Chuck the Gold Cup for THE AMERICAS CUP

[TOFC/ARSENAL]

Rather than play the Gold Cup and Copa America every two years, the two confederations should combine for an Americas Cup played every four years. Imagine:

Brazil, Argentina, USA, Mexico, Canada, Columbia, Uruguary, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Honduras, Equador, Jamaica, Trinidad...

That would be a great tournament and a good money maker.

[Razcle]

How do you determine who the regional champion is? Every region has a regional championship. I could understand if they did the Gold Cup and COpa America in the same year and then did a America Cup in two years....however when would you have time to qualify for it...because now you are adding 10 decent squads to the 20-40 in the CONCACAF meaning you will need to play some qualifying matches to make this tourney.

Besides COPA AMERICA invites the two best squads from CONCACAF anyways so why do they want to play against the thrid, fourth , etc placed teams in an AMERICA CUP?

[Wangy]

That would be stupid. We would get killed, to honest, especially considering that the games are held in South America where the support for the South American teams would be huge.

[Breakwood]

Errrr the America's Cup already exsists. Unfortunately its a competition for sailboats.

[DCUdiplomat96]

How do you determine who the regional champion is? Every region has a regional championship. I could understand if they did the Gold Cup and COpa America in the same year and then did a America Cup in two years....however when would you have time to qualify for it...because now you are adding 10 decent squads to the 20-40 in the CONCACAF meaning you will need to play some qualifying matches to make this tourney.

Besides COPA AMERICA invites the two best squads from CONCACAF anyways so why do they want to play against the thrid, fourth , etc placed teams in an AMERICA CUP?


i like the idea of having a bicontinental cup for both cocacaf and sudamerica teams have the cup inbtween world cups and you still have your gold cup and copa america every four yrs at the same time as europe has there euro and asia has thier cup etc...

[MichaelBall]

You could make it a 16 team tournament. 10 South American teams automatically qualify. The hexagonal teams from World Cup Qualifying make it to the Copa. Hold it every four years. The winner of the hexagonal is the Concacaf Champion. Perfect.

[NYC ugly]

You could make it a 16 team tournament. 10 South American teams automatically qualify. The hexagonal teams from World Cup Qualifying make it to the Copa. Hold it every four years. The winner of the hexagonal is the Concacaf Champion. Perfect.

That's no good. That means teams like Canada will only qualify once every 12 years or so.

[TOFC/ARSENAL]

Errrr the America's Cup already exsists. Unfortunately its a competition for sailboats.
I called it the Americas Cup. The sailing version has an apostrophe, which might be confusing, except that most people have not heard of the sailing version and care even less (no offence intended).

[TOFC/ARSENAL]

You could make it a 16 team tournament. 10 South American teams automatically qualify. The hexagonal teams from World Cup Qualifying make it to the Copa. Hold it every four years. The winner of the hexagonal is the Concacaf Champion. Perfect.
My thinking was, if you combine the two conferences for a Cup of The Americas (maybe that name will satisfy our sailing friend) you would have a competition with 50 entrants, 40 from CONCACAF and 10 from South America. That would still be smaller than UEFA, which has 53 member nations.

The tournament could be modelled on the EURO Cup, with a qualifying competition starting two years ahead of the Finals. By all means have seedings but only the host country should have a bye into the finals.

Start with ten groups of five nations with each group winner qualifying for the final. The finals would have 16 competitors, made up of the host nation and the ten group winners. The remaining five nations could be chosen by having all the second place finishers in the group stage paired up by a draw for a two-game home and home series with the winner of each pairing getting into the tournament.

[Razcle]

That's no good. That means teams like Canada will only qualify once every 12 years or so.


LOL...not if we get the calls we deserve and beat your as$ in extra time.

[MichaelBall]

That's a good idea. It's just that the logistics of it don't make it too practical. In Europe they can do that sort of thing because the distances are much shorter for travel and everyone plays in Europe anyway. To have a two-year qualifying campaign for the Copa incorporating everyone would be very difficult in terms of travel. The distance from Canada to Argentina is just ridiculous for example; not to mention players having to travel from Europe every time. That's why I think it makes more sense to just toss the World Cup hexagonal onto the already existing Copa America and make it a 16 team tournament.

[themodelcitizen]

best we might hope for is a lucrative "Americas Cup" friendly between the two regional champions, mostly money-spinning as both would go to the Confederations Cup anyways. Brazil/Argentina vs. USA in a major American city or even to help foster growth in the Caribbean (close enough to "neutral ground") would be entertaining.