Should minnows be axed from European qualifying?

I was looking through the European qualifying groups for next years World Cup in South Africa and something hit me. No it wasn’t my girlfriend fed up with me for looking at football sites! It was the fact that so many countries compete in the qualification without any hope of ever qualifying.

Some compete without any hope of even getting a point. Small principalities such as Andorra from England’s group and San Marino in Northern Ireland’s group have no points. Then you have the likes of Azerbaijan with one point and Malta with one. When they face any other nation apart from a fellow minnow all they can hope for is to keep the score respectable.

When people say there is no such thing as an easy game in international they are deluding themselves. Some of other the minnows such as Moldova and Luxembourg have fared better in this years qualification  because they have played each other. Liechtenstein and Azerbaijan were in the same group so managed to accrue some points.

My big point here is surely it would be better for there to be a qualifying round for these minnows before the proper qualification. I know this sounds very elitist but they must get fed up with being humiliated by the big nations and never getting anywhere.

I’m proposing a system similar to one in the FA Cup or Champions League. Where the smaller countries have to play in a some preliminary rounds before the actual group stage of qualification. That way it whittles down the teams to a smaller number.

This would also please the people who have this idea that footballers may suffer burnout from playing too many matches. This would reduce the number of matches played and protect against the Premier League managers favourite excuse of fatigue.

A lot of the players that play for these minnows are not even professional footballers. So they cannot complain about playing more games as they probably hardly play anyway. It also gives the players more of an incentive to win.

They have to win the play-off games or they won’t get to play against the big stars of England, France, Holland, Germany, Italy or Spain. Some of the smaller countries also enjoy trying to kick the big stars off the pitch. Like Andorra have tried unsuccessfully to England.

Unlike me though UEFA just want to keep increasing the games and adding more teams to the European qualifying groups. I believe that reducing the number of teams in a qualification group would make the whole process more competitive.

Its not just the European zone that needs revising this rest of the continents need to addressed. All the other continents have their weaker teams as well but they are knocked out in the play-offs with teams who failed to qualify from the other continents.

One of the stronger countries in the Oceania section Australia decided that they had enough of not qualifying and in 2006 joined the Asia section. In qualifying for World Cup 2010 Australia came top of group one and have qualified for their third World Cup. It proved a wise decision.

One of their reasons for changing zones was that in the Oceania they had little to no competition. The proof of that is that New Zealand won the Oceania group ahead of the giants of Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. New Zealand now face a play-off against third placed Asian side Bahrain.

I know its a World Cup but neither New Zealand or Bahrain are good enough to take the field against the great European and South American teams. New Zealand have already proved that in the Confederations Cup, where they picked up just one point against the likes of European Champions Spain, hosts South Africa and Iraq.

Do you believe that the European qualifying should be cut down to less teams?