It's Time To Reorganise Qualifiers

This week, three days before the Scottish Premier League season started, Scotland had to play a World Cup 2010 qualifying match against Norway. They got hammered. 4-0 to Norway.

Also in World Cup Qualifying action were France, Croatia and Germany, not to mention San Marino. I said : not to mention San Marino.

The leagues in France and German started the week before, while the new Croatian season had started three weeks previously.

Norway? Their season started in March and while I accept that a number of their top players play outside of the country, this still gives them a significant advantage.

Surely, FIFA can organise important international matches that don't start a week or two into the new season or even, in Scotland's case, before the season has even started. At international level, there needs to be a level playing field. This isn't it.

No Self Interest In This Move At All?

ITV are lobbying the government to ensure that all World Cup and European Championship qualification matches involving the 'home' nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland be added to the list of sporting events that is protected for 'free-to-air' broadcasters such as, well, them.

Obviously, if this were to happen, it would diminish FIFA and UEFA's ability to profit from such matches as pay TV companies would always pay a premium for the rights to these events.

ITV go one step further and are arguing the case that all group matches at tournaments (whether they involve a home nation or not) should be reserved for free-to-air TV channels. They've got a Mori poll to back them up on this and we all know how accurate those are.

The thing is: I would certainly like to see home national qualifying matches back on free to air channels, even though I thought Setanta did a good job. However, I don't want to see them on ITV, whose football coverages veers from bad to laughable and back to completely embarrassing.

Who Exactly Organises This Shambles ?

Africa is a big place. No, really. It's a BIG place. It's so big, in fact, that on maps of the World, they actually shrink it to fit.

Don't believe me ? Here's a map showing the real size of the continent.

Hopefully, you're now getting the idea that Africa is, um, a BIG PLACE.

So, which idiots would put the first four World Cup 2010 qualifying matches for African nations on consecutive weekends?

Step forward, those geniuses at FIFA.

This hare-brained scheme means that many African teams will spend a whole month criss-crossing the continent, dealing with unreliable transportation and organisation, with barely a rest in between.

If you consider that, for example, Swaziland are in the same group as Togo (a distance of nearly 3,000 miles), you can see the problem.

As the CEO of the South African FA, Raymond Hack, points out with masterful understatement, "this seems a little tough on the players".

Oh, and these qualifiers take place in May, so there will be the heat to contend with too.

Well done, FIFA, another masterstroke of organisation.