By Andrew Warshaw
October 15 – As the World Cup qualifying programme reaches a nail-biting climax, a row has broken out over the seeding system being used for next week’s playoff draw.
France, three points behind world and European champions Spain in Group I going into the last series of games, are currently ranked down at 25 by FIFA and are almost certain to be unseeded since potential rivals Croatia, Portugal, Greece, England, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Sweden who are all ranked higher, while even 26th-ranked Ukraine are poised to overtake Les Bleus if, as expected, they beat San Marino later today.
The two-legged winner-takes-all playoff fixtures take place in November but the French say the seeding system is flawed because fewer ranking points were available in their five-nation qualifying group while all the other groups all contained six teams. It’s a fair claim though the French, of course, knew about the anomaly before the competition even started.
“We’re going to contact FIFA,” French Football federation president Noël Le Graët told the radio station RMC. “There is a little injustice between the group of five and the groups of six. Our rivals from other groups have been able to score more (ranking) points … that’s a fact.”
According to FIFA’s ranking rules, qualifying games are worth 2.5 times more points than international friendlies, and countries in France’s group played two fewer games than all the other nations in the European qualifying section.
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