He's Making It Up as He Goes Along!!!

France miss out on seedings in the World Cup finals due to the decision to use the October rankings rather than past performances in World Cups combined with rankings:

Had the old formula been used, France would have been one of the top seeds and Holland would have missed out. The Guardian tells us:

Jérôme Valcke, Fifa's general secretary, insisted there was no agenda against France as a result of the play-off controversy. He said: "In the past the seedings have been determined by a mixture of world rankings and performances in past World Cups but this time the feeling was the October rankings most closely represented the best teams in the tournament."

Had November's rankings been used, England would have missed out and France seeded.

Valcke added: "We made the decision last month that the October rankings would be used because they were fairer. Countries who had been involved in the play-offs would have had an unfair advantage because they would have played more games and that affects their ranking.

"This is not a case of wanting Holland to be seeded instead of France, just that the feeling was the October seedings represented the best teams."

The best teams that will be in South Africa, anyway. Le Monde, however, believes that France and Ireland are now united in suffering an injustice:

Alors s'est posée la question du mode de désignation de ces têtes de série. On pensait l'équipe de France protégée par son statut de finaliste du Mondial 2006. Mais le doute existait. Pourquoi ? Parce qu'à la FIFA les règlements sont faits au jour le jour, semble-t-il. La commission d'organisation de la Coupe du monde se réunissait mercredi pour fixer les modalités du tirage au sort, deux jours seulement avant celui-ci, et a décidé d'établir une nouvelle règle : "Par le passé, [la répartition des équipes] s'était faite en fonction à la fois du classement mondial et des performances dans les précédentes Coupes du monde ; il est apparu cette fois que le classement du mois d'octobre donnait une photo assez fidèle la hiérarchie mondiale."

In other words, you'd expect France to be seeded by virtue of the fact that they made it to the last World Cup final. Why aren't they? Well, apparently because the rules of FIFA are being invented on a daily basis.

That'll be thanks to Sepp "loose cannon" Blatter, no doubt.

I dunno. Maybe France should ask FIFA to designate them as the ninth seed. Just this once.