Except for Cape Verde, who’re making their debut subsequent 12 months, Africa’s qualifiers are all established on the world stage: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

Six are on the planet’s prime 50 with Ghana, in 73rd, the lowest-ranked of the 9. It might be a stretch to recommend any of those nations do not should be there over a European nation.

However what do the numbers inform us? Let’s use relative power once more by wanting on the prime 50 and weighting it to the confederation.

Uefa has seen its share of the World Cup locations fall, from 54% within the Nineties, to 33.33% at present – but almost half of its groups (46.30%) are inside the highest 50.

So, is it truthful that Europe was solely given three extra slots when Fifa added one other 16 locations for the 2026 occasion?

Africa now will get 9 locations with 53 members, 21.43% of the automated slots however solely seven (14%) are contained in the world’s prime 50. That means they is perhaps over-represented by a small quantity, however not an excessive amount of.

Concacaf is about on level with relative power. It now will get six nations on the World Cup (14.29%), with 5 of its 32 groups (15.63%) within the prime 50.

The actual outlier is Asia, which has solely 4 of its 46 collaborating nations (8.70%) within the prime 50, but it will get eight automated locations (19.05%).

So maybe Gattuso did have some extent in there someplace, however he is unlikely to get any sympathy.