Following John Jagou's review of Blazer's announcement, I just wanted to put a thread in here for us to discuss the new format. First of all, a brief overview of the system: First round: 10 worst teams in CONCACAF get paired up and play home-and-away, to leave 5 survivors. Second round: Top 6 teams in CONCACAF get a bye. The 24 other teams still alive get drawn into 6 groups of 4. They play home and away, but only the group winners move on. Third round: The 6 group winners join the 6 teams that received a bye. They get drawn into 3 groups of 4, and the top two in each group move on to the Hex. Fourth round: The Hex. Top 3 go straight to the World Cup, and 4th place to an intercontinental playoff. IMO, midlevel Caribbean teams (plus Belize and Nicaragua) won out big-time with the new format. Under this system, they're still getting the extra games that, frankly, they need if their programs are ever going to grow (biennial Caribbean Cups/Centroamericanas do help, but aren't enough). Canada, on the other hand, most likely will have to negotiate the tricky second round, which could be hazardous if they get drawn with a team like, say, Guatemala. One final thing to point out: if the following dates are correct, when would we have the draw? Would there just be a prelim draw for the 10 teams in the first round prior to the Gold Cup, or would the entire draw take place before then? Only because if CONCACAF has it's draw before the main World Cup prelim event in July, teams like Canada and Guatemala would miss out on a huge opportunity to break into the Top 6 with a good Gold Cup and avoid the second round.
Apparently the March FIFA rankings will be the official rankings used. A huge break for Cuba and Jamaica. I really hope not. So WCQ will start this year in September for Panama, Trinidad, El Salvador, Canada, Guatemala, and Haiti. Most of these have a good shot at making the "Hex".
So, they lied about the match dates, didn't they? 2 + 6 + 6 + 10 is 24 dates, more than the original plan.
I echo this question -- the prior proposal was 2+6+6+6+2 = 22 match dates which Blazer complained about as too many match dates. His solution? This new format with two additional match dates. Definitely smells fishy. Would love to hear the response from Blazer why...
Concacaf actually did something right. I'm glad that the final round will be one group and we will get to see concacaf's premier match up in meaningful competition.
One downside of the new format is that come January 1, 2013, only six teams from CONCACAF will still be in the hunt. All other confederations (except OFC) will have many more teams still alive. More teams alive in a confederation makes it more interesting for more nations. Trade-offs.
A CONCACAF WC qualifying format without Guadeloupe Yet Guadeloupe is one of the best nations in CONCACAF. This situation will continue for long?
One of the best teams, perhaps, but (objectively speaking) not a nation by any political or footballing standard. They'll have to get FIFA recognition (and the nod from the French FA) before they can play in World Cup qualifying. ..but hey, at least you guys know what it feels like to win a World Cup. But this is (somewhat) mitigated by the Gold Cup taking place in 2013. Speaking of which, my apologies for forgetting to put up the matchdays here: PRELIMINAR Junio 3 Junio 7 2011 PRIMERA RONDA Septiembre 2 Septiembre 6 Octubre 7 Octubre 11 Noviembre 11 Noviembre 15 2011 SEGUNDA RONDA Junio 8 de 2012 Junio 12 Septiembre 7 Septiembre 11 Octubre 12 Ocubre 16 TERCERA RONDA Febrero 6 de 2013 Marzo 22 Marzo 26 Junio 7 Junio 11 Junio 18 Septiembre 6 Septiembre 10 Octubre 11 Octubre 15 ...I'm guessing that the Caribbean Cup finals in 2012 would then be played after the WCQ dates in June, since I could see a team like Jamaica or Trinidad being involved in both.
CFU and Concacaf recognize Guadeloupe as a nation, man! According to Jack Warner, FIFA would be willing to do the same. But it's the French FA who puts his veto! It is certain that political independence would solve the problem but that's another story!
Every news outlet I've read is reporting Mexico, USA, Honduras, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Cuba as the official top 6 teams receiving byes to the third round. This is according to what Blazer said.
And also according to the March 2011 FIFA rankings I guess we can assume these are the bottom ten teams (with their FIFA ranking) to enter the first round playoff. 166. Belize 166. Dominican Republic 177. British Virgin Islands 182. St. Lucia 193. Turks and Caicos Islands 193. Bahamas 199. Aruba 200. US Virgin Islands 202. Anguilla 202. Montserrat
That's correct and these bottom ten nations will kick off WCQ as soon as three months from now in June.
That's a big gap between qualifiers from November 15, 2011 to June 8, 2012. The dates of the Hexagonal games are at the same time of year as previous Hexagonals except for the sixth game being played in June instead of August.
http://concacaf-futball.blogspot.com/2011/03/concacaf-qualifying-format.html and http://concacaf-futball.blogspot.com/2011/03/concacaf-got-wcq-right-this-time.html are blog posts about it.
The last date looks problematic as the other confederation to have put out their schedule (the AFC) lists 15 October 2013 as the first round of the interconfederation play-offs. Maybe CONCACAF still don't want to acknowledge that they didn't get the 4th spot they wanted? There is no mention of the play-off dates here. On a related issue, CONCACAF would have to do something for the 18 June date to allow USA or Mexico to play in the confederation cup. The AFC gets around it by ensuring Japan has a bye in that round of AFC qualification. Presumably CONCACAF will do what they did with the USA last tme around J
This was always a lie. There are 26 match dates from this fall into WCQ. Any soccer "press" person who doesn't catch that is a just pathetic. I for one, had been looking at an older version of the FIFA International calendar, that only had 20. So I could see how someone else could make that mistake, but not pros like Blazer, or soccer journalists, they should know. For one, I think it is an improvement over the current system (more games for mid-level teams), but is not as good as the old proposal (2+6+6+6+2+2 = 24). It is still is grossly unfair as 6 teams gets buys. That is just awful. Really, so Cuba and Jamaica skate while teams like Panama have to play an extra round? And using the rankings before Gold Cup is just absurd.
This doesn't necessarily get us closer to finding out if the 6 teams that get a bye are already set, but at least Julio Dely Valdes (Panama's head coach) thinks that there's still time for his country to move on up. For non-Spanish speakers: Julio Dely Valdés: The truth is that the ranking has changed everything, including the way we have to face these two friendlies [the 2-0 win over Bolivia and Tuesday's game against Cuba, 6th-place in CONCACAF to Panama's 7th], because with the change we now have to play these games as if they weren't friendlies... Even more with the issue of FIFA rankings, which is sort of a qualifying system in and of itself, we hope that when March is over and the FIFA rankings in April come out we're above them [Cuba]. It's clearly important to be sure of playing in [the second group stage, 3x4], because in the [first group stage] of the new format, without the 6 teams that received byes, you could run into a team like Guatemala, which is complicated. It's better to take the more guaranteed path. To play in [the second group stage] you need a bigger margen to prepare.
...and now that Panama's gone and beaten Cuba 2-0 in its own house, plus Panama's win over Bolivia and Cuba's loss to El Salvador over the weekend, the Panamanians are now expecting to be in the Top 6 in CONCACAF in next month's FIFA rankings. Time will tell if they succeeded in getting a bye to the third round...
Yes, Panama are now 6th. FIFA Ranking: April 2011 final preview. They are also 6th in the May and July rankings. 2014 FIFA World Cup seeding for CONCACAF teams (1 April 2011).
The gap is created from the modification of the international date calendar. From now on, the even years (2012, 2014, ...) will have international matches reduced from January to May. (European teams would already have finished qualifying for the appropriate WC or EC finals, so only one friendly date is scheduled for those five months. Interestingly, it is scheduled for Leap Day.) [...also, a little off topic, here's hoping that I can get to see a match on my birthday, Sept 7, 2012. (Maybe in 2013, also, if they go one day off of the match calendar that year.)] JLSA: I'm not sure that the AFC dates of Oct 11-15 (2013) would be a problem. I don't think it would be an "interconfederation" play-off. The last time, I believe that they did have their last round of play-offs, to determine who would go into the actual "interconfederation" round (which is scheduled for November 15-19). [Also, Europe would scheduled their INTRA-confederation playoffs for those dates, also.] [Second point, a little off-topic. I would love to create a Leap Day record book. My college played a basketball game a Leap Day or two ago, and I asked what the school's overall Leap Day record was. They said they THINK it was 2-3 (then they lost, making it 2-4), but the exact dates of some pre-1950 games were unknown.]
The AFC play-offs you refer to are scheduled for early September 2013 (similar timing to 2010 quals). Europe is not really relevant as the problem is the interconfed nature - if the first leg is the Americas and the second in the Asia/OFC then there is barely enough time to get from the first leg to the second. Uruguay found this out in 2005. That was why FIFA specified "sufficient" time between legs, and why the AFC draw has the matches scheduled in separate match windows. J