Was the World Cup seeding France's punishment?

The Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke was, today, at pains to reject any notion that France was being punished for the Henrygate incident but in choosing an arbitrary point of time for deciding the World Cup seedings that is the only real inference that can be drawn.

From the moment that Fifa decided to seed the play-offs the organisation has been on the back-foot in defending France. That France then picked out the kind of team that is best avoided, Ireland, didn't help - perhaps next time the number one play-off team could play the number eight to avoid this happening again.

Then Ireland came within a whisker of beating France, only to be denied by the hand of va-va-voom - causing an anxious few days for Fifa as first a bandwagon developed for a replay and then Ireland requested a place as some kind of favour.

After the play-off seeding and the rejection of a replay, Fifa must have felt some pressure to avoid looking like they were favouring France a third time. People might start to suspect that Uefa was run by the French.

Valcke has made an interesting denial that the World Cup seeding (or lack of it) was France's punishment:

"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. 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 advantages because they would have played more games and that affects their rankings. 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."

Had the current rankings been used then France and Portugal would have been seeded, with Argentina and England missing out.

Fifa cannot escape the suspicion that the organisation makes up its rules based on whatever is politically expedient at the time. The play-off rules were made conveniently late enough to favour France and Portugal, no sanctions were made against France or Henry after some blatant cheating and now an arbitrary date is chosen for rankings because Fifa had "the feeling [that] the October seedings represented the best teams". The only way that Fifa can now avoid accusations of double standards is to publish every conceivable detail of the qualification procedure for World Cup 2014 before the qualification tournaments start - however difficult that might be for whichever of the bigger nations is in a cyclical slump.

World Cup 2010 Top Seeds:
South Africa (hosts)
Brazil
Spain
Holland
Italy
Germany
Argentina
England

Current top ranked teams:
1. Spain
2. Brazil
3. Holland
4. Italy
5. Portugal
6. Germany
7. France
8. Argentina
9. England
10. Croatia