Test cricket Tiers?

[Themer]

No Welshmen would rather play for England. No English footballers would want to play in a United Kingdom team. Hardly any fans would want to see a UK team. The four countries had to stop playing the Home Nations because of how the fans behaved towards each other.

Who cares how competitive they are? Its not even close to being the point of International football.

 

[War]

No Welshmen would rather play for England. No English footballers would want to play in a United Kingdom team. Hardly any fans would want to see a UK team. The four countries had to stop playing the Home Nations because of how the fans behaved towards each other.

Who cares how competitive they are? Its not even close to being the point of International football.

Yea, but as we seen in cricket its a tradition difference between the sports. A Welshman doesn't have the same animosity playing cricket for England.

How competitive you are internationally is very important. Great welsh players like Giggs, Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, John Charles, Bellamy & Bale/Ramsey in the future never/would never get to play on the world cup stage because of how crap Wales will always be. They will just be restricted to club glory which is great shame.

If you look at UEFA's 52 nations. The likes of Albania, Luxemborg, Liechtenstein, Latvia, Wales, San Marino, B & H, Cyrpus, Estonia, Montenegro, Faroe Islands, Lithuania, Andorra, Albania, Malta, Georgia, Moldova.

All of these teams should definately have earn the right to be part of the UEFA WC OR Euro qualifiers - instead of automatically be put into a group. Via all of them playing in a "group" & the best teams out of this crap bunch would then earn the right to participate in the WCQ & Euro qualifiers.

By doing this you reducing the chances of crap matches being played in qualifiers like a Spain vs San Marino.

 

[Owzat]

I'd argue football is a different kettle of fish. Internationals don't happen all that often, maybe a dozen qualifiers over two years. Tests will expose big differences between two sides, football matches last 90 minutes and if "minnows" don't play matches then their chances of improving will be how exactly?!?!? They could play each other, but if there's no gain, no structure, then to what ends? Play each other 20 times in two years so next set of pre-qualifiers they might not get thumped by a team?

And didn't the 2007 World Cup have a similar set up that backfired bigtime? The organisers expected Bangladesh and Ireland to lay down and die, when Ireland and Bangladesh caused an upset the organisers and TV end up having two teams they really didn't want and couldn't 'sell' clogging up the groups.

Besides, England play two matches or 180 minutes against the likes of Andorra, Liechtenstein etc, and of course play pointless friendlies whereas cricket has no (equivalent) friendlies. If these minnows had always had to play pre-qualifiers I doubt whether teams that are quite strong now would be eg Turkey, and maybe even sides that made the World Cup or nearly did wouldn't have got close if denied automatic rights the same as the rest of Europe. I'd be hacked off if I were a national of one of these countries and had to pre-qualify while Israel didn't and they're not even on the same f in continent!

Didn't one of the so called minnows hold England to a 0-0 recently? (Montenegro) If the minnows hadn't played on equal terms in the cricket World Cups would Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Kenya have caused upsets as well as Ireland? 1992 was one of the best World Cups in my book, but it lacked all the minnows which took something away from it.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

How competitive you are internationally is very important. Great welsh players like Giggs, Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, John Charles, Bellamy & Bale/Ramsey in the future never/would never get to play on the world cup stage because of how crap Wales will always be. They will just be restricted to club glory which is great shame.

if you end up just throwing all the players into the nearest convenient nation you might as well just not have international football, it's what marks it apart from club football. half the point is a team could line up with 10 players from polands second division and the current world footballer in the year bossing the midfield, or a team with 10 outfielders culled from real madrid, chelsea, milan, man u etc and acrington stanley's 2nd choice goalie.

you can't just sort of look at wales' one or two good players and think, 'we'll have them.' you make do with the best your country produces. or, if you're ireland, exploit family lineage technicalities.

Didn't one of the so called minnows hold England to a 0-0 recently? (Montenegro) If the minnows hadn't played on equal terms in the cricket World Cups would Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Kenya have caused upsets as well as Ireland? 1992 was one of the best World Cups in my book, but it lacked all the minnows which took something away from it.

algeria held them to 0-0 at the WC. but it's not the same, upsets happen far more often in football than they do even in t20. New zealand drew with italy, south africa beat france. these are ludicrous results.

 

[Owzat]

I wasn't referring to World Cup results, teams like Algeria, New Zealand and South Africa may not be the best in the world, but they qualified. I was talking about a "minnow" in qualifying, in response to suggestion minnows should have to pre-qualify just to join the rest of Europe in qualifying ie draw say Andorra vs Montenegro for the right to join a group of say England, Poland, Georgia and Finland.

If UEFA were to make changes it would have to be radical in my book, but then I think the minnows would suffer and quite probably just not enter the World Cup or European Championship at all. That might make a few people happy who only care about the better teams, they'd probably be happy to do away with football below the Championship, but it would be a shame to deny countries their right to a fair crack of the whip. Those 10 qualifiers they play can be a good learning experience in competitive conditions, just because they aren't as good as other countries doesn't mean they should have to sit it out - as half the teams forced to pre-qualify would have to.

But then maybe that pre-qualifying issue isn't about those minnows at all, or even international football, it's doubtless more about clubs releasing players and how many internationals England etc play ie selfish motivation

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

yeah, I see what you mean, I was just jumping on a random point.

The thing is, it's only a problem in europe, and football makes so much money in europe that any game of any note rakes it in. Minnow nations don't work in cricket because Ireland v India isn't a draw, no one in india watches on TV, neutrals aren't interested and no one in ireland goes to the match. Associate minnows are made up of part-timers and amatuers who can't devote themselves to a full calenedar. you can forget about scotland v netherlands, no one cares. Put a football match on between Andorra and Germany and andorra's stadium will be packed out and andorra will still be fielding an almost completely professional side.

We're not minnows, but we still haven't qualified for a while, even against smaller teams we'll pack out most of 60,000 seater stadium and have the game shown on TV, as well as being part of overseas highlight packages.

It all comes down to cash in the end, sure san marino and the faroe islands are practically joke teams (ahem, faroes almost beat us once, worst football experience ever) but they still make money.