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Actually if you combine groups with a little pre-seeding, it could work it well balanced without getting boring:

Pool A: Top 15 Qualified Teams (going by World Ranking) + Last Years Winner
Pool B: Top 17- 32 Qualified Teams
Pool C: Top 33 - 48 Qualified Teams
and so on

And each Group gets only one Team from Pool A, one Team from Pool B, one Team from Pool C...

This pretty much limits the "lucky draw" problem, and by climbing on the WR scala you can make your way to "easier groups" and better seedings, so even the "worthless" games gain some value.

After the groups stage, you put the 16 Winners into Pool Winner and pair them with one team each from the the Pool Losers, and you might even make a whole bracket after the Group Stage useing the best Winner Top, 2nd best Winner Bottom, and so on ... without drawing alot.

I don´t think that´s a problem at all.

You can either play with some groups bigger than others (like in european wcc qualifiers in soccer) or you can fill up to the next 16th.

Oh, i see, you´re talking about finite length for infinite participants ...

Last edited by LA-seelenjaeger at 9/20/2013 5:42:04 AM

You can even make a pre-qualifiers round four the week teams to make the right number of teams in group stage

Actually 8 games doesn´t equal 8 teams per group. 8 Teams per group require 7 weeks to play each other, so you´d have one "preliminary stage" (week 1 or 8, to play deciders or pre-qualifiers) or you have a later or actually an earlier start.

8 -team groups would mean 128 teams in a 16 group setup. increasing it by one week (so 9 weeks running up to the knockout stage) you´d have 160 teams covered.

with 8 -weeks- you might play 8 team groups and kind of a knockout round before or after. like that:

pool a teams are divided into group Red and blue

pool b - pool I teams are divided into group a - i

in week 1 - 7, group red and blue aswell as group group A - group I play a single round. all teams from group Red and Group Blue and the winner and the runner up of group A - group I "advance".

in week 8, there´s a single knockout preliminary, with the teams from group red and blue play the runner ups of group A - group I. seeding by final tables in group red / blue, so the winners from those groups get the easiest opponents.

you can cover 144 taems with that, only the "winners" from group a - i get one single by in week 8, still they are guaranteed a spot in the knockout.

the other way would be a qualifier in week one and a 16 x 8 group stage in week 2 - 8.

Qualifier could even out the number to the 128 spots covered by the 16x8 and would most likely feature the "fill ins" vs. the "non champions" (like the former winners and such) to shorten the starting field to the 128 open spots. In theory you could cover up to 256 teams like that, alot of luck involved in the preliminary round though. you might need a "losers round" to play for 2 spots in the knockout stages to even the luck of draw out.

Last edited by LA-seelenjaeger at 9/20/2013 6:55:04 AM