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On air: Should each continent's World Cup places be changed?

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Ben Sutherland Ben Sutherland | 13:44 UK time, Friday, 25 June 2010

As the last 16 are finally decided and the World Cup becomes a little more clearer, with Brazil's draw with Portugal confirming the progress of both sides.

We already know that seven of the eight teams from the Americas have made it through, barring a collapse from Chile.

China World Cup Have Your Say this evening will be asking if it's time Fifa changed the number of places per continent. Eight of the nine teams from the Americas have made it through to the last 16 - but only one African team out of six has made it. Meanwhile Asia has only four spots - one of which was taken by Australia - but the bulk of the world's population.

Is that fair?

Here's some interesting statistics gathered by my colleague Ben James.

Teams involved in WC2010
Europe: 13
Africa: 5 + host South Africa
Asia 4: (Bahrain lost in a play-off)
South America: 5 (Uruguay won a play-off)
North America: 4 (Costa Rica lost playoff)
Oceania: 1 (NZ won playoff)

However, If the allocations were to be based on populations in the continents, they would work out as follows:
Europe: 3-4
Africa: 4-5
Asia: 18-19 (Turkmenistan were in effect 19th in Asian qualifying for 2010 - so they would get a spot!)
South America: 3
North America: 2
Oceania 0-1

However, that doesn't take account of the number of countries per Federation. If you want to look at it that way, it breaks down as follows:

Europe: 8 (from 53)
Africa: 8 (from 53)
Asia: 7 (from 43)
South America: 2 (from 10)
North America: 5 (from 35)
Oceania: 2 (from 10)

And finally, if the 32 were based on Fifa's World Rankings, the qualifiers would be:
Brazil Spain Portugal Netherlands Italy Germany Argentina England
France Croatia Russia Egypt Greece USA Serbia Uruguay
Mexico Chile Cameroon Australia Nigeria Norway Ukraine Switzerland
Slovenia Israel Côte d'Ivoire Romania Turkey Algeria Paraguay Ghana

What do you think - is the breakdown of teams fair, or should Fifa look again?

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