With the exception of Cape Verde, who are making their debut next year, Africa’s qualifiers are all established on the world stage: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.
Six are in the world’s top 50 with Ghana, in 73rd, the lowest-ranked of the nine. It would be a stretch to suggest any of these countries don’t deserve to be there over a European nation.
But what do the numbers tell us? Let’s use relative strength again by looking at the top 50 and weighting it to the confederation.
Uefa has seen its share of the World Cup places fall, from 54% in the 1990s, to 33.33% today – yet nearly half of its teams (46.30%) are inside the top 50.
So, is it fair that Europe was only given three more slots when Fifa added another 16 places for the 2026 event?
Africa now gets nine places with 53 participants, 21.43% of the automatic slots but only seven (14%) are inside the world’s top 50. That suggests they might be over-represented by a small amount, but not too much.
Concacaf is about on point with relative strength. It now gets six nations at 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 nations (8.70%) in the top 50, yet it gets eight automatic places (19.05%).
So perhaps Gattuso did have a point in there somewhere, but he’s unlikely to get any sympathy.
