PBP: 2019 CONCACAF U17 Championship Round of 16: USA vs Guadeloupe 5/9 6 PM (ET)

All of the matchups for the Round of 16/Quarterfinals. By winning the group, we avoided Canada's path. Curacao is no slouch, and a tough projected quarterfinal with Costa Rica.

 

Isn't the projected CR game the semifinal?

 

Las
Scally-Gray-Alejandre
Cuevas-Leyva-Saldana-Hernandez Foster
Busio
Reyna-AOC

I like the idea of a back 3. It'll allow the wing-backs to attack. They'll provide more offense than players such as Yow, Fuentes, De Vries would, if they were in the lineup. The CM is the weakest position. I figure you go for the best defensive lineup in central midfield. We'll struggle with possession and chance creation more than we should from CM, but if they can not give away goals like they have earlier in this tournament and all cycle, we should have a better chance to win. Busio would be better with a floating role behind two strikers. I think Pepi looks off the pace. Bring him off the bench, if we need a goal.

 

None of Curacao, Guadeloupe or Puerto Rico are independent nations (Curacao is part of the Netherlands; Guadeloupe is part of France; PR is part of the USA). They are Concacaf members but not recognized by FIFA.

So if they advance to the semifinals, that must mean they can't play in the WC (right?). And if so what happens? Do they pick the losing quarterfinalist(s) with the best records to replace them?

This came kinda close to happening in GC 2007 when Guadeloupe got to the semis and played Mexico to a stalemate for a good long while before losing 1-0. If they'd gotten to the final against the US, the US would have been guaranteed a spot in the Confeds Cup regardless of the outcome because the CC is a FIFA-sanctioned tournament.

 

CONCACAF being CONCACAF, their plan is probably to figure it out when they get there..........................

Curacao, by the way, is arguably the most improved nation in CONCACAF over the past 5 years. Currently the 2nd highest ranked Caribbean team after Jamaica (accroding to FIFA rankings anyway.) That IS NOT a gimmee game for Canada. I don't know if their federation has finally gotten their stuff together, but Curacao is advancing nicely across all age groups. At the U20 Championships they gave El Salvador and Guatemala tough games. They're taking advantage of their eligible players abroad for sure, but there must be more to it than that. There has to have been an investment in their local infrastructure as well. I'm not saying they're going to win this thing, but they're routinely giving the big boys tough games these days across all age levels. I mean, they drew with Panama at this U17 Championships. BEWARE!

Guadeloupe is a complete mystery. Who the hell knows what we're going to encounter there? Yes, their senior team has done well at times at the Gold Cup. But their youth teams rarely make an impression.

 

OK cool, today I learned that an entity can be a FIFA member and not be a sovereign nation. The likelihood of Guadelope getting to the semis is slim enough that we'll likely never find out.

 

We also can't be certain of the effect of the uneven conditions of contest. We just had to play three games in five days, while Guadeloupe rested. I think/hope that playing has been to our advantage, given that we could rotate and mix/match different combinations of players.

 

Scotland and Wales could go to the World Cup if their teams were better. While Scotland's in a bit of a transition, they still aren't independent countries.

 

I believe that the only federations that have confederation members that aren't FIFA members...................are CONCACAF and Oceania now. UEFA had Gibraltar, but they've just recently become part of FIFA (just like the British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean like Bermuda, Turks & Caicos, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, etc. etc.)

Why are the French overseas territories in the Caribbean (Martinique, French Guiana, Saint Martin, etc.) not FIFA nations? They predominantly have the same status as the French Mainland. They have representation in the French Parliament and their citizens vote for French President, etc.

So them having an independent FIFA team would be like Hawaii having an independent FIFA team.

Guadeloupe=Hawaii
Turks & Caicos (British Overseas Territory) = US Virgin Islands

 

Yep true, ditto England too--they are a subset of a sovereign (the UK) not the sovereign itself.

 

And regarding Guadeloupe, FIFA eligibility, etc, anyone remember this mess from just a couple of years ago?

French Guiana ignore Fifa ruling and play ineligible Florent Malouda anyway

You'd think that CONCACAF would have learned its lesson by now.

 

Why would Guadeloupe care about getting dq'd when they can't qualify anyway?

 

And of course it led to an issue in the London Olympics with England proposing a Great Britain team and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all pitching a fit that such a thing could lead to FIFA mandating a Great Britain team all the time. The result was that England fielded a team with some Welsh players in it.

Apparently the home nations have decided that the top ranked side, if they qualify, can represent Great Britain at the Olympics in the women's tournament. So since England is higher ranked than Scotland, if England does well enough at the women's World Cup, they can go to the 2020 Olympics (yet if Scotland surprises and does well enough, and England crash out early, Scotland doesn't get to go.) So maybe there's hope one day for a in name only Great Britain men's Olympic team again.

Getting back to Guadeloupe, the French Overseas Territories all send at least one team to compete in the Coupe de France. (They enter Round 7 of 14). It could probably only ever be achieved on FM, but does that theoretically mean a team from Guadeloupe could qualify for the Europa League? I doubt it immensely but I'm sure there would be lawsuits at the CAS about it.

 

I am unwarrantedly interested in this, so I looked on the interconnected network, and according the infallible godhead of information, there are 11 entities (not countries, I guess) that are members of various confeds that are not FIFA members. To wit:

6 from CONCACAF: Bonaire (NED); French Guiana (FRA); Guadeloupe (FRA); Martinique (FRA); Saint Martin (FRA); Sint Maarten (NED)

2 from OFC: Kiribati; Tuvalu

2 from CAF: Reunion (FRA); Zanzibar (TAN)

1 from AFC: Northern Mariana Islands (USA)

11 countries in total, of which five are French departments, which as @Clint Eastwood points out are the equivalent of US states. Two are Dutch overseas territories; one is a US overseas territory. Kiribati and Tuvalu are both independent nations but I suspect not yet developed enough as football countries to earn FIFA status.

By far the weirdest of these is Zanzibar, which is an island that was unified decades ago with Tangakiya to form Tanzania, no longer an independent nation. Seems that because it had a separate footballing tradition before the unification it still persists as a CAF member. What's also interesting is that it does pretty well at least in the regional tournaments. In the East African championship, the CECAFA Cup, it took second in 2017, only after drawing champion Kenya 2-2 in the final and losing on penalties.

 

Tanganyika?

 

Minor, but France actually has different designations for their overseas territories. "Les Departments d' Outre Mer" (of which there are 5 I believe) are essentially Hawaii, but there are also Overseas territories (Saint Martin, Saint Barts, St. Pierre et Miquelon, Wallis et Futuna, etc.) that are more like the US Virigin Islands albeit with some representation in metropolitan France ( I think there are now 5-6 depending on how New Caledonia is considered).

 

Double post sorry, but if you take the ferry or the "hop" flight from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar, you still have to pass immigration on arrival. They don't recharge you or issue you a separate visa for the island, but still maintain passport controls and theoretically could send you back to the mainland (I think, since I have never seen anyone getting denied entry).

 

Takes two to Tanga.

You're lucky erudition isn't sufficient reason to deny entry.

 

Glad to see everyone here's so loose, but don't forget we've got a game to play tomorrow.

 

Oh, the geographic trivia. I can't let any of this go.

@butters59 Yes, sorry I misspelled the name of that former nation. I blame spellcheck. Spellcheck did not actually cause the mistake, but I blame them nonetheless.

@Celtigo Since erudition for me consists of reading and quoting from Wikipedia, instead of actually knowing things, I followed your suggested nomenclature rabbithole re Guadeloupe. Apparently: "The top-level territorial sub-division of France is the region, which contain of departments. Guadeloupe, like a few other places (French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion) is both a region and a department combined into one entity, the overseas department. Guadeloupe has separate departmental and regional councils."

So yes, Guadeloupe, FG, Martinique and Reunion all have this status as both a region and a department, but what about St Maarten? Curiouser and curiouser: "Saint Martin was for many years a French commune, forming part of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas région and département of France. In 2003 the population of the French part of the island voted in favour of secession from Guadeloupe in order to form a separate overseas collectivity (COM) of France."

Apparently the thing that St Martin is, is an "overseas collectivity". Seems that the St Martinians preferred to have more independence from Guadeloupe even if that meant more dependence on France. See also St Barthelemy. Will geographic trivia never cease.

@TimB4Last I blame the looseness on the intrinsic interest of French designations of their own internal geographic units, as well as the total absence of any knowledge about Guadeloupe's youth programs.

 

Wait, actually a French overseas collectivity appears to have more not less autonomy than a department. More cutting-and-pasting masquerading as knowledge:

"French overseas collectivities (French: collectivité d'outre-mer or COM), like the French regions, are first-order administrative divisions of France, but have a semi-autonomous status. The COMs include some former French overseas colonies and other French overseas entities with a particular status, all of which became COMs by constitutional reform on 28 March 2003. The COMs should not be confused with the overseas regions and overseas departments, which have the same status as Mainland France but are just located outside Europe. As integral parts of France, overseas collectivities are represented in the National Assembly, Senate and Economic and Social Council."

So to follow the analogy several posts above, Guadeloupe = Hawaii; St Martin =[?] Guam.