How have England already qualified?

[Aces McGee]

Can someone explain to me how England have already clinched at least a top-two second-place finish in UEFA and therefore a trip to the World Cup?

There are still several teams that could finish second in their respective groups with more than the 22 points England currently have.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

-McGee

[Aces McGee]

I found it, via the BBC:

The mathematics of England and Poland's qualification are relatively complicated.

There are eight groups within the European section of World Cup qualifying, but some have seven teams and some have six.

Automatic spots at Germany go to the eight group winners, and the two runners-up with the best points tally.

However, to avoid an advantage going to countries in seven-team groups - where more games are played and thus more points available - the runners-up in those groups have their records against the bottom-placed team expunged.

That means the Czechs, who have 24 points, lose two victories and revert to 18 points.

So whoever comes second in Group Six out of Poland and England will definitely be one of the two best runners-up, and will be going to Germany for the World Cup.

[HajiShirazu]

Would it have really been so hard to just have all groups contain the same number of teams? The 7-team league teams are at a HUGE disadvantage here for obvious reasons. First you have to beat more teams to get 1st, and second you don't get your record against the worst team counted, while those in the 6-team league do. Chances are, the 6th place team in the 6-team league is going to be worse on average than the 7th place team in the 7 team league.
This is sort of like baseball, where you have a 14 team AL and a 16 team NL, because they moved the brewers to the NL central making a 6 team division. How you can have a 30 team, 6 division league where one division (al west) has 4 teams and another 6 is beyond me. I know looking at the geography there aren't enough west coast teams and that's why they do it that way, but is texas on the west coast?

[mason55]

[ QUOTE ]
Would it have really been so hard to just have all groups contain the same number of teams? The 7-team league teams are at a HUGE disadvantage here for obvious reasons. First you have to beat more teams to get 1st, and second you don't get your record against the worst team counted, while those in the 6-team league do. Chances are, the 6th place team in the 6-team league is going to be worse on average than the 7th place team in the 7 team league.
This is sort of like baseball, where you have a 14 team AL and a 16 team NL, because they moved the brewers to the NL central making a 6 team division. How you can have a 30 team, 6 division league where one division (al west) has 4 teams and another 6 is beyond me. I know looking at the geography there aren't enough west coast teams and that's why they do it that way, but is texas on the west coast?

[/ QUOTE ]

MLB does it for very sensible scheduling reasons. I don't know why UEFA doesn't just add a couple more teams to make everything even.