With the exception of Cape Verde, which will debut next year, all African qualifiers are consolidated on the world stage: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.
Six are in the world’s top 50 and Ghana, at 73rd, is the lowest ranked of the nine. It would be a stretch to suggest that none of these countries deserve to be there above a European nation.
But what do the numbers tell us? Let’s use relative strength again by looking at the top 50 and weighting them by confederation.
UEFA has seen its share of World Cup berths fall, from 54% in the 1990s to 33.33% today; However, almost half of their teams (46.30%) are within the top 50.
So is it fair that Europe was only given three more places when FIFA added another 16 places for the 2026 event?
Africa now occupies nine spots with 53 participants, 21.43% of the automatic spots, but only seven (14%) are in the top 50 in the world. This suggests that they might be overrepresented by a small amount, but not by much.
Concacaf is on the verge of achieving relative strength. It now has six nations in the World Cup (14.29%), with five of its 32 teams (15.63%) in the top 50.
The real outlier is Asia, which has only four of its 46 participating countries (8.70%) in the top 50, but earns eight automatic spots (19.05%).
So maybe Gattuso was right about something, but he’s unlikely to get any sympathy.
