The easy answer comes in the oft-cited allegation that in FIFA, what you "deserve" is determined by nothing more than your ability to stuff a brown manila envelope with unmarked, non-sequential Euro notes.
But using the real world's definition of "deserving", is there any possible merit to CONCACAF's push to have a fourth guaranteed qualifying spot in the men's World Cup, up from its current 3.5 spots?
Based on the numbers... maybe.
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Now, the most glaring numbers -- recent World Cup results -- suggest that the North and Central American and Caribbean zone is fairly represented (or perhaps over-represented) at the big tournament.
It brings me great delight to say that CONCACAF's lowest qualifier, Honduras, went through South Africa 2010 without scoring a single goal; meanwhile, the lowest qualifier from CONMEBOL (South America) was Uruguay, who made it all the way to the semifinal, and featured the tournament's Golden Ball winner, Diego Forlan.
Trinidad was a fun little underdog in 2006, but also went home without having scored a World Cup goal, whereas 10 of the 14 qualified UEFA teams made the knockout stages, and Europe had six of eight teams in the quarters and a clean sweep of the final four.
The U.S. was CONCACAF's final representative in 2002, and did pretty well, making it to the quarters. But then, Senegal also made that round (losing an extra-time heartbreaker) and, of course, the co-host South Koreans ended up winning third place.
Hell, in 2010, there was only one undefeated team in the entire tournament, and they were the ones expected to be thoroughly and humiliatingly decimated: New Zealand.
The point is, every confederation could probably point to some aspect of recent World Cup history as justification for giving them more spots, at the expense of someone else. So does CONCACAF have any other numbers that may aid in its fight?
- The important number to remember is that CONCACAF currently has 3.5 of 32 places in the World Cup, or 10.9% of available spots.
- CONCACAF has 35 member nations out of FIFA's total of 203, for 17.2%. Sure, the vast majority of CONCACAF countries are absolute non-contenders, but on a strictly egalitarian basis, CONCACAF is grossly under-represented. (A fourth World Cup spot would still only bring our representation up to 12.5%).
- As of mid-2010, the world's population was about 6.89 billion, while North and Central America and the Caribbean were home to about 538.8 million people (source), for about 7.8% of the world's population. Then again, if you're going strictly by population, then Asia "deserves" 20 of the 32 World Cup spots (and having watched some of the ongoing Asian Cup... holy smokes, that's not in anyone's best interests.)
- Currently (January 2011), CONCACAF has 4% representation in the global top 50 in the FIFA Ranking. But if we look at the year-beginning rankings of the past 10 years, we see the following: 8%, 8%, 4%, 6%, 12%, 8%, 8%, 10%, 10%, 10%. Of course, the FIFA rankings are flawed, and my numbers are kinda arbitrary (on some occasions, a few CONCACAF nations just missed out on the top 50). But if one were to stupidly extrapolate meaning from these meaningless figures, one could conclude that CONCACAF is trending towards less representation, not more.
Combine those randomly-chosen statistics with CONCACAF's World Cup history, and even the biased observer (self included) has to conclude that there's no overwhelmingly compelling impetus for FIFA to gift CONCACAF with a fourth automatic qualifying spot -- especially because it means some other confederation would be deprived of that spot.
Which confederation is currently deserving of losing half a qualifying spot? You could say CONMEBOL, since it has 4.5 spots for only 10 member nations; but as I said before, their fifth-place finisher got all the way to the semi-finals this year. Oceania only has 0.5 to begin with. UEFA would surely kick up a mighty ruckus if any move was made to lessen their presence at the tournament. Africa? Maybe, but is Sepp Blatter willing to give up the goodwill he believes he earned from the South African tournament?
Maybe Asia. Not a particularly good World Cup (though even North Korea gave Brazil a scare) and -- the 2002 anomaly notwithstanding -- not exactly a World Cup powerhouse, traditionally. But taking half a qualifying spot away from the AFC would slightly harm China's chances of making it back to the tournament -- and considering that's where the 2026 tournament will be held (just watch), you know FIFA would love to see some hype built up there beforehand.
So when you really get down to it, it seems the "give CONCACAF another guaranteed spot" argument is based upon the same thing that most of CONCACAF's activities are focused on: Increasing the chances that Trinidad (homeland of the confederation's hideously corrupt president, Jack Warner) will qualify for the World Cup.
It's cynical, it's devious and could be horribly unfair to a worthy nation in some other confederation that could see itself deprived of a World Cup spot so that some CONCACAF quasi-minnow could make it.
But then again, Canada is a CONCACAF quasi-minnow, aren't we?
...
Go get 'em, Jack!
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Update: A few colleagues (Dave Clark, in the comments below, and Jono at Out of Touch) have stats suggesting CONCACAF as a whole has statistically outperformed the Asian and African confederations as of late. I assume their calculations are solid, and that lends a bit of credence to CONCACAF's argument... though the cynic in me will always presume it's largely driven by self-interest on Warner's part.