Qualifying is over and the draw happened today. The US will play in Group A with Canada and Cuba. We'll play both teams twice (once at home and once away). The 4 games will happen across The September, October, and November FIFA Windows. The winner of the group will advance to the semifinals next March, and the 3rd place team will be relegated to League B.
I was really hoping for Bermuda for an awesome away leg. Little disappointed, but looking forward to USA - Canada.
Still not sure how specific TV rights work for this tournament. The qualifiers and draw could only be viewed via FloSports, which requires a monthly or annual subscription. I really hope I don't have to turn to that for US games
US games are on ESPN/Fox. https://awfulannouncing.com/soccer/flosports-non-usmnt-concacaf-nations-league-games.html
For the people who were worried about travel, and having to play on shitty fields, this is a pretty damn nice draw. That Cuba pitch wont' be great, but 3 out of 4 matches being in MLS Stadiums is about as good as you could have hoped for. Though if you're looking at this as a valuable chance to get some World Cup Qualifying experience, I wouldn't have minded a game in Central America.
This is probably a "tougher" draw than it could be, but I like the natural rivals of Canada and Cuba. I'm sorta, kinda, in to this. The fact that no one cares about this to post except for @Sebsasour does not bode well. I just took over 30 seconds to figure out who BER was, and I'm posting here, so
Is it possible at this one moment that Canada are better than we are? If they had a backline, then I might say yes.
This is how we crap on our own players and deify everyone else's players. Davies is a part time sub that has never played in a game where the outcome was in doubt. Yes, it is for a top club. But people say Pulisic has been having a terrible year for doing more. They also think Sargent should be with the U23s for basically getting more minutes, in competitive games, for a team also at the top of the Bundesliga table. Larin is a good player on a good team in a mid-tier Euro league. Is he really that different than Novacovich that can't even get a call up? Besiktas is a better club than FS, but Nova has more league goals this season. Gall is playing Europa League as is Weah. I don't know what kind of roster GB will use nor how much they will care to finish first and play in the championship. I think all our U23 dual nationals, that are not included in the GC, should be in the first game.
No. The U.S is more talented and deeper. But unlike 10 years ago, Canada can steal a win now if a few of their players really ball out on game day.
I'm pleased to get an away game at Canada. It'll be our first competitive match (and only second total) away to Canada since 1997.
I for one am truly looking forward to the upcoming roster wars here on BS about this tournament. Figure it'll be a strong battle between the "We should use the kids and dual-nationals to cap tie them" to "we need to bring our full team to prepare them for World Cup qualifying" with a dash of "why are we bringing these guys from Europe - they need to stay and integrate with their teams" and "how come we keep using MLSSUM players?!?!?!". On a serious note, I imagine that only once will we have 2 CNL games in the same window, so keep in mind it'll likely be a friendly plus a CNL game. My guess is we'll probably using as close to the A team as we can get for these as a result.
The US is not playing a CNL game in September according to what I have read. Canada and Cuba will play both their games against each other in that window. https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...ws-mnt-concacaf-nations-league-2019-2020-draw The second paragraph contains the info.
Wow that's... one way to structure this tournament. If that's how they are going to do it, my guess would be H/A with Cuba in October (knowing we'd need to match Canada's performance and maybe even exceed it by GD) and then a final H/A against Canada. (So Sept: 2 vs 3, Oct: 1 vs 3, Nov: 1 vs 2 in a home and away format?).
3-team groups always lend themselves to dumb formats, but it takes real Concacaf know-how to go and make it this dumb. If these games are being played across three FIFA match windows, there's no reason at all to not have 4-team groups.
Except to have 3 Leagues with 4 groups of 4 so one team from each group would promote from Leagues B and C and one team from each group would relegate from Leagues A and B would require 48 teams. Concacaf has only 41 members.
I might actually go to Cuba for the away game, Havana is a fascinating city and unbelievably safe. Doubtful, Our offense is our main strength, midfield can compete but defense is still a massive question mark, more specifically CB. Borjan is a champions league caliber keeper so he might have to clean their mess but he can't do everything Doneil Henry makes me angry with his tackles in the box, Cornelius is promising but needs to grow more, James is fast and good. I'd say that without Tomori or/and Ferreira committing by fall, the US coach should exploit us there. RB and LB are good. Defense doing their job makes the team formidable overall otherwise, we get punish there against stronger teams
Fixable. League A - 3 groups of 4 League B - 4 groups of 4 League C - 3 groups of 3, 1 group of 4 League A: Group winners + best runner-up make finals, bottom teams relegated League B: Group winners make finals, bottom teams relegated - semifinal winners promoted, third-place winner promoted League C: Group winners promoted