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The Race for Pot 3


Miche

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10 minutes ago, sstackho said:

 

First of all, love the pic chosen for USA and will continue to love that pic indefinitely.

As for pot 3, we have to consider that with our Elo higher than all of our opponents, we are 'expected' to beat them, i.e. We > 0.5 in the calculation. That means any draw loses us points, and any loss will lose us more points than any points we gain by winning. For us to move up in any significant way we need 2 wins and a draw. More likely we need other teams to fail, and I think our actual most likely scenario is for the USA to drop to 4th, thus pushing them to interconfederation playoff/pot 4 and pushing everyone in pot 3/4 up. 

 

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Hmm.  Pot4 quality looks to be getting significantly better, what with automatic Pot4 seeding for 2x inter-conference winners.  I still prefer Pot3 for it's slight advantages for drawing "weaker" Pot4 sides, but it's all still a big crap-shoot, followed by the actual games.

When we all get to heaven, that is.  The World Cup!

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As it stands:

Pot 1   Pot 2   Pot 3   Pot 4  
Qatar 1437 Denmark 1654 Sweden 1588 Canada 1497
Belgium 1828 Netherlands 1653 Senegal 1587 Tunisia 1489
Brazil 1823 Germany 1648 Iran 1572 Cameroon 1472
France 1786 Mexico 1647 Serbia 1547 Ecuador 1458
Argentina 1766 USA 1643 Morocco 1547 Saudi Arabia 1433
England 1755 Switzerland 1642 Japan 1549 Wales 1578
Italy 1740 Croatia 1620 South Korea 1522 Peru (IC) 1563
Spain 1704 Uruguay 1605 Nigeria 1509 Panama (IC) 1375

Still a debate whether there's a great advantage being in Pot 3. Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Wales, and Peru are all strong, but overall I'd say I'd still rather take my chances from Pot 3.

Watch schedule (EDT) - rooting for (in hopes of attaining Pot 3):

24 March

5:10am  Australia v Japan - Australia win

7:00am  South Korea v Iran - Iran win

3:45pm  Sweden v Czech Rep - Czech on pens

7:30pm  Paraguay v Ecuador - Ecuador win

9:05pm  Panama v Honduras - Honduras win/draw

10:00pm  Mexico v USA - Mexico win/draw

10:05pm  Costa Rica v Canada - Canada win

25 March

11:00am  DR Congo v Morocco - DR Congo win/draw

1:00pm  Cameroon v Algeria - Algeria win/draw

1:00pm  Mali v Tunisia - Mali win/draw

3:30pm  Egypt v Senegal - Egypt win/draw

3:30pm  Ghana v Nigeria - Ghana win/draw

 

Edited by Miche
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March 24

7:00am  South Korea v Iran - Iran win

March 25

3:30pm  Ghana v Nigeria - Ghana win/draw

The two games most worth watching. Definitely feel Iran has a real chance for a win. Just not sure how many points they would drop against a team ahead of them in the rankings. And we would probably still have to win out, if SK goes 1-1 in their two games

The first game is Ghana's home game and best chance at getting a result versus Nigeria.

The US has a real chance of falling to 4th. Away Mexico should be a loss. Panama at home could decide it. I will be cheering for Panama victory versus Honduras. Let's turn up the pressure on the US a little

Edited by blueseeka
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6 hours ago, Miche said:

As it stands:

Pot 1   Pot 2   Pot 3   Pot 4  
Qatar 1437 Denmark 1654 Sweden 1588 Canada 1497
Belgium 1828 Netherlands 1653 Senegal 1587 Tunisia 1489
Brazil 1823 Germany 1648 Iran 1572 Cameroon 1472
France 1786 Mexico 1647 Serbia 1547 Ecuador 1458
Argentina 1766 USA 1643 Morocco 1547 Saudi Arabia 1433
England 1755 Switzerland 1642 Japan 1549 Wales 1578
Italy 1740 Croatia 1620 South Korea 1522 Peru (IC) 1563
Spain 1704 Uruguay 1605 Nigeria 1509 Panama (IC) 1375

Still a debate whether there's a great advantage being in Pot 3. Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Wales, and Peru are all strong, but overall I'd say I'd still rather take my chances from Pot 3.

Let's not forget that there are also continental considerations in the draw. So if we make it to pot 3 and are drawn against Ecuador or Peru in Pot 4, that means we avoided Brazil and Argentina in Pot 1 and Uruguay in Pot 2.

Now that I look at it more, we will be drawn into a group with either 1 South American and 1 European country, or 2 European countries from the top 2 pots (if the above table ends up matching reality) or we've drawn Qatar and a European team or Uruguay. So in scenario 1 we can't draw against a South American team from pot 4, and in scenario 2 we can't draw against a European team from pot 4, and in scenario 3 we can't draw against an Asian team from pot 4.

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5 hours ago, blueseeka said:

March 24

7:00am  South Korea v Iran - Iran win

March 25

3:30pm  Ghana v Nigeria - Ghana win/draw

The two games most worth watching. Definitely feel Iran has a real chance for a win. Just not sure how many points they would drop against a team ahead of them in the rankings. And we would probably still have to win out, if SK goes 1-1 in their two games

The first game is Ghana's home game and best chance at getting a result versus Nigeria.

The US has a real chance of falling to 4th. Away Mexico should be a loss. Panama at home could decide it. I will be cheering for Panama victory versus Honduras. Let's turn up the pressure on the US a little

Ghana my country I want us to beat Nigeria but I expect us to lose against them. I swear after AFCON, I was done with my national team. So I have next to no faith on them to beat Nigeria at all. 

Hoping Iran beats South Korea but I think Korea gets the win.

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nil-nil after one half Japan v.  Australia.  Japan has had a ton of top-flite chances, and fierce defence, but the Socceroos have made their own attempts too.  Very entertaining watch.

 

Japan scores, finally, in the 89th minute.  Ozzies showed very little in the 2nd half.

Edited by eramosat
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Halftime South Korea 1-0

With the Japan win today, Canada cannot catch them.

If South Korea wins (1536), then somehow lose to UAE (1520). Canada would have to win all three (1527) to pass them. It is highly unlikely that they would lose to UAE. We need a Iran comeback , Nigeria not winning both versus Ghana or the USA to choke

 

Edited by blueseeka
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33 minutes ago, blueseeka said:

Halftime South Korea 1-0

With the Japan win today, Canada cannot catch them.

If South Korea wins (1536), then somehow lose to UAE (1520). Canada would have to win all three (1527) to pass them. It is highly unlikely that they would lose to UAE. We need a Iran comeback or the USA to choke

 

2-0 now. I think our best chance now is to catch Nigeria. Just need Ghana to pull of a result in one of the 2 legs.

 

Edit: I think it’s possible to pass Nigeria even if we both win out, but I’m not positive. On the simulation site if you add up the points gained by each team winning out, they end up 0.05 points ahead of us. But that’s based on opponents’ points right now. Ghana will be lower and Nigeria higher for the 2nd leg, so they’d gain less points for that game than the first. And if Jamaica/Panama enter our games with more points than they have now, that could increase the amount of points we get from those games. So I think rankings wise, we should be hoping for Jamaica to beat El Salvador, and Panama to beat Honduras and USA

Edited by archer21
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8 minutes ago, theaub said:

I've seen a lot of posts/blog posts etc about catching teams - who behind us do we need to worry about?   Is there any hope with a 4 point window if its the right 4 points (ie US ends up in 4th etc)

Without crunching all the ranking changes based on hypothetical results across the world, yes, I think so. 3 spots are automatically in pot 4 (inter continental playoff, which means we have to be ranked higher than 5 other teams. Saudi Arabia is in and is ranked well below us, so that leaves 4 more to go. From my post above you can see that Egypt, Tunisia, Australia, Cameroon, and Turkey all can still clinch. That list isn't exhaustive either, I stopped at that point in the rankings. The more upsets there are with lower ranked teams qualifying, the better our chances. Of course if we have a mediocre/poor window, teams like Egypt and likely Tunisia could pass us with a good window, but the point remains, there are other teams still in it ranked lower. Of course, these results are all unlikely, so it may be pretty unlikely we get so many of them, but we will see.

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11 minutes ago, theaub said:

I've seen a lot of posts/blog posts etc about catching teams - who behind us do we need to worry about?   Is there any hope with a 4 point window if its the right 4 points (ie US ends up in 4th etc)

Depends. If the US finish 4th, then yes we’d move into pot 3, but Tunisia is 8 points behind us. If they win both games against Mali, and we get 4 points, they’re gonna surpass us for pot 3. 

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27 minutes ago, theaub said:

I've seen a lot of posts/blog posts etc about catching teams - who behind us do we need to worry about?   Is there any hope with a 4 point window if its the right 4 points (ie US ends up in 4th etc)

The second post in this thread has the approximate point totals each team can get this window. Also my post above includes the important matches for the chasing teams.

Can we get Pot 3 from a 4pt window? Unlikely. It would net us about -5pts for the window. Tunisia would pass us. And Egypt as well if they upset Senegal. So we would need two from the following: USA to IC, Nigeria upset, Morocco upset.

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41 minutes ago, Kent said:

Others have posted filled in pots with hypothetical qualifications. I don't know if anyone is interested, but here are things as they stand right now (with old rankings, not up to date with results from this window).

image.png.484241d937ba4d41fdf7b2e78f4705b0.png

I haven't been keeping up on all the possibilities for the pots, so forgive me if this was covered already, but the IC playoff spots (x2) and the Euro playoff spots (x3) are all in pot 4, right? That's 5 teams, isn't it?

If my understanding is correct, then 3 teams would remain for pot 4.

It would seem to me that as long as we have a good window, two of those spots will be filled by teams who won't catch us (Cameroon/Algeria & Tunisia/Mali). Then we need one of Egypt, Ghana and Congo to win their match up. 

Is my understanding correct here? I don't want to jump the gun, but the odds of us getting into Pot 3 seem very realistic.

 

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