Possible Points Won by Region - Updated

I’ve been waiting for someone to do something like this.

Couple points:

1. UEFA was a clear second place and you’re taking away three auto-spots and turning them into half spots? At least give them a chance to increase their production. I think 11 auto spots and 3 halves would be an improvement over what they have now, and it would be well deserved. Not sure who you’d take that spot from though, since you’ve already taken one from Africa. Actually, you might could take it from Asia, who you just gave an addition half spot to what they have now.

2. IIRC, CAF has never gotten more than one team into the knockout stage. CONCACAF has matched that for seven cups in a row and has exceeded that in two of the last three. Why does no one mention this? I think Canada, Jamaica, or El Salvador could take South Africa or Algeria.

That seems a bit much. There’s a gigantic production dropoff behind Mexico and the US. In fact, I really wouldn’t want to see any of the other nations at a World Cup. 3+1 would be a lot more logical in my opinion.
Europe can certainly stand to lose a spot or two, but I’d definitely disagree that their 3rd tier teams are worse than other 3rd tier teams. You’re saying Slovakia and Slovenia(or if you’re going by this World Cup progression France and Italy) are as bad as North Korea, New Zealand or Algeria? I’m not buying that, certainly not as a structural power balance. I’d like to see a few more knock-out qualification matches between Europe and the other continents, though, and I wouldn’t mind giving South America another spot.

But besides that, you’re basing all this on one World Cup with very few games played. Clearly Ivory Coast is getting shafted in this scenario because they were in such a power group and Argentina is given too much credit for winning a very weak group. The schedule is so uneven and moreover the sample is so small, that it’s somewhat odd to use it as a basis for the restructuring. I’d want the qualification ties to be based on long-term results, over a period of between 12 and 20 years. That would mitigate the influence that schedule and temporary fluctuations (not structural changes) have.

Lastly, the existence of stand-out nations that drag the rest up isn’t unique to Europe: it goes for every continent. The point is that Europe has more stand-out nations with a long history of doing well at the World Cup than any other continent. The fact that Italy and France got rubbed out in this specific World Cup doesn’t mean they’ve lost their place as a long-term powerhouse. There’s a total of 4 structural European powerhouses: Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.
That’s up against a total of 2 structural non-European powerhouses: Brazil and Argentina.
I’m not even including England and Spain for the Europeans as I feel England has shown over the past 20 years that it has some sort of structural problem in performing at the major tournaments, and Spain had shown the same problem until 2 years ago so their success seems more short-term than structural right now. There’s also a case to be made to include Portugal in that list, who have performed well at major tournaments over the past 10 years. There’s a similar, but weaker, case to be made for Mexico.

And it is more apparent that a major problem with Europe is its qualifying structure as they had more good teams miss than any other region.

UEFA’s best non-qualifiers: Russia, Croatia, Ukraine, Czech, Turkey, Bosnia and Sweden are all in the top 25 in the World and didn’t qualify. Biggest bad qualifier was Greece at 59.
CONMEBOL best 2 non-qualifers: Colombia and Ecuador are both top 30 in World.
CONCACAF’s best 2 non-qualifers: Costa Rico is 34th and Jamaica at 61. Honduras was at 39.
Asia’s best non-qualifiers: Iran at 45, Saudi at 50. North Korea was bad. Oceiana worse.
Africa’s best two non-qualifiers: Egypt at 13, Tunisia at 49. South Africa and Algeria were out of the top 40.

The more I look the more clear it is that CONCACAF should get 4 outright, CONMEBOL should get 6+1. Africa should lose one, to 4. Asia should expand to include the South Pacific getting just 4 slots. Europe would only lose one automatic, and that would become a playoff.

And yes, I think that South America has done enough that 6+1 ignores Brazil as host.