Fair points! For the most part. Yes, you certainly have to play games H2H at some point. The big issue you run into - in all competitions - is that you have to balance the number of games you play vs. how representative a tournament really is. The fewer games you play, the more likely you have "upsets" and such. It's the same argument people make in the "Euro regular season champions VS North American playoff champions". That is, saying "nothing is a fair as actually playing games against each other" isn't as cut-and-dry as you're making it out to be. Even for the WC, yes it's usually a deserving team winning, but is it the best team? Arguments can always be made. And you can also have instances like Greece winning the EUROs. Take that issue into a qualifying campaign, and if you don't play enough games, then you're more likely to not be sending the best teams to the WC - but try to increase the number of games played, and then you get schedule congestion. The "old qualifying" honestly was NOT "working fine". You had plenty of teams eliminated insanely early in the WC cycle, and you had a fair number of noncompetitive games. It was just too tedious and drawn-out. Is it unfair that most teams in the confederation are only competing for a quarter of a WC berth? Maybe. It might have been better to only seed 2-4 teams directly into the Hex and have a more robust competition for the other 2-4 spots. But no matter what you do, every round of qualifying will be seeded in some way. So it's just a balancing act for how much you rely on the FIFA rankings for seeding and what stages those seeds mean. Considering the stratification of teams within CONCACAF, I think the new setup is (mostly, maybe not entirely) the most balanced way to do so - with the amount of WC berths and FIFA windows we currently have available for this cycle. It can (and certainly should) change in the future. I mean, I guess you theoretically could eliminate seeding altogether by RNG'ing six groups of six (or so) in the first round of qualifying, then have the top 1-3 teams in each first-round group make up a second round of Hexagonal(s) - but what happens if the RNG throws all four of the top teams into a first-round group together? That's not really very fair either - and very bad for the confederation to lose 1 or 2 of its top 4 teams even before the second round begins.
There are obviously lots of games to play in the Nations League still. The 4 seeded teams haven't even started yet. Honduras playing 2 games each against Curacao and Haiti should go a fair way toward sorting some things out, and Canada and Panama will certainly have the opportunity to make a move if they can beat the US or Mexico. But regardless of who wins which game, by the time next April (or whenever the exact timing would be) rolls around, there will still be 2 teams ranked 5th and 6th, and 2 teams ranked 7th and 8th, whoever they are. And by then, the math might become more obvious. A team ranked in 7th or 8th might decide that the only way to pick up enough points is to schedule teams ranked in the top 20 in the world. Conversely, a team ranked 6th or 5th might look at the numbers and decide to schedule 2 friendlies against the likes of Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands. Or perhaps even to just stay home on the couch and play no friendlies at all, as opposed to risking anything, if it's not necessary. Is that what's going to happen? Surely we won't be blessed with some imaginary El Salvador vs Canada game, where the winner gets into the Hex and the loser gets to pretend like a 0.25 slot is an achievable goal.
Creating this new competition is part of my whole point so this isn't an answer for my questions. They are the ones that chose to create a new competition. This was not a must or mandated. I know you even say this, but this is in no an answer. My understanding was they created the nations league to replace qualifying. I just don't understand why. I still can't believe we have people arguing against just playing games and directly moving up in qualification. Blows my mind. Having all but 6 teams playing for a .25 birth. Just seems like a ploy to barely skate by FIFA rule of qualification having to be open to everyone. They have found a way to protect the money makers and pretty much close qualification to most of the other teams. It will be interesting to see if FIFA likes this because it means the teams that make them more money are virtually guaranteed a spot or if they will make rules to stop this in the future.
The Nations League was created to give the small countries, which are a supermajority of CONCACAF members, more frequent meaningful games. Under the 2018 qualifying system, 23 of the 35 FIFA-eligible members were eliminated by September 2015, 33 months before the World Cup. Most of them had pretty much nothing to do for a full three years until the special Nations League classification tournament started in September 2018. This new system now gives that majority a Nations League competition every two years, a more open process for Gold Cup qualification, and at least a WCQ group stage to play in. It also creates an extremely unrealistic path to the World Cup, but most of these teams have effectively zero chance at the World Cup regardless of format. Aruba won't make the World Cup under the old format, and it won't make the World Cup under the new format, so why shouldn't it vote for the new format that gives it a more consistent schedule of competition? Repeat that voting decision for Belize, Dominica, US Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, etc. The price is that teams in the 7-12 range are screwed over.
And teams 1-3 are protected by getting to skip into the final round and get a 50% shot at WC. They could have easily accomplished all you suggest they did and still made qualifying more open. Anyone denying this is denying reality. They didn't have to lock the top 6 ranked teams in the hex and give them 3.25 of 3.5 WC spots. Lets not act like this was the only way to give the lower teams more games. This was done to protect Mexico, US and Costa Rica and therefore more money for CONCACAF. They could have changed the final qualifying round to allow lower teams to play their way in to that group. Instead of allowing only one of them to have a .25 spot. I also don't agree with the mentality of "well they suck and didn't have a shot anyway so lets just make it official." Pretty crappy attitude in the sports world as the Iceland's do beat big teams sometimes. This was done to protect money makers and prevent upsets from knocking them out early in qualifying. All under the veil of saying it is for the small teams.
Am I crazy to think that there may be some corrupt federations out there that could be persuaded to take a dive in a friendly in exchange for certain considerations from (for example) Canada?
I agree they could have done something to make it more open, but not a whole lot more. Anything more would have to fit into the March and June 2020 windows. There isn't time to fit a full multi-stage process to winnow down from 35 to 24 to 12 to 6 and then have a 10-game hex. You can say "scrap the Nations League", but the membership wants the Nations League. There is also the matter that FIFA was dickering about with its consideration of expanding 2022 to 48 teams, which meant that CONCACAF had to wait for FIFA to drop that stupid idea before it could finalize the format. Without that delay, CONCACAF could have begun things earlier and used early 2019 for part of the competition.
To be entirely fair, they could have easily allowed the smaller teams access to the Hex and simultaneously protected the top 3 teams - as both you and I have suggested, they could have locked some of the Hex spots up by seeds and let the other Hex spots be played for. But the supermajority of minnows still voted for the current format, so... IDK? I do think a more open format might(?) have been more appealing to them, and yet this is what we got. I don't quite understand the thinking there, but they apparently see the KO competition leading to the 1/4 berth as more appealing than playing into the Hex. Either way, this current system isn't designed just to protect the top teams, so I don't think hammering on that point so much is fair.
You understand wrong. The creation of the Nations League was not (directly at least) tied to World Cup qualification. But because of the existence of the Nations League World Cup qualifying had to be adjusted. Dealing with the international calendar is denying reality?
No but they have full control over the competitions THEY create and how long they are and how many teams are in them. They have the ability to create tournaments and still allow more than 6 teams a shot at 3.25 spots. This is a fact. What they did create is not the only option. To think so is absurd. They could have done whatever they wanted. You act as though they had no other option but to only allow 6 teams to have a shot at all but .25 of the spots. That is just not accurate in any way.
It is absolutely fair as CONCACAF decisions are completely controlled by money. They did what they think is the best way to protect their money makers. That is all. They don't care two hoots about the "minnows". They want US, Mexico and Costa Rica in every WC. This format lets those 3 teams completely focus on the hex.
And you're acting like this was all some big plot from day 1 by Concacaf to put us here when in reality it was a series of decisions, some by Concacaf, some by FIFA, and some by the individual countries that put us here. Somebody should have had a better handle on the big picture but given that they didn't I can't really fault their solution for the situation they ended up in.
And you're acting like they had no other choice to only give everyone outside top 6 .25 spots. That is just not the case. They could have done a final 10 instead of hex with all the other teams competing for the 4 additional final round spots. Yes this adds more dates to the final round but they could have shortened the qualifying for these 4 spots as they would only need a final 4 instead of a final 1. They could have made it work a multitude of ways. You act as if CONCACAF has other things than money in mind. They don't care two hoots about all these lower teams playing for this .25 spot. They just threw that in to fulfill FIFA's open to everyone requirement. That is all.
So go ahead, lay it out. I've seen other attempts and it gets hard to do much more than a hex given the dates remaining. But if you're so sure its possible show us.
Edit: the more I think about these suggestions they are not possible. I don't think you can change to my idea, and have the Gold Cup and have the Nations League. There is also an idea of just using the Nations League as WC Qualifying. Yes, there may be teams in it that aren't eligible for the WC but then you just move down to the next team that is. I am not sure why it can't serve a double purpose. I know my ramblings below will get blasted but it was just me thinking out loud. I also openly admit this is a very complex problem and not easily solved. But only allowing 29 teams a shot at .25 of a birth is not a good option IMO. My suggestion is for 4 teams out of the 29 lower ranked teams to qualify to play in a round robin with the top 6 teams. One option is you stop the second part of qualifying that has 29 teams after the quarterfinal stage. This would give you 4 winners of this stage and eliminate 4 match days of games you would have had during the semifinal and finals rounds. This also eliminates another 2 match days for the Hex 4th place finisher and 29 team winner playing for the .5 spot. So my suggestions here eliminate 6 match days. This means this round would be done by middle of March and you would have your 4 teams to join the other 6. The other 6 teams in my final 10 could already be playing games against each other while waiting for the additional 4 teams to join. This round would have 18 games instead of the current 10. So this adds 8 match days. So not sure how many of these can be squeezed in between March and Sept of 2021 (along with Gold Cup). I know there are some international dates in June that the Hex is currently not playing during. So for sure some of these 8 could be put here. It may just be 2 available dates in June. I know you have the 2021 Gold Cup in July which greatly congests things. My suggestion eliminates 6 matches from the 29 team part of qualifying and allows that to be done by March 2021, but adds 8 to the final round. It may not be possible. Also wonder if they could have started this process earlier than Sept 2020. If they went a route like this they also could have played with the Nations League schedule to lessen the games in it by a few. This suggestion may not work, but rest assured there are more options than what they went with. There is always more than one option.
I appreciate the effort, you came close to finding a workable schedule but as you said, the dates don't line up. I wonder if this wouldn't introduce some unfair competitive balance. The remaining 4 teams would come in off of already competing to face 6 teams that already know each other and may be more rested. I'm not sure that's a scenario we'd want to have. And yet nobody has come up with a workable option given the scenario they were in. I've already admitted they needed a better long-range plan than thy had but their hands were also somewhat tied with FIFA not settling on 32 or 48 teams until late and with what the individual Concacaf nations wanted to do. Given the original mistake though, this feels like the best solution to the scenario they found themselves in.
They are already doing this with the Nations Cup. Many of the teams have played 2 games and the top teams have played none. This isn't really any different. Also the current qualifying set up is giving the top 6 teams a MASSIVE advantage of monstrous proportions. Them playing some of their games early would be much less of an advantage than what they have now. Would be silly to be accepting of the current format and opposed to this as too much of an advantage. Bottom line: There are other options. They have congested this greatly by adding the Nations League. They didn't have to add the Nations League. They chose to. This problem doesn't exist without it. The Nations League could also be used to determine the Hex teams instead of just using straight FIFA rankings. What they have done now for all intents and purposes completely locks out the bottom 29 teams from qualifying for the WC. That is not an acceptable solution for me. A .25 spot for 29 teams is just thrown in to fulfill FIFA's requirement of qualifying being open to everyone. I am surprised teams 7-10 have not tried to fight this harder.
And the old qualifying wasn't fine. The hexagonal was great when CONCACAF got 2 2-1/2 spots. With 3-1/2 and heading to a 48 team World Cup in 2026, the point of a Hexagonal diminishes. Too many games for too little risk. Yes, Mexico was bailed out in 2014 and we weren't in 2018, but by the time we get to 2030, CONCACAF will likely have 6 or more spots available. The Hexagonal really doesn't matter at that point. And CONCACAF is going to hate 2026 qualifying as it won't have any lucrative Mexico or U.S. games. The Byzantine qualifiers in CONCACAF make sense if you understand the economics of it all. Every team wants their chance, but the real objective is to eliminate as many teams in as few a games as possible. Especially the tiny Caribbean nations. The three Cup system knockout groups of 8 teams eliminated 12 teams after only two games and 18 teams after four. But even then we ran into issues where Barbados almost forfeited their Semifinal Round games in 2000 because their FA was going broke and the travel to Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the United States exceeded their budget. They never expected to advance that far. Now that CONCACAF has learned how to use the Gold Cup to print money (without large chunks being siphoned off by the old kleptocracy that ran the Confederation), CONCACAF basically underwrites a lot of the travel, but most of the games are still money losing. Mexican TV and mainly Spanish language TV rights in the United States are where most of the revenue comes from. Without the United States and Mexico competing, it gets real dark, real quick for CONCACAF. The solution is to lock the U.S. and Mexico into these CONCACAF Nations League matches. It doesn't completely fix the hole, but it fills most of it in. Effectively the United States and Mexico will play in 2026 qualifiers (via the Nations League), they just won't be in the final qualifying rounds - the Hexagonal.
You keep saying that, yet not coming up with another option. You can't rewind time and say "cancel the Nations League". It exists, its scheduled. Given that, what are the other options for World Cup Qualifying that work with the available dates?
This would mean: Other 29 teams in group stage to reduce to 8: Sept., Oct., Nov. 2020 8 teams reduce to 4: March 2021 Then you put the four survivors into a group of 10 needing to play 18 more games. You have these FIFA windows to play these games: Sept., Oct., Nov. 2021 October and November are slated for the Nations League, but lets ignore that, imagine we can push it back somehow. That takes care of 6 games, so you still need to fit in 12 more games with no FIFA windows before the inter-confederation playoffs in March 2022.
I posted one idea earlier which would have required only one more FIFA window, which could have been managed with some creativity. My idea was to give the Tournament of Others teams a shot at one of the direct CONCACAF slots rather than having their only chance be through the inter-confederation playoffs. It was basically the same format, though, with one tweak. Top 2 hex qualify for WC Tournament of Others winner plays hex-4 in knockout, loser eliminated Winner of above knockout plays hex-3, winner to WC, loser to inter-confederation
And my point is they chose to create this tournament and lock top 6 in Hex. They didn't have to do that. I agree now that they have there aren't many other solutions but that is the problem...they did it and created the problem. This eliminates bottom 29 from qualifying. Also, you are ignoring my suggestion to somehow use the Nations League as part of the WC qualifying process. To think there is only one solution to something as complex as qualifying 3.5 teams out of 35 is absurdity. I may not have the solution but i am not a professional manager of a soccer federation and have no experience in doing so.
Future World Cups will have more teams. If all three hosts get automatic bids, maybe there will be a Hexagonal next time. If only USA gets an automatic bid, there will be too many spots from qualifying to have a Hexagonal, and that will also be true in 2030 and every other time Concacaf doesn't host. There's a difference between having 2 matchdays off and then playing 4 matchdays in the Nations League compared to playing 18 games in a group that other teams started first. 6 games (4 games for teams in groups of 3) + 2 games between group winners to get down to four group winners + 18 games in a group of 10 is 24 games. Last time without the Nations League, Concacaf teams couldn't play more than 22 qualifiers. In both cases I'm excluding the interconfederational playoff.
I will reply with the part you cut out... "Also the current qualifying set up is giving the top 6 teams a MASSIVE advantage of monstrous proportions. Them playing some of their games early would be much less of an advantage than what they have now. Would be silly to be accepting of the current format and opposed to this as too much of an advantage." Either you are accepting of advantages or you aren't. The current set up is an unbelievable advantage.
Didn't read the whole thread, but CONCACAF decided a long time ago that they prefer to not break up USA-Mexico instead of a fair process. That's why the Gold Cup is set up like it is (with no draw, and no knockout crossover), and that's why we're still talking about ONE hex, when we could have 2 hexes, which would have the merit of keeping twice as many teams in contention until the end. You'd have the top of each group through, and could choose to have the second places play for automatic qualification or playoffs, or have 2-3 crossover for something similar.