Three leagues, relegation and promotion, and the fearsome BVI, “Dashing Eagles”! Goodbye BS debates about efficacy of friendlies, hello debates about efficacy of the LON! Discuss:
Metaphors!! I would say LoN is the (in)Justice Legue USA is Cos-play Superman T&T is cos-play kryptonite made out of a rock, some styrofoam, and green food coloring
Canada is Dudley Do Right. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Do-Right] Wait, who is the US's first opponent in the LoN? I don't recall seeing the schedule anywhere, but I'm sure it's out there.
The games through March 2019 are qualifying games. The 6 hex teams will not start playing until joined by the 6 additional “A” league teams that qualify and then not until after the Gold cup(?). Short story: US does not have a schedule as of yet
UEFA and CONMEBOL have already announced their LoN competitions. FIFA's ambition is for these to feed into a global LoN in 2021 which I guess would replace the Confederations Cup.
It's not the League of Nations; it's now officially the "Nations League". Presumably they ran into someone with a high schooler's knowledge of history. The format is 4 groups of three, playing a double round-robin of home and away. The group winner goes to a finals tournament; the group loser is relegated. Not a lot of games, so each result would be important. If the MNT checked out mentally for a couple games, they might actually be relegated.
Only 4-6 games over 6 months, that's not as awful as I'd feared it was going to be. Shouldn't impact our ability to schedule friendlies against decent teams outside of that time window. There are 3 sets of group play matchdays (one each in Sep/Oct/Nov of last year), no indication yet if teams will play two games in one of the months and one in each of the other two, or if each month will have two of the teams going home-and-home with the third having that month off. The former would seem to make more sense (latter is easier logistically but would leave the final round of group play wide open for shenanigans), but it's CONCACAF. Our group is likely to be something like Honduras and Cuba, Jamaica and Martinique, or Canada and El Salvador. I'm assuming they'll seed the pots by FIFA rankings, meaning we won't get Mexico or Costa Rica in the first round (or whichever of Panama/Honduras is ranked higher whenever they do the draw). Likely to be a snoozefest but there's at least the chance we'll get a decent Caribbean road trip out of it. Semis and final will presumably held at NFL stadiums with CONCACAF referees trying their damndest to get a USA-Mexico money grab final. Bottom line it still kinda sucks but it doesn't seem as awful as it did when they first announced it, it'll only be a few games and won't eat up all of our friendly dates.
I'm not sure that's the case. Because they're not getting rid of the Cup competitions - Gold Cup, Copa America, Euros - and besides, the Confederations Cup is once every four years, while the "leagues" will generate a winner every year. Sort of related to that - CONCACAF seems to be planning for the Nations League to entirely replace Gold Cup qualifying. The 2019 Gold Cup will be the six teams of the Hex + 10 top-placed finishers in Nations League qualifying. That might work this time, but what about the future? Nations League qualifying is a one-off to kickstart the league, and the Hex won't be played in 2021. The 2021 Gold Cup will require a completely different qualifying format. Theoretically, the top 16 finishers in the Nations League could directly qualify for the Gold Cup - but Nations League will be every year, while Gold Cup is two years. Does that mean every other year, the Nations League results become significantly less important? It's almost like they didn't really think this through. My guess is that Nations League becomes a completely meaningless trophy that's awarded every year but no one really cares about. That is, unless CONCACAF decides they want to raise its importance and does something stupid, like tie it directly into World Cup qualifying. Then it becomes a logistical tangle - "If you finish highly in the Nations League this year, it won't matter and won't mean anything, but if you don't finish highly then you'll be moved into an unfavorable draw in the qualifying for the Gold Cup next year, which directly impacts your seeding for the World Cup qualifiers, unless you raise your FIFA ranking two years from now which will let you avoid a playoff for that round, unless you win the Nations League the year before, which will ...." The best-case scenario is that it becomes a completely meaningless trophy that impacts nothing.
Everything I see looks like the Nations League is supposed to be every two years. There's the group stage in late 2019, and then the four League A group winners have a championship playoff in 2020, and then the next group stage in 2021. For Gold Cup 2021, they could do something such as having the 12 League A teams (after 2019 pro/rel) automatically qualify, and then have some sort of qualification tournament for League B/C teams to take the remaining spots. They would have all of 2020 and the first half of 2021 to find a spot in the calendar for those qualifiers.
So if everything goes to form how many times will the US and Mexico end up playing each other per World Cup cycle? Hex home and away Nations League home and away x 2 Gold Cup x 2 Olympic qualifying home and away
lol, Presumably the 3rd team in that group of 3 would be something akin to Belize, Antigua, or similar. Getting relegated would be very hard in that case. I suppose a once in a generation Nicaragua or Guat team could pose a threat but it seems to me those teams are getting worse not better and our main problem is certain teams like Jamaica and Canada developing into real Hex threats. Hwvr, the 1st/2nd place ranking would be in play, for sure, if I understand the system correctly.
Well we won't be participating in WCQ in the 2026 cycle (they likely won't either, but TBD given their and Canada's status as "junior" hosts) and from that cycle on the WC is 48 teams so who knows what CONCACAF's qualifying format will look like, and we actually haven't played them in the last 3 Gold Cups--they lost in the semis in 2013 and 2017 and we did the same in 2015. Plus we presumably won't play them in the first round of the Nations League and I believe the semis/final are single elimination, so we'd play them at most once per tournament. There's also the possibility of a CONCACAF Cup if we keep playing the Gold Cup every other year, but if FIFA shitcans the Confed Cup that won't be the case. The issue is more that we'll play teams like Honduras and T&T over and over and over again
I'm getting kind of skeptical that the 2021 CC is going to happen, to be honest. Assuming they keep the AFC host my guess is it'll be one of China, Japan, South Korea, or Australia...someone capable of throwing something together on short notice.
More than anything I hope the Nations League trophy is as stupid looking as possible. The fact that the original CCL trophy and Gold Cup Traffic Cone have been replaced is a goddamn disgrace.
Or they take the 12 2019 A teams and the 2019 B group champions. Meaning the earliest the relegated teams from League A wouldn't be in the Gold Cup would be 2023, assuming they also don't win their League B group in 2021.
I don't think it's every two years. I think the tournament takes up most of the current friendly slots over a two year period. So the cup would be played throughout 2019 and 2020.
The schedule is already set for 2019-20. The group stage uses the six international matchdays in Sept./Oct./Nov. 2019, and then the playoff is March 23-31, 2020. Only the four teams in the playoff (the League A group winners) have any Nations League obligations in 2020. Then the next group stage is in 2021.
I hadn't realized that it was only every two years. I find that scheduling very odd, in that case - because the actual "season" for Nations League would only be seven months (three of which will not see any games played), ending with the final in March 2020 - and then it goes dormant for 18 months until September 2021. Why make it so short, if it's every two years? All the group games are contested in just three months - why not spread them out over several international windows across the two years? I can get their logic for the first edition - they want the Nations League wrapped up quickly before summer 2019 so it doesn't overshadow the prestige and greatness that is the Gold Cup - but why continue that pattern? Why not one group game every few months - one in November 2019, then another in March 2020, June 2020, finish the group stage in September 2020, have your pointless final and trophy ceremony in March 2021?
Because in the meantime SUM and the Mexican Federation need to make money from all those lucrative Tex-Mex friendlies.