A look at the latest FIFA rankings will show that while as expected UEFA (the European football confederation) nations dominate the top 50 of this list of the best nations in world football making up about 60% of all the nations in the top 50, CAF is third with 5 nations in the top 50 which is two behind second-placed Conmebol, the South American confederation with 7 nations in the world top 50. CAF is ahead of both AFC, the Asian confederation, with 4 nations and CONCACAF (North and Central American confederation) at just 3 nations. However, it must be said that Conmebol’s 7 nations in the top 50 represent 70% of the member nations that make up its confederation being in the top 50 nations and in a sense they are the top confederation in the world. UEFA’s 30 in the top 50 represents 55% of its total membership base.
So by all accounts, Africa has some decent football nations, still has some work to do, but not that bad. So why is our showing in the FIFA World Cup in some ways the worst of all Confederations? I see some rolling their eyes at that statement. Well, in truth we probably are! UEFA and Conmebol have won the World Cup. AFC have gone as far as the semi-finals and have regularly made quarterfinals lately. Even Concacaf nations could argue they do better for their only 3.5 World Cup qualifier slots compared to Africa’s 5 qualifying slots.
One of the most likely areas we have not looked at very closely as a possible cause of this underperformance is creating an environment for regular world-class competition for African nations within Africa. If it is true that to be the best you must play against the best then Africa is by far the worst place to be as a potential FIFA World Cup competitor. You simply do not play enough matches and, if you do, there isn’t a decent enough opposition in the qualifiers to prepare one for a top-level competition like the FIFA World Cup.
How so? It is fair to assume that a typical FIFA World Cup finals participant and the eventual winner will invariably come from the FIFA top 50 football nations in the world. Therefore the best preparation one can have is to play as many top 50 football nations and as often as possible. So in a four (4) year FIFA World Cup cycle, a typical European World Cup qualifier, as an example, would have played top 50 nations in their Euro qualifiers, Euro Championships finals (and/or the latest innovation the UEFA Nations League) as well as FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
South American World Cup qualifiers would have played 12 matches against top 50 nations in their 18 match marathon qualifiers and also in the Copa America finals. And then to Asia, whom it can be argued, is now performing much better than Africa at the FIFA World Cup finals for their 4.5 qualifying slots. Why is their qualifying format better? They whittle their 47 member nations down to the last 12 best nations (used to be 10) through various phases of seeded qualifying matches. They then put the last 12 best teams in the region in two groups of 6 each thereby ensuring that the best play the best in a mini-league format. This is an ideal preparation for a FIFA World Cup tournament. After 10 matches in home and away round-robin the top 2 from each group qualify for the FIFA World Cup finals and the third-placed teams in each play-off for the right to the final play-off against a playoff finalist from CONCACAF region. The winner of this home and away match qualifies for the finals.
This is where I believe Africa’s format has not helped its World Cup finals qualifiers. In the previous format (for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and before that) the final 5 groups of 4 teams played a home and away mini-league and the winners went straight to the finals. This meant that a typical African qualifier would be in a qualifying group with one or two national teams outside the top 50 and another one or two teams outside the top 100 or in the bottom 100 nations in the FIFA rankings.
This meant that African teams invariably arrived at these finals having not played in a competitive match against a single top 50 football nation in the world, hardly an ideal preparation for the FIFA World Cup finals. The African Cup of Nations finals offers some competition but even then the most you are likely to play as an eventual finalist in 3 matches against a world top 50 nation, quite possibly still none.
The latest format is a slight improvement on the previous format but it has also missed an excellent opportunity to significantly improve Africa’s fortunes both technically and commercially speaking because instead of reducing this to the top 10 nations and then putting these in a single group (best preparation) or 2 groups thereby ensuring that they play at least 4 matches against a top 50 nation in the world as preparation for the world cup. We still haven’t given our national teams the best preparation for the finals.
To illustrate this further let us look at the 10 groups below as announced a couple of weeks ago whose winners go into to final qualifying phase, a two-legged home and away knock out round with the winners qualifying for the finals in Qatar in November 2022. At the time of writing this only the top seeds in groups A, B, C, G and H are in the top 50 in the world. For the record 15 other nations are outside and fall between 51 and 100 and the rest are in the bottom 100 nations.
Figure 1
So if we have all the top seeds win their groups for example 5 group of the 10 winners will be outside the top 50 in the world. If in the final knock out qualifying phase the 5 top 50 nations avoid each other they will again qualify completely unprepared to compete against the very best. They would have come out of the group in which the best opponent was outside the top 50 and the other two opponents were in the bottom 100 football nations in the world. Even if the top 50 nations do not avoid each the very best they could do is play two matches against the single top 50 nations in the world. Contrast that with other continental qualifiers mentioned.
The table below also shows something even more concerning. The number of matches each qualifying nation would have played to get to Russia in 2018 by confederation. It’s quite clear that not only did African nations come out of the easiest qualifiers simply because of who they play but they also because play the joint fewest matches of all qualifier teams. Yes, you could argue that UEFA’s straight qualifiers vs. plays-off qualifiers also played 8 matches, that is true but as previously mentioned a UEFA qualifying group has far tougher competition invariably with at least 3 top 50 nations per group. That cannot be compared with a typical CAF qualifying group makeup.
Figure 2
While one cannot say for sure that this suggestion will improve Africa’s fortunes, logic and evidence suggests it will. In fact, Africa’s Under 17, 20 and 23 Olympic qualifying formats follow the format being suggested here of strength vs. strength.
In these competitions African nations are far more competitive in these tournaments than they are in the FIFA World Cup. They have won all of these competitions and regularly finish in the final four. I would argue that’s because these teams come out of tough qualifying processes, which means they play the best teams as preparations for the finals and the results show.
As mentioned earlier, however, this is not just a missed technical performance improvement opportunity. It also represents a lost commercial opportunity. Imagine a final CAF World Cup qualifier format with a mini-league containing Senegal, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Tunisia, Ghana, Cameroon. Where the top two qualify automatically for the World Cup Finals and the third-placed teams playoff against each other for the final slot. This will see Africans finally arrive at these finals having played at least 8 matches against the best teams in Africa and the world. These are heavyweight matches that will ensure African nations get to play the best in the world and more than just one two-egged KO round.
Commercially fans, sponsors and broadcasters would give an arm for that kind of competition and entertainment. These are world-class football matches that we are only likely to see every two years when AFCON Semis finally comes around if we are lucky. This is therefore likely to fill up the revenue coffers of CAF and thus member associations as well. If one thinks about what UEFA has done with the Nations League competition, it further strengthens their competitive edge of the game in Europe.
So as we build towards Qatar 2022, Africa will again be going to the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals in hope rather than in expectation. The rest of the world will continue to widen the performance gap and African football will continue to lose ground firstly on the field and secondly, commercially. I hope I will be proven wrong but until such time that Africa creates a more competitive qualifying format i.e. more strength vs. strength opportunities we are likely to continue to make the numbers in these major global tournaments and promise so much more but deliver so much less.
