Changes to South American qualifying format?

The third section of this article from Soccernet raises an interesting point:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=471805&root=global&cc=5901&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1

Should qualifying for the World Cup for the CONMEBOL federation be changed to a system involving 2 groups of 5 teams each? If so, on what basis will the groups be decided - the ineffective FIFA rankings at the time qualifying for a particular WC is about to begin? Also, how will the 5th team. ie. the one that plays against a CONCACAF opponent in a qualifier, be decided? The better of the two 3rd placed teams?

The benefits are obvious, because it reduces the number of matches that players have to play, esp. with all the travelling involved for many of the players. Or would South Americans actually prefer to play more matches but have the tradition of every team playing every other team?

I prefer the current format. And since we don't have qualifiers for Copa América, we play less qualifying matches than the Europeans, who play WCq + ECq.

each south american country plays 18 qualifying matches every 4 years, while europoeans play around 30.

moreover, that's the only opportunity we have for watching our national teams, cause now they only play friendlies in Europe.

anyway, this format began only for the 1998 WC.

in the qualifyings for USA 94, we had 2 groups:

brazil, bolivia, uruguay, ecuador, and venezuela. brazil and bolivia qualified.

argentina, paraguay, peru, and colombia. chile was banned form that WC. argentina and colombia qualified.


for 1990, there were 3 groups (argentina were already qualified as champions)

brazil, venezuela, and chile
colombia, paraguay, ecuador
uruguay, bolivia peru


they were like small Copas Américas, played in less than a month. If a team wasn't doing well in that month, he would not qualify. not fair IMO.

Agree with Todo, Why would southamericans want a group format for de WC qualifiers?So that they can only watch their teams once a year(assuming that they won't be going to the away games)?

As Todo said, looks unfair to me. If the players don't want to travel across the Atlantic then fine, other players will, and if Barça/Inter/Man Utd, etc don't like Messi/Cambiasso/Tvez, etc travelling all those miles to play for their country, then let them leave the club...I'm sure other teams would be interested

I think it is really stupid proposal. First of all South America don't have any qualifiers for the Copa America.

Secondly two groups of 5 teams each would mean 8 games per team, which would really mean that entire world cup qualifiers can be compressed within 12-14 months. Which means more meaningless friendlies for the rest of 3 years.

Having watched the Copa America over the summer, id say leave it as it is.

South American football whenever i have watched it has been pure entertainement so more games the better