There are teams in Europe that will almost never make it to any tournament…all they do is make the numbers and thus increase the number of games competitive countries have to play.
In Asia and Africa, they already have different stages of qualification, although it’s a different setup to what I think Europe needs.
My take is the countries with the lowest FIFA ratings should play a two-legged knockout fixture (or a one-off could be a better idea) and then proceed to the main qualifying round.
What’s your take on that?
They still have a shot to do so no matter how unrealistic it is. Making it harder for them to do anything is not a good thing because some redditors are bored of international football. I bet you the same ones crying for “competitive qualifiers” would go mental if they made it so pot 1 teams can get matched against each other, which realistically makes the qualifiers more competitive.
That’s not what I mean. Take the FA cup preliminaries for instance where the teams at the lower leagues go through playoffs, but the difference is any of the weak teams that get through the playoffs will book a spot in the qualifying table of four teams