By Terry Baddoo

With the Conmebol World Cup Qualifiers underway, South American soccer is front and center with a total of 92 matches on the schedule. Ahead lies more than 2-years of home and away round-robin competition featuring some of the best players in the world and four of the current top-10 teams in the FIFA Rankings -- Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Chile.

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Conmebol has been awarded 4.5 places in the 2018 Finals, which means 4 are automatic, while a 5th place hinges on the outcome of a two-leg play-off between the 5th placed finisher in the South American qualifiers and the winner of the Oceania group. Only once has a South American side lost a qualifying playoff, back in 2005 when Uruguay missed out on the 2006 Finals after being shocked by Australia. 

Upsets can always happen, but, as 148th ranked New Zealand is now the big dog in the Oceania region, with Australia having migrated to the Asian Football Confederation in 2006, it’s a reasonable bet that Conmebol will have 5 representatives when the next Finals kick-off in Russia.

As the smallest confederation of the six that make up FIFA, Conmebol has just 10 member nations so the odds on making it to the Finals would seem to be pretty good, especially in comparison to their main rivals in UEFA, where the 54 members compete for just 13 European places. However, the stats don’t tell the whole story.

Granted, South America’s two big powerhouses are, historically, a virtual lock for qualification. Five-time World Cup winners, Brazil, have been ever-present at each of the previous 20 tournaments, either via qualification, as host, or as defending champion (defending champions gained automatic entry to the next Finals between 1938 and 2002. Nowadays they have to qualify).

Two -time champions, Argentina, are also World Cup regulars. The Albiceleste have only once failed to qualify, back in 1970, though they missed three previous tournaments for political reasons.

However, beyond the top two, qualification is far from guaranteed. In fact, since the Finals became a 32 team affair in 1998, only Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay have managed to qualify twice in a row, and Colombia, the quarterfinalists in 2014, hadn’t been to the previous three World Cups.

So, with 5 places up for grabs, there’s an open invitation for one of the minnows to make a run. And, for those who love an outsider, you should look no further than Venezuela, which has never made a World Cup in 12 attempts. Perhaps their time is now.