I have to be honest guys. Now is the time Canada is going to step up and become a force. The wild popularity of Toronto FC and the incredible attendance figures seen at the U-20 WC make me confident that Canada is ready. You could make a case that De Guzman is the best player in CONCACAF. I personally don't think that's true, as Nery Castillo and Andres Guardado were brilliant at Copa America, but you can at least make the case. Wasn't he named the most outstanding player at the Gold Cup? I look for them to push really hard for that 3rd position in CONCACAF. I haven't been impressed with Jamaica, TT, Costa Rica, or Honduras of late. I just haven't. I also went to the USA-Panama match, and Panama does indeed have several good players. But I witnessed Canada absolutely destroy Guate that day also. Seriously, you could make a case that Canada has the best midfield in the region. De Rosario, De Guzman, Hutchinson, etc. are very strong players. We'll see I guess. By the way the best thing that ever happened to Mexican football was the development of US Soccer to push them. The best thing for US Soccer would be for their neighbor Canada to develop into a power.
you didnt even mention Radzinski....if he can find a way to get back to form they can have a very good forward leading them along...he was a premiership player for years....He will be 35 by the Hex though, so who knows the role he will play
Canada is no #3. They had a good Gold Cup run but lets not ignore the fact that they have a very shoddy Federation. While they may have some talented players they have shown over and over they lack any real consistancy in their game. They have to earn the #3 distinction in qualifing for me to beleive they are better than a full strength Costa Rica or Honduras.
You mean the Canada team that couldnt score a goal in their U-20 own tournament? Bright future I must say.
you know that few U-20 players ever end up playing for the senior national side....in smaller countries they might, but in Canada, i doubt this is the case...a team like Canada put out there, probably wont even get a shot at the senior level...a select few might
I don't really see why everyone is all hyped up about Canada . They made it to semi's in GC so what ? Start naming players that are going to impress besides De Rosario?
Currently, some of Canada's best player like Atiba Hutchinson, Julian de Guzman, Iain Hume, Mike Klukowski, Rob Friend, and Tam Nsaliwa played for Canada at the 2001 U20 World Cup. They went 0-3 without scoring any goals at that tournament as well. They all turned out to be great players for Canada. And, I must agree. We do have a very bright future.
Edgar Alvarez - AS Roma Julio Cesar de Leon - Genoa C.F.C. Maynor Suazo - Antalyaspor Carlo Costly - GKS Bełchatów Wilson Palacios - FK Crvena Zvezda Those are the players I can remember on top of my head. I know there's more but I can't seem to remember them.
who else is there to get all hyped about in concacaf ? Canada evenly played the US and were denied a clear equalising goal. They also made mincemeat of Guatemala who the US struggled against twice. Player for player they are better than any other concacaf side besides US and Mexico. CAnada for me is #3 in concacaf.
So your argument is that Canadia is #3, only because there's no other team that performed above expectations in a short tourney? Keep in mind that even with their "player for player" superiority, they were expected to suck. They didn't and they deserve kudos. But will they be able to keep it up during WCQ?
I perosnally think this is all useless posturing and its way to early to judge. Number 3 right now doesn't really matter, cuz your number 3 now in 2007, 3 years b4 the WC, wowiee good for you. Alot can change in 3 years.
you're right. I guess what I should have said was, what is the point of that in the first place? To see how wrong we would all be again at the end?
Come on. What would we have to talk about in between cycles if these useless posturing threads didn't exist ? Anyway, I was working on this idea. It would be a lot easier to rate teams if Concacaf was a league right? While this isn't feasible for a number of incaclulable reasons, I tried to simulate it from existing results. Are taken into account: - competitive matches* between the top 10 teams since the end of the 2002 World Cup. * in 4-5 cases the results of friendly matches played during the time period studied were used to avoid too many blanks - top 10 defined as follows sample 1 : USA/MEX/CRC/TNT/GUA/PAN/HON/CAN/JAM/CUB sample 2: USA/MEX/CRC/TNT/GUA/PAN/HON/CAN/JAM/SLV One can do the ranking by comparing the points per game avg for each team to make up for the huge discrepancies between certain teams in terms of matches played (eg 37 for CRC and 13 for CAN). However this destroys the whole idea of the league. A better idea is to get two competitive matches in between each team (unfortunately there is no assurance that these will be home and away, even if this is usually the case) There are 3 methods possible - method 1 : take the best two results for any given team against another - method 2 : take the best and the worst result of any given team against another - method 3 : take the worst two results of any given team aainst another The rankings were as followed : Sample 1 PPG: US/MEX/CRC/JAM/HON/CAN/GUA/TNT/PAN/CUB Method 1 : US/MEX/CRC/HON/CAN/JAM/PAN/GUA/TNT/CUB Method 2 : MEX/USA/JAM/CRC/HON/PAN/GUA/TNT!CAN/CUB Method 3 : MEX/USA/JAM/HON/CAN/CUB/TNT/CRC/PAN/GUA Sample 2 PPG: US/MEX/CRC/JAM/HON/GUA/CAN/PAN/TNT/SLV Method 1 : US/MEX/CRC/PAN/GUA/HON/CAN/JAM/SLV/TNT Method 2 : US/MEX/CRC/JAM/GUA/PAN!HON/CAN/TNT/SLV Method 3 : US/MEX/CRC/JAM/HON/GUA/CAN/SLV/TNT/PAN - Several Comments Jamaica benefits from having played a very low number of competitive matches (miss out on the hex, caribbean cup, as well as the gold cup) Canada suffers from not playing enough competitive matches (none against TNT or Panama since the 2002 WC), and from qualifying automatically for the Gold Cup Central American teams as a whole benefit from playing UNCAF against many of the teams in the 'league' whereas the caribbean teams (tt, jma, cub) play a lot of their competitive qualifying matches against teams outside of the league - The US supremacy over Mexico in the 2nd sample is an optical illusion created by the fact that the US have played and beaten El Salvador competitively 4 times in the period whereas Mexico only has one friendly which they lost. Without that friendly match Mexico would be ranked ahead of the US in 3 of 4 categories
Thanks So based on the procedures above the scores were obtained and/or simulated (for the moment I have trouble getting the score tables up in a readable format) Therefore the two league standings would look like this: Sample 1 Code: P w d l f a pts US 17 11 4 2 32 12 37 Mex 15 10 2 1 37 10 32 CR 16 7 4 5 27 22 25 Jam 13 5 5 2 17 18 20 Hon 17 4 8 5 23 19 20 Gua 16 5 2 9 22 31 17 TNT 16 4 4 8 14 26 16 Pan 15 2 5 8 13 25 11 Can 11 2 3 6 10 16 11 Cub 12 2 2 8 13 28 8 Sample 2 Code: P w d l f a pts US 17 11 4 2 29 11 37 Mex 16 10 3 1 40 10 33 CR 16 8 3 5 25 20 27 Gua 18 7 2 9 25 32 23 Jam 14 5 6 2 19 18 21 Hon 17 4 8 5 19 19 20 Pan 16 3 4 9 14 25 13 TNT 15 3 4 8 12 25 13 slv 14 2 2 10 6 24 8 Can 9 1 3 5 10 16 6 Of course this is all irrelevant for WCQ. Qualifying in Concacaf has never been about consistency, but about peaking at the right moment. Other than the US's and Mexico's dominance very little can be deduced from all of this Still had fun though.
One thing all of this proves is the gap between USA/Mexico and the rest of the CONCACAF is pretty large, something that wasn´t true even just a few years ago.