Excluding Cape Verde, who’re making their debut subsequent yr, Africa’s qualifiers are all established on the world stage: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.
Six are on this planet’s prime 50 with Ghana, in 73rd, the lowest-ranked of the 9. It might be a stretch to recommend any of those international locations do not should be there over a European nation.
However what do the numbers inform us? Let’s use relative power once more by wanting on the prime 50 and weighting it to the confederation.
Uefa has seen its share of the World Cup locations fall, from 54% within the Nineties, to 33.33% at this time – but practically half of its groups (46.30%) are inside the highest 50.
So, is it honest that Europe was solely given three extra slots when Fifa added one other 16 locations for the 2026 occasion?
Africa now will get 9 locations with 53 individuals, 21.43% of the automated slots however solely seven (14%) are contained in the world’s prime 50. That means they could be over-represented by a small quantity, however not an excessive amount of.
Concacaf is about on level with relative power. It now will get six nations on the World Cup (14.29%), with 5 of its 32 groups (15.63%) within the prime 50.
The actual outlier is Asia, which has solely 4 of its 46 collaborating nations (8.70%) within the prime 50, but it will get eight automated locations (19.05%).
So maybe Gattuso did have a degree in there someplace, however he is unlikely to get any sympathy.
