World Cup Qualification. The Talented and the Lucky.

The extended prequel to World Cup 2014, namely the qualification process finally closed for UEFA following the second legs of  the playoff matches on Tuesday night. Spaces are limited, so it is inevitable that there will be some notable absentees when the final draw takes place in Rio on December 6th. Apparently, parts of the media are inconsolable because the 20th World Cup will take place without Ibrahimovic following  Portugal's elimination of Sweden.

Seeding for the qualification groups was decided by the FIFA rankings on July 2011 and the majority of the top seeds were recognizable as the current, leading national teams. France provided the biggest point of interest, by falling into pot 2, although they had been outside the top 9 position that guaranteed a more favourable draw for over a year. While France failed to recover ground lost at a dismal WC 2010, sides such as Norway reeled off a consistent string of narrow wins in both friendlies and higher weighted competitive Euro 2012 qualifying matches to retain their place in pot 1.

As Simon Gleave points out here, tournament formats and the vagaries of chance can play a huge role in deciding major sporting events. And by falling into pot 2, the chances of France drawing a group containing a previous World Cup winner or the Netherlands was more likely than not. By being paired with Spain in the five team Group I, France weren't quite in the group of death, but they were odds on to need the playoffs to progress. So more the group of maximum inconvenience and by taking the playoff route to the finals, they were unlikely be blessed with a comfortable passage if they did make the finals in Brazil.

Five of the nine top seeds qualified as group winners, three made it through to the playoffs and only Norway belied their ranking by slipping out of the competition at the earliest possible stage. France, as expected trailed in behind Spain and Russia (from pot 2), with a resurgent Switzerland and Belgium (pot 3) completed the list of nine group winners. So class, as measured by recent FIFA rankings appeared to shine through with reasonable clarity.

If luck, in the most purest sense, decides the make up of each qualifying group, where danger occasionally lurks in pot's 2 or 3, as a new generation of starlets sweeps countries to levels beyond their recent station, it is small sample variation that can derail teams once the groups are fixed. Of the two heavyweights in Group I, Spain would be confident of confirming their supremacy over a France team that is ranked over a dozen places below them, but the eight match format afforded the current holders just two shots at their most likely challengers for automatic qualification. A strong team, possibly out of place at the wrong time, can cause unwelcome early challenges, even for the top seeded side.

The outcome of each of the nine UEFA qualifying groups can be viewed as a random, weighed draw comprised of the outcomes of each match played in the group once the relative abilities of each side is accounted for. Reducing World Cup qualification to a sterile number crunch lacks all of the tension of a wet night in Warsaw, but it does help to add context to the perceived achievements and failings that we have seen over the last year and a half. A side can perform well above expectations, but that may be partly due to improvement and partly to the randomness at which results cluster in small sample sizes. Malta do have a shot at defeating Italy, but it is a very longshot.

France could do nothing to influence their chances of avoiding Spain or a similarly talented seed, once their own performance/luck combination over 2010 had anchored them outside the best nine European sides, but raw ability and 94th minute equalizers, vied with random chance to decide the individual outcomes of the subsequent matches. The destination of the group honours was a combination of talent and luck, where the actual placings that transpired were just one of many possible combinations that could have occurred from that heady mix.

Below I've simulated the outcomes of 1,000's of iterations for all nine groups, using the bookmakers odds as a proxy for team talent on the day and the constant repetition to host the role of randomness.

The progression of a young Belgium side, as measured by their gradual elevation in the eyes of the oddsmakers over the qualifying period, gave them around a 50% chance of topping the group in the simulations. Their actual points total of 26 was above their simulated median score of 20. The FIFA rankings took this over achievement at face value and propelled them up to third in UEFA from a starting placing of 22nd at the start of the qualifying process.

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Denmark could consider themselves unlucky to miss out on a play off berth as the ninth best runner up. The tie breaker saw the lowest points scoring runner up eliminated once the record against the group's worst side was expunged to account for Group I only having 5 teams. However, the average points total achieved in all simulations of Group B by the runner up was 19.4 with a standard deviation of nearly 2 points and Denmark's actual tally of 16 was therefore, nearly 2 standard deviations below the average, making them comfortably the most under performing second placed team over all nine groups.

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A comfortable qualification for Germany, where the group make up provided them with little danger from three inferior challengers who were likely to take points from each other. In gaining 28 and 20 points respectively, Germany and Sweden each gained a couple of points more than their median points totals across the simulations.

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Romania's finishing position of 2nd appeared impressive because it got them into the playoffs. But it was only one spot above their most likely finishing spot of 3rd and they gained just two points more than their median in all simulations. Without an injury time equaliser in Budapest, Hungary could have swapped places with them at the death. Three teams were close together trailing runaway winners the Netherlands and Romania finished qualifying in a still relatively lowly 19th place in FIFA.
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A case of Iceland performing well above their initial standing as a team drawn from the lowest pot or a rare occasion of a lowly rated side collecting a fortuitous sequence of unlikely results to propel them to unsustainably heady heights in the short term? They were rated by the oddsmakers throughout the campaign as the second worst side in the group, with a most likely finishing spot of 5th and around a 10% chance of snatching second place in simulations.

A very tight group on the field, with 18 of the 30 matches being either drawn or won by a single goal. Both winners Switzerland and 2nd placed Iceland outperformed their odds based median points total by 5 points, indicating a miss calculation by the bookmakers or fortuitous, short term set of results that saw, in the case of Iceland, a less fancied 10/1 shot beat two more deserving talents in Slovenia and Norway?
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Russia topping the group should hardly be considered a surprise as they did so in over 30% of the simulations. Portugal's median points total was 24 (which they would have got had they not allowed Israel a late equaliser in Lisbon) and Russia's was 22, which was their actual total. The perception of Portugal shouldn't change because they required the playoffs to progress to Brazil.

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England's qualification campaign has already been covered in detail here.

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France were unlikely to topple Spain as winners of the group, although they did so in nearly 20% of the simulations.They ultimately took their most likely road to Brazil, as runners up and then by way of the playoffs, although being France, the latter was not achieved without considerable drama and uncertainty.

With a couple of exceptions, the 17 UEFA representatives could broadly be predicted before a qualifying ball was kicked. The seeding process, coupled with the large talent gap between the best and the worst of European national football, invariably gives half of the sides in each group very little chance of scooping the top slot. But the truncated nature of the qualifying process does give middle ranking teams the opportunity to jump a place or two above their natural long term station. Rather like merely good sides occupying the elevated Champions League placings in the EPL after a dozen matches.

Sides that produce a couple of atypically good or bad results, especially in highly weighted matches, such as WC and Euro qualifiers can fall prey to FIFA's blunt rating system, where results are understandably considered interchangeable with true ability, with no room for random chance. 

Belgium's relatively poor WC and Euro results prior to July 2011, led to their placing in pot 3 for the 2014 draw, but their (possibly) small sample sized over performance in group A should see them set fair for upcoming future draws, baring a major meltdown in Brazil. 

Neither a placing in pot 3 in July 2011 nor a top three rating now, truly reflects Belgium's actual ability, anymore than France possibly deserve to be struggling to clamber back into the elite on a diet of lowly rated friendlies and two fewer qualifying matches. But the process has done a decent job of producing the cream of European team talent for Brazil 2014 (even if some individual players will miss out). 

At the very least a ratings system based on ranking points exchange, with too few matches for lucky streaks to be fully eradicated from the system before they are used to shape major competitions, merely adds to the uncertainty and excitement, both for the team that is out of place and the sides that have the unwelcome task of taking them on early in major tournaments.