaro (first time) as his Chilean side qualified in style with an impressive 4-2 win in Colombia. Mexico easily dispatched El Salvador to finish a qualifying effort that at one point looked to be on the rocks. Congrats to Alvaro (second time) as the Serbians hammered Romania 5-0 to win the group over a favored French team. They return to the World Cup after a disappointing showing in the group of death in Germany in 2006. The defending champions will be there as the Italians officially clinched qualification for the 13th straight time with a stoppage time equalizer in Ireland. And finally, congratulations to Alvaro (third time) as the Danes finally accomplished what they had been favored to do for a very long time, win the vaunted Group 1 over Portugal nad Sweden (whom they beat 1-0 at home to seal it). They are a strong team and a balanced team, and I think they might have an outside shot to make a little noise next summer.
Out
Turkey, Togo, Colombia, Morocco, Norway, Bulgaria, Poland, Venezuela, Mozambique, El Salvador, Hungary, Northern Ireland, Kenya, Zambia, Latvia, Austria = 0.00%. Not all of these teams are officially out (e.g. Venezuela and Northern Ireland), but they’re done. This includes Norway who are also not officially out, but are going to wind up being the unfortunate team who misses the UEFA playoffs by being the worst 2nd place finisher. I think it’s a stupid system, but they didn’t ask me. Norway probably only has themselves to blame though. Turkey is the best of some pretty decent teams there and they passed Romania in the Rankings making them the highest ranked team so far to hit 0.00%. However that dubious “honor” is almost certainly going to go to a team who is still mathematically alive. Four teams in the top 10 (Argentina, France, Portugal, and the Czech Republic) still have work left to do. The Czechs in particular are in massive amounts of trouble.
Up
Slovenia = 78.02%; Uruguay = 75.68%; Portugal = 72.34%; Costa Rica = 70.32%; Ukraine = 36.46%.
Down
Slovakia = 44.73%; Ecuador = 9.29%; Croatia = 6.67%; Honduras = 59.28%; Sweden = 1.27%.
UEFA Group 1
Denmark wins the group with a 1-0 victory at home over Sweden. Portugal’s 3-0 victory over Hungary has made this group essentially over. The Portuguese beat the Maltese 4-0 in Malta, one assumes they shouldn’t have a lot of difficulty at home with them. The Swedes had their chances to put the Portuguese away, but they didn’t do it and likely have to start preparing for Euro 2012. Officially Hungary is still alive… they’re not.
UEFA Group 2
One of two groups whose winner you could reasonably argue is still undecided, the Swiss are nevertheless in strong position needing only a home draw against Israel to wrap things up. It’s been a little over a year since that stunning loss at home to Luxembourg. Jan on that World Cup blog thought that first place was “pretty much gone” after that, but they righted the ship and now have it in front of them for the taking. Israel is still mathematically alive and the sims even gave them a few hits so I suppose anything is possible there. But most certainly it will be the Swiss and the Greeks battling for first with the loser heading to the playoffs.
UEFA Group 3
Oh dear, what did Slovakia just do to themselves? What did they do to the poor Czechs?!? A home match against Slovenia, needing only a draw, and they fall 2-0 and now almost certainly must win in Poland to win a group it appeared they had well in hand. Absolute disaster, not just for them but for the Czechs whose 2-0 win over Poland probably didn’t spark a lot of celebrations knowing the score in the other games. Now the Czechs need San Marino of all teams to get a result over Slovenia, an outcome the sims think is more likely (though unlikely) than I suspect is the case. So much so, that I’m going to review the system to see if there are ways to improve the system (poisson might not be working so well after all). The Northern Irish are mathematically still alive, but that math involves very large numbers in extremely unusual places. They’re out and the sims concur. The Poles only won one game (at home against the Czechs) against someone other than San Marino and never got their qualifying campaign going. They too now prepare for Euro 2012. Slovenia? Credit where credit is due and now it’s making sure something silly doesn’t happen in San Marino and hope Poland helps them out. This counts as a wildly successful qualifying campaign for them regardless, and they’re just a little ways away from being the biggest shock group winner in Europe.
UEFA Group 4
This group was down to two teams before this round, and now first and second are finalized. Miroslav Klose’s 38th minute goal gave the Germans a mammoth road win in Moscow. That’s damn impressive and a warning to anyone thinking about overlooking their chances in South Africa. The Russians are still very much in this as they’re extremely likely to be seeded in the playoffs. But no team who makes the European playoffs is anyone you can take likely, and they’ll view this as a missed opportunity. As for the rest of the group, the Welsh now look to 2012 as another chance to finally get into a major international tournament. The Finns also hope to maybe make a surprise run.
UEFA Group 5
The race for 2nd ended in a hurry in this one. Bosnia-Herzegovina wins in Estonia 2-0, and Turkey loses 2-0 to a Belgium team who had been having trouble beating anyone, anywhere. Turkey’s third place in 2002 seems like a distant memory now as failure to even reach a playoff spot is a big disappointment for a team with a lot of talent. It’s a national program that may need a little re-organization to take the next step into the permanent upper-echelon of teams. The Bosnians head to the playoffs, but are very unlikely to be seeded and remain medium to long shots to make it South Africa. They’ll need to bring their best against what will likely be a very strong team.
UEFA Group 6
With the backdrop of a bizarre telecast situation and an early penalty and red card, England lost on the road to Ukraine 1-0 in a game they respectably fought to try and get a result in despite it not having any meaning for them. That will be little consolation to the Croatians who now need to win in Kazakhstan and then hope somehow Andorra gets a home result against the Ukranians. In another example of why I want to look at poisson again, the sims give Croatia a better chance than they probably actually have. Andorra are legitimate minnows and the closest they’ve gotten in qualifying so far is to within two goals. Like the problem the Czechs face, Croatia’s issues are good news for other 2nd place finishers with a shot to be seeded. The Ukranian’s FIFA ranking is much weaker. I thought Belarus acquitted themselves fairly well in this pretty tough group, we’ll see if they can build on it from here.
UEFA Group 7
The Serbians win the group with an emphatic 5-0 trouncing of a Romanian team in desperate need of regrouping. France took care of the Faroe Islands by 5-0, but 30-0 wouldn’t have done them any more good. It’s the playoffs for them and a likely seed. Other than the Faroes, the other teams have a non-zero chance of qualifying for the Euros in 2012, so they’ll set about doing that now.
UEFA Group 8
What looked like a dramatic stoppage time equalizer was really not that big of a deal at the end of the day. Once Ireland had sealed at least a draw, the final outcome of the group was almost certainly set. Italy first and Ireland second. Ireland has a relatively poor FIFA ranking and won’t be seeded, making the task ahead fairly difficult. They’ve got a chance to pull a surprise on anybody, but they still sit at less than a 50% chance of qualifying. This was probably the deepest of the groups as Georgia is probably the best of the last place teams in the six team groups. They’ll all fight to qualify for Euro 2012, but only Bulgaria has anything more than a small chance of making it.
UEFA Group 9
Obviously this group had already ended, but Norway was waiting for a miracle to save them and get them into the playoffs. It didn’t happen and despite mathematically being alive, the turn of events is unlikely to the point of not being worth discussing. They’re out.
Conmebol
I continue to be stunned at the abysmal form of the Argentines. They needed Martin Palermo’s stoppage time winner at home against a struggling Peru side, to keep a bad situation from deteriorating into something far worse. Despite all of this chaos, the sims still think they are likely to qualify. However the sims don’t really know (nor do I) how Chile will approach their final home match against Ecuador. Should Ecuador spring the upset, Argentina would be fortunate to escape the unthinkable: elimination in sixth place. Ecuador’s only chance at direct qualification is a five goal win over Chile and a draw between Argentina and Uruguay. That actually happened once in the sims, but don’t hold your breath. They still are in the playoff picture with a win, but are not traditionally a great road team and need a poor performance from an already qualified Chile to help their cause. Uruguay’s hugemongous road win at 9,000 feet in Quito creates a scintilating showdown between them and Argentina in Uruguay with so much on the line. It is now more likely than not that both teams will eventually make it to South Africa, but I think both would like to get there right here and now. Only one of them is going to on Wednesday. I give up figuring out who that will be. Venezuela’s home loss and a 15 goal differential with Uruguay mean that they’re out, despite mathematically being alive. Colombia once again fails to qualify; they by all rights should be a better team than this. Obviously organization for the national team can always be difficult in a country that seems to have the persistent domestic troubles they have, but the raw materials are there for a world powerhouse. Don’t know if they can get the latter without resolving the former though. But that’s a little out of my field so…
CONCACAF
The two giants of CONCACAF once again push through with wins, and now Costa Rica and Honduras jockey to see who goes through and who gets to try and pull the surprise party on South America. I watched the USA/Honduras match at an El Salvadorian Restaurant here in Phoenix. I’m going to pull for Honduras because the Honduran fans (the vast majority of the fans there) were very gracious after the game despite obvious frustration at the many chances they threw away to get a better result. I’d also like to see them go through because it would mean that the USA didn’t just lay down in its final qualifier at home against Costa Rica. I have no information on what kind of side Bob Bradley will send out (with the biggest issue as to whether Landon Donovan will play), but in any event the best case scenario came through for the Costa Ricans, and there’s now quite a number of different ways they can qualify directly. They’ve re-taken the lead in their see-saw battle with the Hondurans for that final automatic spot.
The AFC/OFC Playoff Begins
Bahrain has never made the World Cup, New Zealand has made it only once in 1982. The rankings have Bahrain as the better side, but I do wonder if maybe the system underrates teams like New Zealand and Australia (and to a lesser extent the USA) who have so many of their best players playing so far from home (and therefore unavailable for many less important matches). In any event, the 0-0 draw in Bahrain improves New Zealand’s chances some, but an away goal would have done wonders. Now they either have to win at home, or shut Bahrain out and win a shootout. Any non-goalless draw sends Bahrain to South Africa on away goals. The final game takes place on November 14th in Wellington amd I’m sure the Kiwi fans will come out in droves for that one.
CAF
Gabon is not giving up just yet and Cameroon still has to work for this one. Both teams won by multiple goals and now each faces a road match on the final matchday with Cameroon up a point and two goals on goal differential. The situation is much the same in Group 2 as Tunisia has the upper hand on Nigeria, but things are far from finished. Again, both teams are on the road in the final match with Tunisia up two points but even on goal differential (meaning Nigeria owns all the tiebreakers).
Now the real insanity. From the time I ran the simulations, until now there’s been a clarification on the tiebreakers, and the sims tiebreakers are slightly wrong only as it pertains to the Egypt and Algeria group. Algeria enters the final match with a three point lead and a four goal GD on Egypt. One slight problem, their final game is on the road against Egypt. Here’s the scenarios:
Algeria wins the group (and qualifies for the World Cup) if:
- Algeria wins
- Algeria draws
- Algeria loses by one goal
Egypt qualifies if they win by three goals or more. If Egypt wins by two goals that would make all the tiebreakers dead even forcing the dreaded ??????? to solve it. In the numbers below, Egypt was considered the group winner if they won 2-0, Algeria if it was a two goal margin but Algeria scored at least two themselves. That is apparently not the case (IE, away goals head to head is not a tiebreaker) so any two goal win by Egypt (not just 3-1) leaves the group deadlocked. I’ll re-run the numbers and Algeria’s chances should go up very slightly (the winner in a deadlocked group is decided via random number by the sims).
The other two groups in Africa were decided long ago.
Voros Passes Out
My god that was a lot of work… 
Data Dump
CONMEBOL Percent Brazil 100.00% Paraguay 100.00% Chile 100.00% Argentina 56.72% Uruguay 43.27% Ecuador 0.01% Colombia 0.00% Venezuela 0.00% Bolivia 0.00% Peru 0.00% CONCACAF Percent USA 100.00% Mexico 100.00% Costa Rica 60.22% Honduras 39.78% Trinidad and Tobago 0.00% El Salvador 0.00% CAF - Group1 Percent Cameroon 73.96% Gabon 26.04% Morocco 0.00% Togo 0.00% CAF - Group2 Percent Tunisia 69.84% Nigeria 30.16% Mozambique 0.00% Kenya 0.00% CAF - Group 3 Percent Algeria 67.27% Egypt 32.73% Zambia 0.00% Rwanda 0.00% CAF - Group 4 Percent Ghana 100.00% Mali 0.00% Benin 0.00% Sudan 0.00% CAF - Group 5 Percent Côte d'Ivoire 100.00% Burkina Faso 0.00% Guinea 0.00% Malawi 0.00% AFC - Group A Percent Australia 100.00% Japan 100.00% Bahrain 0.00% Uzbekistan 0.00% Qatar 0.00% AFC - Group B Percent Korea Republic 100.00% Korea DPR 100.00% Saudi Arabia 0.00% Iran 0.00% United Arab Emirates 0.00% UEFA - Group 1 Percent Denmark 100.00% Sweden 0.00% Portugal 0.00% Hungary 0.00% Albania 0.00% Malta 0.00% UEFA - Group 2 Percent Switzerland 81.56% Greece 18.44% Israel 0.00% Latvia 0.00% Luxembourg 0.00% Moldova 0.00% UEFA - Group 3 Percent Slovenia 73.76% Slovakia 26.24% Czech Republic 0.00% Poland 0.00% Northern Ireland 0.00% San Marino 0.00% UEFA - Group 4 Percent Germany 100.00% Russia 0.00% Finland 0.00% Wales 0.00% Azerbaijan 0.00% Liechtenstein 0.00% UEFA - Group 5 Percent Spain 100.00% Bosnia-Herzegovina 0.00% Turkey 0.00% Belgium 0.00% Estonia 0.00% Armenia 0.00% UEFA - Group 6 Percent England 100.00% Croatia 0.00% Ukraine 0.00% Belarus 0.00% Kazakhstan 0.00% Andorra 0.00% UEFA - Group 7 Percent Serbia 100.00% France 0.00% Lithuania 0.00% Austria 0.00% Romania 0.00% Faroe Islands 0.00% UEFA - Group 8 Percent Italy 100.00% Ireland Republic 0.00% Bulgaria 0.00% Cyprus 0.00% Montenegro 0.00% Georgia 0.00% UEFA - Group 9 Percent Netherlands 100.00% Norway 0.00% Scotland 0.00% Iceland 0.00% Macedonia FYR 0.00% UEFA - Playoffs Percent France 76.91% Portugal 72.34% Russia 64.73% Greece 47.17% Ukraine 36.46% Ireland Republic 33.97% Bosnia-Herzegovina 21.74% Slovakia 18.49% Switzerland 10.33% Croatia 6.67% Czech Republic 5.33% Slovenia 4.26% Sweden 1.27% Israel 0.33% AFC/OFC - Playoffs Percent Bahrain 60.10% New Zealand 39.90% CONMEBOL/CONCACAF - Playoffs Percent Uruguay 32.41% Argentina 28.71% Honduras 19.50% Costa Rica 10.10% Ecuador 9.28% UEFA - Playoff Losses Percent Bosnia-Herzegovina 78.26% Ireland Republic 66.03% Slovakia 55.27% Ukraine 53.73% Russia 35.27% Greece 33.62% Portugal 25.35% France 23.09% Slovenia 14.20% Switzerland 8.11% Croatia 3.14% Czech Republic 2.45% Sweden 1.04% Israel 0.44% AFC - Playoff Losses Percent Saudi Arabia 100.00% AFC/OFC - Playoff Losses Percent New Zealand 60.10% Bahrain 39.90% CONMEBOL/CONCACAF-PlayoffLoss Percent Honduras 40.72% Costa Rica 29.68% Uruguay 14.00% Ecuador 8.93% Argentina 6.67% Worst 2nd Place UEFA Percent Norway 100.00% UEFA Playoff Seed Percentage Percent France 99.90% Russia 99.84% Portugal 97.69% Greece 66.91% Switzerland 15.63% Croatia 9.81% Czech Republic 7.34% Ukraine 1.96% Israel 0.58% Bosnia-Herzegovina 0.34% Ireland Republic 0.00% Slovakia 0.00% Slovenia 0.00% Sweden 0.00%
28 responses so far ↓
1 Mitz // Oct 12, 2009 at 4:25 am
Thanks once again, Voros – terrific analysis as always. Seems I agree with you almost everywhere, except that I give Honduras a slightly better chance than Costa Rica and that Diego’s boys have blown it. Can’t wait for Wednesday’s games, the playoff draw, November’s games, the draw for the finals and June…
2 Mitz // Oct 12, 2009 at 5:27 am
By the way, one tiny little anomaly that I don’t understand:
How come Bosnia have a 0.34% chance of being seeded for the playoffs, whereas Ireland (who have a significantly higher FIFA ranking) have no chance at all?
3 Voros // Oct 12, 2009 at 6:10 am
Bosnia have the ability to finish ahead of Ukraine and Greece in the FIFA rankings and Ireland do not.
Bosnia needs to win their final game against Spain (HUGE points) and then either Malta not to lose in Portugal or Greece to lose at home to Luxembourg.
As you can see, a tough ask all the way around. Ireland don’t even have those kind of options.
4 Voros // Oct 12, 2009 at 6:23 am
I just realized I didn’t make any comments about Africa. The Egypt/Algeria situation is quite interesting too. Will make an edit shortly.
5 Jared // Oct 12, 2009 at 8:02 am
The tiebreaker for Egypt/Algeria (if there’s a two goal Egypt victory) is drawing lots (!) unless FIFA can schedule a one-game neutral site playoff between the two squads.
“With the approval of the FIFA Organising Committee and should the coordinated international match calendar allow, play-offs may be played instead of drawing lots to decide ties within groups (cf. art. 17, par. 6g). If any such play-off ends in a tie, extra time of two periods of 15 minutes each will be played. If the score is level after extra time, penalty kicks will be taken to determine the winner in accordance with the procedure described in the Laws of the Game.”
The Egypt/Algeria match is on November 14th, and there is one more international match date on November 18th (2nd leg of European playoffs). So it might be logistically difficult; but it will be possible to have a one-game playoff at a neutral site (Libya? Turkey?) to decide it, instead of the dreaded random draw.
6 Jared // Oct 12, 2009 at 8:04 am
Oh, and in how many sims was there a two goal victory by Egypt against Algeria?
7 JJBean // Oct 12, 2009 at 10:55 am
Great work as always – have been a huge fan of your stats for a while.
So realistically, Egypt has a shot if they win by any 2 goal differential (2-0, 3-1, 4-2)? I’m going to go out and say a 3 goal win is not worth considering.
Algeria still has to severely crap the bed for that to occur which leads one to intuitively think the chances for Egypt are less than 30%, but at least it isn’t as unthinkable as San Marino beating Slovenia. Random draw of the pot would really stink for whoever is the unfortunate recipient of the result.
I think the results in the AFC playoffs actually have hurt New Zealand rather than helped them due to the away goals rule – Bahrain is no stranger to that coming into implementation.
8 Alvaro Valenzuela // Oct 12, 2009 at 11:37 am
Thanks for the update! I was thinking if there was any way of calculating how already qualified teams underperform against teams playing crucial games, you would have to analyze data from other qualifications but you would have no ranking to work with( you could use elo rankings though). If you only take the games from this year the sample size would be too small.
Of course this method is going to be really imperfect but it sounds better than simply giving the qualified team the same chance as if they were desperate for a win.
9 Cramer // Oct 12, 2009 at 1:41 pm
If the egypt does win by two goals, then, according to the rules, there will if possible be set up an neutral ground one match play off or a drawing of lots. Does anybody now if FIFA have prepared for a neutral place.? They should be able to play the 18th of November in some other african country. Drawing of lots just sounds to primitive in the year of 2009
10 scaryice // Oct 12, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Even in the single digits, Croatia and Czech Republic’s chances seem highly overrated by the system.
11 Voros // Oct 12, 2009 at 3:53 pm
That’s right, scaryice and I’m current overlooking both poisson and the goal matchup predictions to see if I can dial that in a little.
The goal predictions don’t look too bad, but maybe poisson’s weaknesses as the matchup becomes more lopsided are getting exposed.
I’ll be doing a post on this tomorrow (I hope) where I go over my system’s predicted outcomes compared to the actual data.
12 Yamor // Oct 13, 2009 at 2:00 am
In the Egypt-Algeria match if it finishes 3-1, 4-2 etc. then it will be decided by overall goals scored. Only 2-0 will leave it going down to a coin-toss or one-off game to decide.
13 Mitz // Oct 13, 2009 at 2:03 am
I will be very interested to see how FIFA handles the situation if Egypt do win by exactly two goals, leaving them and Algeria level in every respect. IMHO FIFA should definitely be preparing the contingency plan of a neutral ground playoff on November 18th – as Jared points out this is provided for in the official tournament rules, and what a spectacle it would be!
14 Mitz // Oct 13, 2009 at 2:46 am
Another “already qualified team anomaly” leads to Ecuador’s chances being under 10%.
In a playoff against either Honduras or Costa Rica they would be pretty evenly matched according to the ratings, so the big hurdle is reaching the playoffs in the first place.
To do that they have to beat Chile in Santiago. Home advantage for an intrinsically superior team quite rightly puts Chile in command and gives Ecuador less than 20% to win, but fails to take into account that Chile have already qualified, and that Ecuador will be super fired up by the chance of eliminating Uruguay (great!) or Argentina (even better!)
I suppose we’ll find out for sure tomorrow night…
15 Voros // Oct 13, 2009 at 2:51 am
Yamor,
In any two goal win for Algeria, all of the tiebreakers will be equal: goal differential, goals scored, head to head points and head to head goal differential. Originally I thought there might have been a head to head away goals tiebreaker in there, but apparently there is not.
16 Daniel Burnier // Oct 13, 2009 at 3:54 am
I think it is a shame FIFA is not prepared for this situation (I mean the tiebreak situation between Egypt and Algegia). Of course this is not expected to happen, but the chance it occurs in a 4-teams group is not to be ignored at all.
Another question: Why FIFA waited so long to announce the european play-offs would be seeded? Did they wait to see if France and Portugal were going to take part in it? Tha’s unfair, to tell the least
17 Mitz // Oct 13, 2009 at 6:53 am
A lot of people have been getting their knickers in a twist about FIFA’s late announcement of the Euro-playoffs being seeded. But really, did anyone ever expect anything else? (Voros for one has stated that he didn’t!) I can’t remember any playoff scenario in recent times that hasn’t been seeded in this way.
I would state the following:
1) Everyone knew at the outset that coming second in the group would lead to a playoff at best and elimination at worst (sorry Norway). If you want to be sure, then win your group.
2) Playoffs are a lottery at the best of times – anyone can beat anyone else in a one-off, seeded or not.
3) France are vulnerable. Portugal have wobbled their way to the playoffs. Russia are inconsistent. Greece are not all that. If these four are the top seeds (as seems likely) then the likes of Ireland, Bosnia, Slovakia and Ukraine should just get in there with the belief that they can cause an upset.
As I have stated elsewhere, I would confidently predict that at least one seed will fail in the playoffs.
18 Rich // Oct 13, 2009 at 7:55 am
According to the BBC website, if the Algeria Egypt result means a tie then
“That raises the prospect of lots being drawn to decide who qualifies. The only alternative is if the two teams can agree, in conjunction with Fifa, dates for a deciding play-off. But they will have to move fast – the draw for the finals is made on 4 December.”
Which seems to indicate that the situation is not entirely in the hands of FIFA!
As an aside, and being a non-stats guy, how would you decide what the ‘correct’ % chance should be of (for example) Croatia taking 2nd place?
People are saying the chance you show is probably high, but these results can happen (Switzerland lose to Luxembourg etc).
In other words, how do you select the appropriate figure, as 10 people asked would surely give 10 different chances on what they feel would be right!
19 German Guy // Oct 13, 2009 at 7:57 am
Egypt will play a friendly in Germany on Nov 18th.
I think it’s impossible to cancel this event to replace it by a quickly set up play-off match (anyway, I don’t know how it should work if there was no friendly), if Egypt wins by 2 goals margin on Nov 14th.
If they don’t want to draw lots, the mentioned play-off match has to take place after the World Cup draw on Dec 4th.
20 ilias // Oct 13, 2009 at 11:47 am
Algeria and Egypt are sure to not be seeded at the Fifa World Cup Finals Draw at 4 December. So why not leave the name empty for the draw and feeling it after the draw? The playoff could be played later (e.g February). It happened before in 1982 with New Zealand and China. These teams played the playoff at January.
21 Voros // Oct 13, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Rich,
I do statistical national team rankings based on past results, and then do a statistical simulation of the remaining games. The whole process is described in these two posts:
http://vorosmccracken.com/?p=142
http://vorosmccracken.com/?p=143
22 Mitz // Oct 14, 2009 at 2:27 am
German Guy,
I find this news astonishing. The friendly between Germany and Egypt can only have been organised since last Saturday – until Germany got the result they needed against Russia there was the very real possibility that they would be involved in a playoff themselves on November 18th. I would like to think that this friendly has been arranged to give Germany and Egypt something to do on an official international fixture date, and that it will be trumped should an Algeria vs Egypt playoff be required. I note that Algeria do not have a friendly fixture on the books for Nov 18th so far…
Notwithstanding Ilias’ point about New Zealand and China in 1982, these days the idea of having a slip of paper reading “Algeria/Egypt” in the draw on December 4th will not be acceptable to the suits at FIFA. It would be more likely for them to draw lots – an outcome that for pretty much everybody would be entirely unsatisfactory.
23 German Guy // Oct 14, 2009 at 6:53 am
Mitz,
http://www.goal.com/en/news/89/africa/2009/06/01/1299150/egypt-tackle-germany-in-november-friendly
The friendly was arranged in summer – under reserve, of course.
I don’t know whether it’s possible to cancel a friendly 3 days before kick-off. You will get problems to find an other opponent for Germany. Also, this opponent wants to know whether they’ll play.
You know what I mean?
So if they don’t hurry to cancel the friendly soon, I think it’s getting more and more unlikely.
24 Mitz // Oct 14, 2009 at 7:44 am
Interesting – the friendly would certainly have been binned if Germany were obliged to take part in a playoff. Maybe the game will still take place in Germany, but between Egypt and Algeria instead!
I’m sure England would have been more than happy to step in and play a friendly against Germany, but sadly we have the inconvenience of a match against those pesky Brazilians…
25 German Guy // Oct 14, 2009 at 9:17 am
Of course, the scheduled friendly would have been canceled, if Germany took part in the play-offs.
I think now they’ve realized the problem.
Egyptian FA informed German FA about the situation. It is said, there may be a play-off on Nov 14th, if Egypt wins 2-0. But be aware, it’s only a rumour.
I think it’s time that FIFA decides as soon as possible whether there will be a play-off match or draw of lots.
26 German Guy // Oct 14, 2009 at 9:19 am
I meant Nov 18th, of course.
27 Mitz // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:57 am
I have emailed both FIFA and the Egyptian FA asking for clarification, but I’m not holding my breath for a response…
28 German Guy // Oct 20, 2009 at 4:26 am
Cote d’Ivoire replace Egypt for Germany’s friendy. So there is space for the possible play-off match. By the way, a nice opponent
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