A Proposed Fifa Tournament Format

ISSN 1750-9823 (print) International Journal of Sports Science and Engineering Vol. 06 (2012) No. 02, pp. 075-088

A Proposed FIFA Tournament Format

Godspower Osaretin Ekuobase + and Esingbemi Princewill Ebietomere

Department of Computer Science, University of Benin, Benin City, 300001, Nigeria

(Received February 21, 2011, accepted May 9, 2011)

Abstract. We computationally formalized and established that though existing FIFA world cup tournament formats guarantee that the gold medalist is indeed the best team of the tournament, none guarantees that the silver and bronze medalists are the 2nd and 3rd best teams respectively. A tournament format is proposed that does not only guarantee that these three medals goes to the most deserving teams in a tournament but also reinforces some of FIFA’s promotions: sportsmanship, world peace and unity as well as the economic boost, particularly, of the host nation(s). The formalism and analysis were based on the assumption that a team’s capability is constant all through a tournament and no two teams have equal capability. Keywords: FIFA, tournament format, computer algorithm

1. Introduction

FIFA, an acronym for Fédération Internationale de Football Association, is an umbrella organization responsible for governing the rules of the game of football all over the world, it is made up of six confederations and together they organize various football tournaments for men and women, the biggest being the FIFA World Cup held every four years except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second world war. Since the inception of the FIFA World Cup tournament in 1930, the world football governing body has applied different tournament formats; however the same pattern is used from 1986 till date even with increased number of teams in the tournaments. FIFA has done much to improve competitiveness and avoid appearance of favoritism, blind luck (good or bad) in the tournaments by using different policies and rules to...