Gold Cup should be 8 teams

Discussion in 'Gold Cup' started by ZeekLTK, Aug 21, 2009.

  1. ZeekLTK

    ZeekLTK Member

    Mar 5, 2004
    Michigan
    Nat'l Team:
    Norway
    For a while I've all been for expanding to 16 teams to "catch up" with Europe, Africa, and Asia but now I think we should do the opposite and decrease the number to 8 teams.

    It's shameful how the tournament, which is suppose to be OUR *biggest* tournament outside of the World Cup, is treated as a throwaway training event more often than not. I think the only way to fix that is to force teams to go through a rigorous qualifying campaign, and the only way to necessitate that type of qualifying is to reduce the number of spots.

    There are what, like 36 teams in CONCACAF (probably should have done a head count first but bare with me)...

    1 Host nation (yeah that's another thing we need - and with 8 teams you only need 2 stadiums to be able to host, meaning most of Central America could, Canada could, some Caribbean teams could. Spread it around!)
    7 spots - 7 groups of 5, top team from each group qualifies.

    Put everyone into qualifying, don't do it by "regions" (no other continent does this, even Asia which is almost twice our physical size [while I haven't measured I would guess that it is way further from Japan to Jordan than it is from southern Canada to Panama City]) and let everyone duke it out. You're going to have more than 1 capable team per group, which will result in heated, highly contested games since there is only 1 spot available. Also in each group you are obviously going to have minnows, but what continent doesn't. San Marino and Liechtenstein get in there and mix it up with England and Germany so why can't Aruba and Turks & Caicos try their hand against USA and Mexico. Plus it'll really benefit the middle teams (Barbados, Guyana, St. Vincent, etc.) by giving them more competitive matches (against some of the good teams in the region) other than the 2-8 they get every 4 years for the World Cup.

    And best of all, when it gets time for the Gold Cup there will be 8 teams into 2 groups of 4 - they all had to qualify to get here so no one is going to be sending their scrubs. With only 2 spots (not this 3/4 teams going through crap you get with 12) the group is more highly contested because there's now less room for error.

    Plus, because there are so few teams and the tournament wouldn't take that long, it's okay to have it every 2 years and in the off years when there is no Confed Cup spot on the line it will still be considered important to the teams who had to earn their way into the field via qualifying.
     
  2. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If the groups were played double round-robin and the Gold Cup was held every two years, the six countries (five if one of them was the Gold Cup host) that participate in the Hexagonal for World Cup qualifying would have to play 34 qualifiers every four years (18 WCQs and 8 Gold Cup qualifiers twice). If a country such as El Salvador this cycle went from the first round of qualifying to the Hexagonal it would be 20 WCQs and 36 qualifiers total. 34 is 10 more qualifiers than the most any UEFA team could have to play combined for Euro 2008 and World Cup 2010. The largest qualifying group size for Euro 2008 was 8 (14 games) and the largest group size for World Cup 2010 was 6 (10 games). In order to be feasible, your idea would need to have the Gold Cup every four years, qualifying groups done single round-robin at one site, or multiple rounds of qualifying starting with two leg series.
     
  3. Gwadaboyz 72

    Gwadaboyz 72 Member

    Jun 27, 2009
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    A Gold Cup with 12 teams is better because this allows for small caribbean countries like Grenada to have the opportunity to participate in this competition.
     

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