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?
Why though? Just so that international teams can play a couple of extra friendlies instead of playing weak teams? They’d probably just end up playing those weak teams in the friendlies instead, since teams from other continents would be busy with their own qualifiers anyway.
They wouldn’t. England, for example, only tend to play high calibre friendlies because they want to sell out the stadium and keep the competitiveness high. It’s rare that they play a small nation in a friendly