Dude, no. Just no. Conmebol WCQs are the rare treat. Can't we just leave South America alone so that for once it can be the continuing example of excellence?
I'm suggesting a format for a combined Copa America, similar to what we had this year. I'm not suggesting actually merging CONMEBOL with the NA countries or changing CONMEBOL WCQs.
I get what you're saying, but I think the downsides of such a scenario are too significant. A 64 team expansion would be fun in the sense that so many nations would get a chance, but the tournament's size is so great that it would have the potential to dramatically decrease the value of that berth. Also, the potential for blowouts is too high and the dilution of quality issue is far bigger than it is in the 48 team or even the 40 team proposal. Many here know that I'm VERY pro expansion, but I'd keep it way under 64. That's just bigger than necessary, imo.
It does not need to be a group of 7... it could be a group of 5. 7 groups of 5 all playing 8 games total. A potential group could look like this... Costa Rica Honduras Nicaragua Aruba Anguilla Instead of a hex we have the Lucky 7 (the 7 first place teams in each group). The top 4 of this playoff make the WC. I am not saying this is the solution... this is just a hypothetical Euro version. I do however think the system needs to be rethought a bit to let the weaker teams play a few more games and these games need to take place later in the cycle. Whatever happens in the reworking of the system I hope they keep the Hex in the end (or something close like the best 7 or 8). Just the early rounds of the system needs some reworking. Currently it works like this... (from wiki) First round: A total of 14 teams (teams ranked 22–35) played home-and-away over two legs. The seven winners advanced to the second round. Second round: A total of 20 teams (teams ranked 9–21 and seven first round winners) played home-and-away over two legs. The ten winners advanced to the third round. Third round: A total of 12 teams (teams ranked 7–8 and ten second round winners) played home-and-away over two legs. The six winners advanced to the fourth round. Fourth round: A total of 12 teams (teams ranked 1–6 and six third round winners) were divided into three groups of four teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The top two teams of each group advanced to the fifth round. Fifth round: The six teams which advance from the fourth round will play home-and-away round-robin matches in one single group (often referred to as the "Hexagonal"). The top three teams will qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and the fourth-placed team will advance to the inter-confederation play-offs. What if it was more like this... First Round (teams ranked 11 - 35) 24 teams, 6 groups of 4 teams each. 6 games total Eliminates 18 teams Second Round (6 round 1 winners plus remaining 10 teams) 16 teams, 4 groups of 4 teams each. 6 games total Eliminates 8 teams The 4 First place teams advance to Third Round Second Round Playoff The 4 second place teams have a playoff (1 group of 4) Top 2 advance to round 3. 6 games total Third Round, HEX (4 first place teams plus 2 wining second place teams) 10 games total First round teams can play minimum of 6 games and a total of 28 games (22 if they skip the playoff) Second round teams can play minimum of 6 games and a total of 22 games (16 if they skip the playoff) The problem is the first leg needs to be longer then 2 games.... some of the teams play just 2 total games 2018 WCQ games played... St Kitts played 2 El Salvador played 10 games Mexico and the US will play 16 If El Salvador made the HEX they would play 18 games How is this current system fair to St Kitts and other small countries?
Good point with the 7 team group requiring 14 matchdays, I was thinking it would only be 12. I'd just change it to a home/away playoff between the bottom 2 teams then, that way it's back down to 12 matchdays. Honestly, I'm not sure how the Caribbean Cup and its qualifiers would work around my proposed WCQ format. I took a look at Wikipedia to see when they play the games, and it appears to be all over the place. They moved it to June 2017 (so third year in the cycle), with the qualifiers taking place this year. But prior to that, they played it in late November of 2010, 2012 and 2014, with the qualifiers happening in the months just before. And before that, they played it every year. It'd be up to them how they wanted to handle it, but with none of the participating teams typically making the WC and almost all being knocked out by the Hex, there should be room to fit it in somewhere. Anyway, my proposed format is solely for the Caribbean teams benefit (giving them more WCQ games), so if they didn't think it was feasible because of their Caribbean Cup format then they can just keep that instead.
I'll humor Montagliani a little before his internal review tells him to come back down to reality. There's not much that can be done about Qatar 2022 assuming the confederation receives 3.5 berths again. It seems like he wants to increase the number of games for the lower-ranked teams while decreasing the gap between cycles. The problem is that the ideal solution that targets those two problems creates more problems. If you want to go the UEFA/SA route with one major round involving all the teams with perhaps a playoff round: -3 really large groups involving 11-12 teams: The three group winners directly qualify while the 0.5 would be awarded to one of the 2nd place teams somehow (mini-group perhaps). Every team gets 20-22 matches with the smallest gap between cycles! But this idea would never fly. The number of rubber matches would be high. Can't see the major networks being too fond of ponying up for a bunch of bad telegenic matches either. The teams at the bottom of each table would hit -100 GD or worse. The international calendar would also be stressed. A compromise would be a solution similar to the latter stages of AFC qualification: -Two group rounds. The first round would involve groups of 5-6 teams. You could go the full AFC route with two final groups followed by a playoff stage for the 0.5 berth or we could continue the Hexagonal. This would be a more realistic compromise. We'd still have that gap created by the Hexagonal and World Cup year, but it's an improvement where the guaranteed number of WCQs goes up from 2 to 8-10 for those lower ranked teams. But I get the impression that this solution wouldn't completely satisfy Montagliani. This method would also create additional strain on the international calendar. We could also tie in WCQs with Gold Cup qualification like how AFC integrated WC and Asian Cup qualification this cycle. But I don't know if the Central American and Caribbean countries would want to part with their regional tournaments and/or diminish their importance. I suppose Montagliani had World Cup expansion in mind. Expansion would make any round consolidation proposals more palatable with the increased number of berths. I think CONCACAF would get 5 to 5.5 berths in a 48-team format assuming that the confederation berth number increases proportionally. Honestly though, my perfect world would involve the North American and Central American teams forming one confederation and cutting out the Caribbean. FIFA would never allow that to happen as they would not want two craptacular confederations with Oceania and the new Caribbean one. My second choice is the status quo. Combining with CONMEBOL would be cool on paper but the risk of missing out on the World Cup would be too great.
I thought about a similar format myself. I just couldn't bring myself to accept two rounds of odd-numbered groups. But I could get on board with this idea if the confederation insists on increasing competitive matches for those bottom feeders.
So....basically lets find some dumb and complicated way to screw up what already works in the name of hoping for a less than 1% chance that Aruba becomes CCAF Iceland. Got it. I hope everyone enjoys useless dead rubber qualifiers against teams we could play our U-17's against and win 6-0. It's also quaint that people seem to think any increase in revenue from these games will end up going to development in those countries as opposed to into some unnamed Cayman account.
Pretty much, yeah. That's what the man wants. Like I said before, I prefer jettisoning those island countries or maintaining the status quo. The former is very unlikely to ever happen and the latter is the likely result from his little review. I say just have the bottom 24-28 teams play in groups of 6-7. The group winners of those pillow fights makes the current semifinal round format. But I doubt the confederation goes for that idea as those low-ranked teams won't get the money that comes from playing Mexico or the US, which is what this whole idea is about to Montagliani. CONCACAF could have easily increased the number of competitive matches for these teams this century if they so desired. The reality is that CONCACAF also wants the likes of Hexagonal-grade teams (Mexico and US in particular) to play these teams more often in the hopes that we'll become more well-rounded like UEFA with Aruba becoming the next Iceland as you said.
Hopefully we don't changes until expansion to 48, but if that happens, obviously they'll revamp the qual process at that time. If CONCACAF gets 5 spots it makes it very easy to just go EUFA style....5 groups of 7 with the winner advancing...which is gonna be awful. Based on Today's FIFA rankings groups would look something like this: A: Mexico, Antigua & Barbuda, Haiti, Grenada, Barbados, Montserrat, Cayman Islands B: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Aruba, US Virgin Islands, Turks & Caicos C: USA, Jamaica, Canada, Cuba, St. Vincent & Grenadines, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands D: Panama, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Belize, Suriname, Bahamas E: Trinidad & Tobago, St. Kitts & Nevis, Guyana, Curacao, Dominica, St. Lucia, Anguilla Tons of uselessness They could instead go with more of the route AFC uses (which also sucks, but might be the best alternative). Definitely have the match days for this as it's already done (almost) exactly like this in AFC. 7 groups of 5 Group winners and 5 best second place teams advance for Top 12. 2 groups of 6; Top 2 in each advance, and 3rd place teams play H-A for last spot. A: Mexico, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Bermuda, U.S.V.I. B: Costa Rica, Canada, Curacao, Suriname, Montserrat C: USA, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, Cayman I. D: Panama, Haiti, Cuba, Dominica, Turks & Caicos E: T&T, A&B, El Salvador, Belize, B.V.I. F: St.Kitts & Nevis, Honduras, Grenada, St.Vincent, Bahamas G: Guatemala, Jamaica, Barbados, Aruba, Anguilla Then something like: A: Mexico, Panama, T&T, Jamaica, Honduras, El Salvador B: Costa Rica, USA, St. Kitts, Guatemala, Haiti, Canada This gets all the minnows at least 8 matches. So that goal is accomplished. It also eliminates the bad ones a little early so we have a decent competition in the Final 12. CAF is the other alternative which is much like AFC but keeps more teams alive and puts them into more groups at the end. Not a great way to go, IMO. Would look something like this. Top 5 teams get bye. Teams 6-35 play H-A eliminators to eliminate 15. Then 5 groups of 4 teams with winner of each advancing. Groups would look something like this: A: Mexico, A&B, Haiti, Belize B: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Barbados C: USA, Jamaica, Canada, El Salvador D: Panama, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Cuba E: T&T, St. Kitts, Guyana, Curacao This is terrible as we play only 6 games to qualify. Also the bad minnows get only 2 games so I don't think the guy goes for it. The CONMEBOL model i don't think works because you won't have enough match days to do like a 10 team H/A unless you eliminate the minnows years earlier, which defeats the guys' initial premise.
It already is dumb and complicated... 5 rounds, with the first 3 rounds being 2 leg home and away, winners advance, then switch to 3 groups of 4 in the 4th, with 1rst and second place advancing, and then end ending in the 5th round with a HEX. The problem is 7 teams every cycle play 2 WCQ games. and another 4 only play 4 total games every cycle. How is this fair to the little countries. Proposing a new system that all teams, no matter how small, get to play at least 6 to 8 games in the early rounds, and ending in a HEX would be better for everybody.
Two quick thoughts: 1) As I will apparently have to repeat ad nauseam: NO, we (or Mexico or whatever subgroup you like) can't just leave CONCACAF. The detail that everyone conveniently forgets about the Australian example is that they left the OFC with the OFC's consent. And they continue to invest in Oceanian football, one of the selling points of their 2022 WC bid. With WC access not a problem for us in CONCACAF, there's no incentive for the confederation to let anyone bolt - and frankly, if no one even suggested leaving during the Bin Hammam Bribe-o-Rama, they're not doing it now. Btw: FIFAGate showed that Central American and CONMEBOL officials are no less corrupt, even if their countries offer more on the field. 2) For everyone assuming that the tiny Caribbean teams want more games, ask yourself: why did we go from the 2014 WC format to the current one? In case you didn't notice b/c you don't care about qualifiers before the US joins in, the 2014 WC featured a group stage before the semifinal round, with everyone playing six games - but only the winner of each group moving on. Thus, several teams ended up effectively out of contention on Matchday 4; but with two games still to go (the bottom two seeds in each group were scheduled to play each other on Matchdays 5 and 6, while the top two presumably would play for the semifinal round spot), you ended up with FAs burning through budgets, begging CONCACAF for travel money and calling up players abroad for dead rubbers. It's those very same small Caribbean FAs that lobbied for the change to home-and-away series, so that the games would still matter. If anything, the last thing the likes of Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands need are 10 guaranteed fixtures, half of which won't matter and in which they'll still have to go broke showing up for the games. In all honesty, I believe Montagliani's looking out for C---..but it's not the Caribbean. Look further north...
You are probably right he (Montagliani) is looking out for Canda, and you are correct that Caribbean countries are worrided about travel costs. They are however worried about not playing enough too... “Caribbean countries have problems climbing the FIFA rankings, just because we are not able to play as many international games as you want to,” John Krishnadath, president of the Suriname soccer federation, told the AP earlier this year, while also highlighting the high cost of traveling to matches.
Caribbean countries have problems climbing the ladder because they're generally terrible, which is a common impediment to success.
I am not saying they are great or that they will be the next Iceland. Caribbean teams only need to be ranked 150 or better and they will help the confederation as a whole. As stated earlier there are 16 C-CAF nations ranked 150 or worse. 6 of them are 25 points or less from breaking the 150 mark. These teams play more games and some of them can move up a little. These 6 are Barbados, Aruba, St Vincent, Belize, Dominica, St Lucia and Suriname. These teams played 2 WCQ games... Barbados (ranked 157), St Lucia(ranked 171) and Suriname (ranked 175) These teams played 4 WCQ games... Aruba (ranked 160) and Dominica (ranked 170) This team played 6 WCQ games... Belize (ranked 166) This team played 10 WCQ games... St Vincent (ranked 164)
In the FIFA rank, in 2 ways. 1. the Importance of Match factor and 2. the Strength of Opposing team factor These smaller countries could play more WCQ matches (a hypothetical minimum of 6 opposed to 2) at a importance of match factor of 2.5... if they play more matches against each other at the WCQ level then someone has to win. Which in turn will move them up the rank a little. If their FIFA rank goes up over 150 and the US or any other bigger CCAF team beats them then we get more points for beating them. Here are the details from FIFA --------------------------------- I: Importance of match Friendly match (including small competitions): I = 1.0 FIFA World Cup™ qualifier or confederation-level qualifier: I = 2.5 Confederation-level final competition or FIFA Confederations Cup: I = 3.0 FIFA World Cup™ final competition: I = 4.0 T: Strength of opposing team The strength of the opponents is based on the formula: 200 – the ranking position of the opponents. As an exception to this formula, the team at the top of the ranking is always assigned the value 200 and the teams ranked 150th and below are assigned a minimum value of 50. The ranking position is taken from the opponents’ ranking in the most recently published FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.
Okay, but how does any of that actually matter in a way that provides a tangible benefit to the US or Mexico? How would it provide a benefit that would outweigh the loss of the competitive games of the Hex in exchange for a reduced slate of competitive games in exchange for minnows gaining ranking points?
It would be good for the region if the Caribbean nations with a chance of being good get good. I'd say the only countries that are currently underperforming their fundamentals (population, performance in other sports) are Cuba and the D.R. If it ever gets to the point where those two plus Haiti are competitive, then we'll have a problem on our hands, because there will be more competent teams than semifinal spots. That problem is a long way off.
If Mexico If Mexico or US or Costa Rica get a high enough rank then they get seeded in a WC, like Mexico did in 2006. Part of the reason CBOL teams are all ranked so high is 1 they are good teams, 2 they have the best CONFED rank, 3 they all play 12 WCQ games every cycle. AND they all play in the Copa too. Only 4.5 teams from CBOL makes the WC, that means 6 teams fail, but by failing they still are improving their FIFA rank by playing so many games.
So your theory is that if a few CCAF island minnows break into the 150s, it's possible that we'd get a seed based on FIFA rankings. Despite FIFA reworking their seeding criteria every 4 years. Would that not be offset by fewer games against the actually good teams in the Hex? I'm sure playing Mexico never in qualifying would probably dwarf the impact of playing 135th ranked Aruba in a heated qualification match that we win 17-0
No my theory is the weak teams deserve more then 2 WCQ matches every 4 years. And it might benefit the Confed if they get more games. I also stated that the HEX should stay, and the beginning rounds (1 - 4) need to be revised so that all teams get at least 6 guaranteed WCQ games. These 6 teams were just an example... if the entire region plays more WCQ games then the entire region could move up in the ranks. I just don't see how to justify a nation, regardless of how small or bad they are to only get 2 WCQ games every 4 years.
Why do they "deserve" it? They're pretty terrible teams. If they "deserve" it, they should earn their spot in the semifinal round like every other minnow does. Look at Canada, for example. It doesn't benefit the confederation in any way, shape or form except to the extent that it shores up the position of whoever the CCAF president is, and solidifies that voting block. It won't matter in terms of seeding or anything else that's cromulent if St Kitts or Aruba are ranked 141st as opposed to 159th. The TV money that would supposedly go toward improving those teams won't go to improving those teams, because history says it won't. It'll end up in the hands of whatever Warner-like figure runs those federations. Sorry, but adding travel and wear and tear on every other team whose fed gives a crap and tries to field a team in the name of giving additional opportunities for resort staff to get steamrolled by better teams is dumb.