The 2015 Gold Cup is looking to be the best one yet. The Qualifying for this tournament took place on official FIFA dates for the Caribbean and CA teams, allowing the best teams to get their best players in, which in turn allows them to qualify. For the 2017 Gold Cup, qualification will be less ideal due to the extremely crowded schedules So, instead of trying to fit in a Caribbean and Central American cup around WCQ, why not do something a little different? Round 4 of WCQ ends on September 6th, 2016 and at that time 6 teams will be eliminated from WCQ I propose rewarding the teams that make the 6 HEX teams with automatic qualification to the Gold Cup while allowing the 6 teams eliminated to play a home-away leg against 6 previously eliminated teams from WCQ to determine the full Gold Cup field. Round 3 ends September 8th 2015 and at that point, 29 teams will have nothing to do until the next Carribean or Central American Cup. Take the October 2015 FIFA dates off and create 6 groups of 5 or 4 teams (depending on how many teams want to participate) where the 6 group winners get to play a home-away leg against the Round 4 WCQ eliminated teams. The Calendar works out perfectly. Play GC qualifiers on the 11/2015, 3/2016, 5/2016, 8/2016, and 10/2016 FIFA dates. This will accommodate any group of 5 that may arise to allow for a true group winner. The final home-away leg to determinate the last 2017 Gold Cup slots can be played on 11/2015 or even the 3/2017 FIFA dates. If is not fair the Central American and Caribbean teams in the middle of WCQ to be expected to play GCQ. In 2012 Guyana had to play GC qualifiers less than a week after their WCQ games against Costa Rica and Mexico. They essentially had to choose which to prioritize, which in this case gave their WCQ opponents an advantage, as it appears that the WCQ were not prioritized. I hope CONCACAF does not try to fit a Caribbean Cup and a Central American Cup in the middle of WCQ.
Are you including the areas that are not members of FIFA? If you are not, the amount of teams that will have nothing to do after September 8 will be 35 - 12 Semifinals = 23, not 29. I don't think most of the Caribbean countries would want a group stage with at least 3 home games and at least 3 away games because the countries don't have much money. That's one reason why Caribbean Cup groups of 4 are played at one site rather than like the WCQ Semifinals.
yeah I was including the non FIFA members because they will be eligible for GCQ. If full robin robin groups of 4 or 5 are too expensive, then do some preliminary rounds to get rid of those that are not going to take it seriously. I also doubt all of the 29 eligible would participate. Some type of automatic qualification should occur to help those in the HEX from having to worry about GCQ as well as the 6 teams eliminated in the pre-hex around who should not have to worry about GCQ and WCQ overlapping.
The 2014 Caribbean Cup let the host and defending champion start in the Caribbean Cup (with 8 teams) and let Guadeloupe and the second and third place teams from the previous Caribbean Cup skip the First Qualifying Round. Maybe the format could be modified so that any Caribbean countries that reach the WCQ Semifinals don't have to qualify for the Caribbean Cup.
that would be a fair thing to do. gold cup qualifying as a whole greatly improved this past cycle which was nice to see. the off year qualifying and cup is always played in such a congested time frame, which is really unfortunate. i wish they would do something radical such as guaranteeing gold cup slots to hex qualifiers while letting those that did not make the hex fight for the remaining 6 slots, but i know that is a pipe dream