Better European qualifying system for World Cup

From Unfocusgroup.org

Originated by Brendan Fernandes

European teams tend to disappoint in World cups compared to their South American counterparts. I believe that this is because the better South American teams tend to play each other a lot during qualifying, and hence get more practice. In qualifying, European teams are currently divided into groups, each group with maybe one good team and 5 crappy teams. So England might have to qualify against Azerbaijan, Poland and the Faeroe Islands and a couple of other "fodder" teams. This is hardly good practice for the World Cup.

Of course, in South America there are only 10 teams, fighting for 4.5 places. In Europe there are 53 teams fighting for 13 places.

So how do we do it?

Ok, I think that we should first have a super-group of the top 8 teams in Europe, all of whom have to play each other in a qualifying group. The top 4 teams go through to the world cup. This leaves 9 more places.

Meanwhile, the other 43 teams in Europe are divided into 5 groups of 8/9, and all play each other. The group winners all go through, and the top 4 runners-up have to play-off against the bottom 4 teams of the super-group for the final 4 places.