OFC qualifiers format is not a good reason to award OFC with 3 youth WC slots. Why should the world pay for OFC's lack of inclusive youth qualifiers? 55% of OFC teams get discarded after playing only 3 qualifying matches. Thus, a 3rd youth WC slot could be earned by winning only 2 of 5 qualifying matches: Lose all 2 group matches + win quarterfinal match + lose semifinal match + win bronze medal match. A world tournament must balance world representation with staying relevant as a proper world competition. Promoting cannon fodder into the world stage is not a good idea, unless you want to use those weak teams to build an easy WC path for FIFA's favorite teams.
We won't forget because literally every discussion on qualifying spots for Youth WCs leads to the "developmental role" of the tournament? Let's assume the argument that playing in the Youth WC improves development in that country is true. If OFC gets 3 spots instead of 2, it will just be offset by one less spot going to another region - probably Africa or Asia. Nothing is gained, globally speaking. Its a zero-sum game. But I'd rather the additional spot be reserved for to a country with 10+ million people because the NT of that country could improve, at least theoretically. As opposed to the spot going to a country with < 200k people, most of whom are obese and/or play rugby, if we are being honest.
If the OFC was allocated three places at the expanded U17WC - which would, incidentally, correspond to only 6% of the 48-team field - the third qualified team would need to be among the two highest-ranked teams in their four-team group and then win the third-placed game. Therefore they would have to perform well to qualify in the context of the OFC U16 Championship. All FIFA members are entitled to a pathway to develop and we know FIFA competitions are particularly important for members outside Europe. I expect the slot allocation will be decided at next month's FIFA Council meeting.
And they'd be very poor, still, because that context is an extremely low level of competition. Which is another case against this, as the spot that would be reserved for OFC cannon fodder could be much more useful in Africa or Asia, allowing a better team the chance to compete. And there's no universe in which 3 of those slots go to the OFC. I could see the Caribbeans and other sub-regions rioting otherwise. Imagine, the OFC guaranteed 3 full berths in a world where the much larger and deeper Caribbean, Central American, Central Asian and Southeast Asian regions (among others) are guaranteed nothing at all. Totally unacceptable.
Neither the Caribbean nor other regions are confederations though like the OFC is. If OFC has 1.5 places in the senior WC, I don't think it's so improbable that they get 3 in the U17 version.
Australia is a huge part of that continent/region and its now part of AFC. What's left is precisely a sub-region/sub-continent. Comparing OFC to the Caribbean is more than fair. Probable? I don't know. Stupid? You bet. Big difference between 1.5 and 3.0. It can be argued that 1.5 is more like 1.1 since OFC's #2 will have zero chance of getting through the playoff for the senior WC unless that team happens to be New Zealand (and even then... )
As has already been noted here, the OFC is a confederation by circumstance. They are a sub-region/sub-continent that had the good fortune of settling into their own confederation and gaining clout after the big fish in their pond, Australia, ran off to the AFC. They are absolutely comparable to the Caribbean, or Central Asia, or ASEAN. In fact, not only are they comparable, I'd go as far as to say those other regions are all substantially more significant than them. The Caribbean has more than twice the number of federations and 3 times the population, with dramatically more depth. The top two nations in central asia would probably be superior to New Zealand, and their second tier (the Kyrgyz, Turkmen, etc) would eat the OFC's second tier for lunch. The Caribbean has at least 3 nations that are historically of NZ's quality or better in Haiti, Jamaica, and Trinidad, and after the mass dual national recruiting pushes of recent years you can probably add Suriname and Curacao to that list. All 5 of those nations would dog-walk the OFC's 2nd ranked nation, nevermind its 3rd. But somehow, the OFC gets 3 berths and the Caribbean gets...zero? Thailand, Vietnam, and the rest of ASEAN get nothing, but the OFC gets 3 guaranteed places? How do we sit here and insist that the OFC must receive a guaranteed 3 berths at every world cup, while these other regions, despite having far more quality, size, and depth, receive absolutely no guarantees at all? What is it that makes the nations of the OFC so much more worthy than those of the Caribbean, ASEAN, and Central Asia? Why are Fiji, Tuvalu and Kiribati more worthy than Kyrgyzstan, Barbados and the Dominican Republic? Why are American Samoa and the Solomon Islands more worthy than Thailand or the Philippines? What is it that makes them intrinsically more valuable? Because the way we are discussing bending over backward to accommodate them, you'd think they were FIFA royalty.
Seems a strange argument to give 3 spots to OFC. I outlined my thoughts a while ago and thought places should roughly be aligned to number of nations in the under 17 competition. OFC is not only small number wise, its quality is also very low and a 3rd team probably wouldn't develop anything as they could potentially be looking at a couple of double digit defeats depending on how lucky they are with the draw. I think a division of UEFA 12, CAF 12, AFC/OFC 12 (a 10/2 split) and CONCACAF/CONMEBOL 12 (a 9/3 split) is more than fair as it represents each confederation based roughly on numbers of members.
The number of over-aged u17 players competing in u17 WC should skyrocket. Having the same host for 5 consecutive years should help deploy age-fraud testing.
Hmmm… It might just be my suspicious nature but I smell a big rat here… Could it be that FIFA’s “Syndicate” has found in the South Pacific a replacement for its once flourishing Caribbean soccer “business” far away from the long arm of the U.S. Justice Department? sniff… sniff…