Would the AFC be better split into East and West?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The AFC Champions League, presumably for reasons of economy and local interest, effectively does this already. Up until the final, teams from China, Australia, Japan and Korea play each other, while the Gulf states' clubs scrap it out to produce the other finalist.

Would it make any less sense for their international qualifiers to be split along similar lines? They are, politically and geographically, two regions very much divided, and in football terms divided by the soccer desert that is Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the Himalayas. Why not separate the AFC's future proposed world cup qualifiers and similarly give say 3 automatic to both east and west, with playoffs? The amount of travelling done in the name of football across the AFC must be insane.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think that will work provided east and west remain roughly equal standard. The drawback would be that they would no longer get to play enough games against teams of roughly the same standard but different playing styles, whereas currently they get a 10 game group that's pretty tough (although it will of course become less tough when the top 4 out of 6 teams qualify from each group).

Their biggest problem going forward is that qualifiers are just too easy and a bit meaningless when we get to a 48 team finals, but that affects several confederations.

Personally I'd love for Eastern Europe to be guaranteed a couple of places, but again it means they don't face the same toughness of preparation (and of course Poland and Russia were dire last time).

[KyleRoteJr.]

I've long thought the Asian Football Confederation should be split into East and West confederations. When I lived in Japan in the '90s, I thought it was strange that Japan and North Korea, for example, would play, say, Kuwait and Iran in World Cup qualifiers. There is very little, if any, cultural or geographical affinity between the opposite ends of "Asia."

Where would you put the South Asian subcontinent? I'd put India and Pakistan in the west. Maybe Bangladesh and some of the Himalayan countries in the east. Sri Lanka?

And while you're at it, dissolve the Oceania confederation and fold it into East Asia. Granted, I haven't thought of all the ramifications of these moves; obviously, there are going to be pros and cons, and details need to be worked out for the optimum benefit of member countries.

Europe and Africa are pretty well-defined and set. Although CONMEBOL and CONCACAF could maybe use some realignment. These are just musings off the top of my head.

[seand]

It'd certainly make sense for the first and second rounds, the final qualifynig groups could be fully continental then. And the West can have Kazakhstan back.

[Patrick Thistle]

Qualifiers generally are an absolute waste of time, and particularly for a 48 team world cup. You may as well give 40 spots to the biggest nations and draw the remaining 8 out of a hat.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

A 48 team World Cup according to current rankings is only going to feature at most 34 of the top-48-ranked nations. The other 14 will come from the 26 qualifiers now guaranteed to come from outside UEFA and CONMEBOL. Of course, the rankings are severely skewed against the nations outside those continents because they rarely play anyone in (particularly) UEFA any more, and that will only get worse now the friendly windows have been closed off for the Nations Cup. It's probably only at World Cups in future that AFC and CAF teams will play UEFA ones. The FIFA rankings will become as self-perpetuating as those 1980s WPBSA ones where the top 16 were invited to every tournament and then given more ranking points for turning up to them all and losing than a qualifier who fought his way into one tournament and made the semi-finals.