Sweden, Gazza??

Vilhelm
Nordic Stones Vikings

leteyer Wrote:
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> The point I was trying to make is that there's no
> such thing as a CAKEWALK...The USA and Mexico
> don't even play against those teams in the first
> rounds..And if you follow the USA a little bit you
> must know how hard it is to win in places like El
> Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "they don't even play against shotse teams in the first rounds."

And I concede that there is an element of difficulty in going to play away games in Central America, but a large part of that is the hostile atmosphere (I remember reading about the U.S. team getting "bags of urine" thrown at them somewhere), rather than the quality of the opposition. The quality of the opposition is not particularly good, and I still contend that the U.S. has a relatively easy time in qualifying/friendlies within CONCACAF, and this inflates their ranking. You can throw as many "weak" UEFA sides at me as you want (though I don't think Israel is in the same category as Iceland; Israel barely missed out on Euro 2004), but there is simply no comparison between the memberships of CONCACAF and UEFA. So, as a general matter, it is fair to say that the U.S. gets easier federation games than European teams do. And thus their ranking is artificially elevated compared to UEFA teams'.

Consequently, I also don't think that CONCACAF should have the chance at having four teams in the World Cup (only three automatic, I know), but that's another matter.