Grant Wahl previously reported: It possible that they moved in a more radical direction in the last month, but I doubt they are going to replace WCQ entirely with the league. (By the way, it's hilarious that we have to get ongoing reporting on this major story from the newspaper on whatever tiny island Montagliani happens to drop in on.)
I was in the middle of creating a post referencing the same article.... I'll post it anyway because I was almost finished with it.
Here is another article from about a month ago... (same article that @Ironbound posted.) "Sources say that benefits from League of Nations success might include a berth in the eventual replacement World Cup qualifying tournament for the Hexagonal, which would see an increase from the six teams that are currently in it. Under FIFA's outline for the expanded 48-team World Cup, CONCACAF would receive six berths, up from the current three and a half, in the main event." So this article says that teams that are successful in this new LoN could gain a spot into the last round of the WCQ tournament. This makes more since to me. Maybe they do something like this. 4 leagues (3 leagues with 10, and one with 11) League 1. 10 teams (ranked 1 - 10) League 2. 10 teams (ranked 11 - 20) League 3. 10 teams (ranked 21 - 30) League 4. 11 teams (ranked 31 - 41) They have a seeded WCQ tournament based on what league you are in. Basically each team enters WCQ based on what league they currently are in. The winners of each league could be auto qualified to the last round. CONCACAF can still do home and away in the early rounds of WCQ because the new LoN allows many more games to played in each cycle. WCQ Round 1 - League 4 Teams WCQ Round 2 - Winners of round 1, and League 3 teams enter WCQ Round 3 - Winner of round 2, and League 2 teams enter WCQ Round 4 - Winner of round 3, and League 1 teams enter along with the 3 winners of the lower leagues.
Are you proposing everybody playing every opponent in their league or dividing the leagues into groups? I don't think the bottom 11 teams would want to go to 10 other teams every four years. The teams might not be able to afford the travel, and those games wouldn't get much revenue.
I think we are all saying the same thing in that the LoN will be used only for its seeding purposes when it comes to WCQ. There's no way a 'lower' team would accept the idea that they can't participate in every WCQ. The way I think the LoN is going to be set up is that since it's gonna be a 4-year cycle, WCQ will basically begin pretty much right after the World Cup, which is a pretty cool idea when you think about it. The league would sort of resemble the Davis cup for Tennis if anyone follows that format. The start of the '1st year' of the cycle would consist of the lowest 'divisional' league and this would essentially be the start of WCQ 'unofficially' in that the teams that are 'promoted' from that league would remain in the hunt to participate in WCQ. If it's gonna be how I think it might be, then the 'HEX' would remain intact but become the highest divisional league. The only difference is that teams would be 'relegated' from the HEX in order to make room for other nations to be 'promoted' on a yearly basis. Bottom line, at the start of the 4-year cycle (which I think would begin right after the WC) a nation from the 'lowest divisional' league could play its way (over the course of the 4 years) onto the highest league (formerly known as the HEX). That and vice versa.
I am trying to understand this idea... Would the 4 leagues play every year or does league 1 play in the 1rst year and league 2 in the 2nd and so on? I don't get how this will work? How do league 4 teams get relegated to make room for league 3 promoted teams? Just to make sure I got this right. 1rst year, league 4 (worst league) 2nd year, league 3, with promoted teams. ( are the relegated teams decided in the previous cycle? ) 3rd year, league 2 with promoted teams. 4th year, league 1 (best league) with promoted teams. If I get this right a team could play in all 4 leagues if they start in league 1, and get promoted in every league. Or a team like Mexico that starts in the best league, plays in just 1 year. The math doesn't work out for a HEX, and some teams are not FIFA sanctioned. I think there are 35 FIFA teams and 41 total teams including the 6 non FIFA teams. So it could be a 10 or 11 team league. They couldn't play a Hex style tournament every year with this many teams. It's just to many games. This is an interesting idea, but I think the league will be more like UEFAs LoN.
You have to switch the numbers. League 3 teams get relegated to make room for League 4 promoted teams. Teams at the bottom level can't be relegated. We're all trying to understand, but nobody knows the format yet. If League 4 played right after the World Cup, their teams would get more games than the current WCQ format where about half the teams were eliminated after Round 1 or 2, which both had two games per team. However, the teams eliminated would still have a giant gap between being eliminated and the start of qualifying for the next World Cup.
Exactly what Evan said; I'm just speculating based on what was said in those articles that were posted here. Speculating once again, the way I'm thinking it's gonna work is similar to UEFA's LoN in that a champion will be awarded either every year or 2 years within the '4-year cycle' to the nation finishing in 1st in the top league. What will be different I think is that every year, all 4 leagues (or as how many leagues there will be) will play each year with promotions and relegations occurring each year. In other words, each year every nation would be playing close to the same amount of grams as possible with each game being more important than friendlies as they go towards winning their respective league as well as being promoted to the higher league or avoid being relegated to the lower league and if the nation happens to be in the highest league, they would be trying to grab the title of Champion of the League of Nations (if that year happens to be a 'Champion' year, which might be every year or 2) and at the same time might also be trying to be one of the nations in that league to qualify for the following World Cup. Using this year as an example, right now the 'HEX' would be the highest league and not only would they be playing to become the Champion of the League of Nations but also to be one of the '3 1/2' nations to qualify for Russia'18. They would also be playing to avoid being relegated to the lower league below them. At the same time, the other leagues would be in play as well and they would be playing for promotion, remaining, and relegation. The top nations in the second league would be looking to start next year in the top league while the lower leagues in the 'HEX' would be looking to avoid starting next year in the second league. IMO, I hope my idea is as close to what they are gonna do because it's really interesting and I think it'll make things more fun for fans from the top nations all the way to the bottom of Concacaf.
So there would be 4 HEX's every year? One "HEX" for each league? (assuming there are 4 leagues?) This would be way to many games. I recall reading that teams could be promoted or relegated every 4 years. If this is the case then the format will have to be different, to allow the lowest leagues a way to qualify.
I can't think of a good format that gives everyone a shot, especially if pro/rel only goes on once every 4 years. This is just spit balling but if we're going with the 3 leagues of 10 and the bottom with 11 format, here's my playoff idea. (to be clear I'd hate this) Option 1: League 1: top 5 teams qualify for the World Cup. 6th goes to a playoff (let's say Trinidad) Leagues 2-4: Winner goes to a playoff (let's say El Salvador, Puerto Rico, and St. Lucia) 4 Team Playoff: Trinidad and Tobago vs St. Lucia El Salvador vs Puerto Rico. The winners face each other for a spot in The World Cup.. Option 2: This would be similar 1, but all 5 of the non qualifiers in league 1 would qualify for an 8 team playoff. It would prevent teams being from being "punished" for being in league 1 as I'd argue being one of the better teams in League 2 gives you better odds of qualifying than being one of the worst in League 1. 8 team playoff: Trinidad and Tobago vs St. Lucia Jamaica vs Haiti Canada vs. El Salvador Guatemala vs. Puerto Rico Both of those would technically give everybody a chance and would probably give the smaller island nations a slightly better chance than they would under the old format.
I think WCQ and LoN will be separate, but what league you are in will determine when you enter WCQ. Winners of the leagues could get an automatic spot in the last round along with the teams in league 1. Early rounds can be home and away to eliminate teams quickly because the LoN will provide many more games for all teams. The problem is there are 41 Concacaf teams, but only 35 are FIFA sanctioned. After LoN finishes and teams have been relegated or promoted then WCQ starts.
Maybe the 'HEX' wouldn't be considered a league but rather something to consider after the LoN finishes, which makes more sense since the teams in the 'HEX' would start off playing more teams so @RalleeMonkey , calm down, no one is saying Hondo (how did that nickname come about by the way?) will be playing against the same teams 10 to 12 times a year. In the end, we're all speculating but the 'idea' of this promotion/relegation is promising and hopefully it's probably something we can all look forward to.
Nice!! I've heard it somewhere before but don't remember where... but it most definitely may have been a reference or something else. You should sneak it in Wikipedia just for laughs. If the LoN was begun and ended in a year, at the most it would be around 8 per cycle but I think the LoN would last 2 years so it would be around 4 per cycle. Anyway, I agree with what others that think that these 'leagues' would consist of more than 6 teams so Hondo would be playing so many teams that you wouldn't notice it. Besides, doesn't this 'HEX' consist of almost the same 6 teams every other 2 years? At least with this league (again, my thinking), at least we'd know for sure that the bottom 2 or whatever it is wouldn't be there 'next year's and the top teams would be going up against new teams trying to steal the throne.
The HEX is every 4 years. There have been 6 of them so far. Starting in 1998. Mexico, USA & CR have been in all 6. Honduras & T&T have been in 4 of the 6. Jamaica & Panama have been in 3 of the 6 El Salvador have been in 2 of the 6 Guatemala and Canada have been in 1 of the 6
What I meant by every other 2 years is that the HEX began in 2016 and will end in 2017. After the following 2 years (2018 and 2019) it will begin again in 2020 and end in 2021 prior to WC'22... thus, every other 2 years. Having said that, I just realized that this was the first time the HEX was played within 2 years; prior to that, it was always played within a year so if this was just an anomaly, then yeah, the HEX is every 4 years.
World Cup Qualifying happens once every four years regardless of how many years it's part of. CONMEBOL has one round of qualifying that includes 2015, 2016, and 2017, but it's still only one competition every four years.
Yes but we are talking about the HEX or Fifth round or whatever you like to call it and that happens every 4 years. Yes the whole process happens every 4 years but we are talking about 'LoN' and bow it may or may not incorporate in WCQ and in this case, this particular HEX occurred within 2 years but before, as you said, it happens every 4 years. In whatever way CONCACAF plays it, their LoN will have to treat each year as either their yearly crowing of a 'League Champion' or part of a cycle to crown a 'League Champion' and how it will either apply to or replace the WCQ yearly schedule.
The Surinamese FA would like to use Dutch players of Surinamese origin,but the problem with that is that Suriname doesn't allow dual citizenship.The director of the Suriname Football Association has even tried to convince the government to change this law,but so far without success.Even the fifa boss said that Suriname should do something about their legislation.Surinamese people like to talk about star players and clubs like Messi,Ronaldo,Suarez,Robben,Ibrahimović,Barcelona,Real Madrid....etc and etc,but when it comes to self-achievement, everyone is silent, especially the Surinamese government!
Seeing Jamaica as well as other CONCACAF teams in this Gold Cup (Canada, El Salvador) that didn't qualify to this current HEX makes me more interested and excited about the LoN and can't wait for it to start. I can see these countries making for some interesting LoN scenarios as they fight to get 'promoted' to the top league where the powerhouses of the region would be.
UEFA announced recently the format for their LoN. I'm guessing CONCACAF will have a similar format as well; the only difference I see is that there will less leagues per division. Maybe the bottom division would have a couple of leagues (the league winners would be promoted) while the higher ones would have less; the top one I guess would only be one league unless they would want some sort of final four playoff to determine the LoN Champion (like UEFA) instead of just crowning the league winner the Champ. Either way, I'm pretty excited for this to start... whenever that will be. Hopefully, this will clear up any (and not made more) confusion that anyone had so far.