FIFA THROW RONNIE AND CO A LIFELINE

FIFA dropped a bomb on Ireland this week by announcing their world cup qualifier will now be seeded.

After being seeded top in their groups why should Portugal, Greece and France get another lifeline to hold onto their world cup hope? Russia were seeded second in their group behind the Germans as were Republic of Ireland to Italy, but there were no favours given to the Irish.

The World cup finals should consist of the best nations around the world and France and Portugal do fall into that category, without a doubt. But they like the other six teams also came second in their groups.So why now has the rule suddenly changed? I think it would be great to see France and Portugal fighting to hold onto their world cup dreams. Also there are other big nations missing out such as Sweden, Czech Republic, Croatia and Turkey I’m surprised Mr Blatter hasn’t given them another chance to qualify if he's concerned about the bigger nations .

FIFA are so worried about loss of finances without the big money making players such as Ronaldo and Henry, rather than thinking about the revenue you they could possibly make from a surprise country such as Slovenia. Surely this is why Sepp Blatter introduced this seeded rule just last week. He said, “we have decided on seeding the teams into two groups of four, taking the FIFA world rankings into account, with the top four in one pot and the others in another pot.” Blatter also explained “there will be a separate draw to decide the home and away sides.”

I feel the group stages tell the whole story. For instance, in group one Denmark won the group which makes them the best team in the group overall. Portugal were second, they were top seeds, favourites and they fell short. As for the rest of the teams, better luck next time. We never seeded the qualifiers before so why start now?

I recently have started to think money is key in domestic football, but then international football starts up and it’s all about passion, heart and money is forgotten about. But now with this seeded rule for the bigger nations money influence with top players and merchandise is finally interfering and not for the good of the game.