Now do CONCACAF.
The tiniest micro-state teams are irrelevant though, they always finish on -30 with maybe a point if there's another small team (Cyprus are levels above Gibraltar and San Marino, btw). The issue is only one team qualifying automatically from a group, which is inherently more unforgiving than having what is essentially a league stage, because you lose one game and there's a good chance you'll have at best a chance to finish second. We've seen groups including both Spain and Italy, or France and Spain. You get a lot of times a traditional powerhouse teams plays a random "2nd tier" Euro team who are very good at that time (Serbia, Croatia, Russia, current Norway as examples). Then you'll get some random shit group with Bosnia and Greece as the top seeds. The seeding doesn't always work but Europe has a lot of teams so they have to do something.
I agree with the idea that on a game by game basis it's harder to play in South America (altitude, crap pitches, crazy fans, the average level of teams), but you lose or draw a game and you can still correct it. UEFA qualifying is less forgiving in terms of results with the 1+1 format. And Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay will always have better players than Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay.
I think this'll all be an irrelevant discussion one day because they'll let every man and his dog enter soon enough.
Buy on AliExpress.com
