When doesn’t 2022 World Cup qualifying start?

Discussion in 'USA Men' started by phillyfan593, Oct 17, 2018.

  1. phillyfan593

    phillyfan593 Member

    Jul 20, 2011

    They might be waiting a little longer it looks like. No announcement yet.
     
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  2. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    AFC just played Round 1, which had 12 teams. They tried to eliminated 6 teams to be left with 40 for 8 groups of 5 in Round 2. However, Macau did not go to their second leg in Sri Lanka, and FIFA is deciding what to do. There are no matchdays before September 5 when Round 2 starts.

    CONMEBOL will play 18 matchdays in 2 years rather than the usual 3 years. They have the Copa America now, and maybe friendlies in September, October, and/or November. They play 2 WCQs each in March 23-31, August 31-September 8, October 5-13, and November 9-17, 2020; and March 22-30, May 31-June 8, August 30-September 7, October 4-12, and November 8-16, 2021. They won't play in June 2020 because there will be another Copa America. Normally the last November would have a CONMEBOL team in an interconfederational playoff, but with World Cup 2022 being later, the playoffs with be in March 2022.
     
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  3. phillyfan593

    phillyfan593 Member

    Jul 20, 2011
    I’m surprised that their formats are set and that some have already began to qualify while we don’t even know our format regarding the USA.
     
  4. HomietheClown

    HomietheClown Member+

    Dusselheim FC 1971
    Sep 4, 2010
    Club:
    --other--
    CONCACAF has two Gold Cups and a Nations League that are their priority $$$$$$.
     
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  5. phillyfan593

    phillyfan593 Member

    Jul 20, 2011
    It’s incredible though that we have not heard anything.
     
  6. jagum

    jagum Member

    CF Montreal
    Venezuela
    Jun 20, 2007
    Panama City, Panama
    Club:
    Montreal Impact
    Nat'l Team:
    Venezuela
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  7. Ironbound

    Ironbound Member+

    Jul 1, 2009
    Wow. I really do not like putting that much weight on the crappy FIFA rankings, nor the reduction in the number of qualifiers this would mean. I mean, it's fine for the USA, but not for the competition overall.

    Just for the hell of it, the top six in the most recent rankings were Mexico, USA, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Honduras, El Salvador. Gotta think that #9 Curacao and #11 Haiti will be making big moves after the Gold Cup though.
     
  8. phillyfan593

    phillyfan593 Member

    Jul 20, 2011
    The CONCACAF will make changes in the system for qualification to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which will favor those who are better in the FIFA ranking, according to sources within the organization.

    In the information that was released by Hernán Pereyra of Jorge Ramos and his Band, the body will announce the new format where 6 teams will play a hexagonal to play 3 World Cup tickets, while 29 teams will have to play a mini tournament that will give the winner the opportunity to dispute with the hexagonal room the remaining half ticket.

    According to documents held by ESPN Digital, the 35 selections that will enter into dispute will be divided into two. The first will be established by the FIFA ranking they have in June 2020, so the first 6 will play the hexagonal.

    These 6, will play matches to reciprocal visit from June 2020, and where the first 3 will have their direct ticket to Qatar. The one who is in fourth place, will wait for the winner of the mini tournament to dispute the other half ticket.

    For the remaining 29 selections, the tournament will be played in 8 groups; 3 of them with 3 selections, and 5 groups with 4 teams.

    The 8 winning teams of their group will go to a second round in March 2021, where a direct elimination will be played.

    By June 2021, the best 4 will pass and in September of the same year, the remaining two will face each other. The winner will play against the team that is in fourth place in the hexagonal and the winner of those two teams will go to the repechage against a team from Asia, Oceania or Conmebol, depending on what FIFA establishes.
     
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  9. phillyfan593

    phillyfan593 Member

    Jul 20, 2011
    I could not agree more. Those FIFA rankings are not very accurate all the time. The first three teams are pretty easy. But 4 through 10 is debatable. Pretty harsh if you were the number seven team and you lose out by a couple of points when you don’t even get a chance to prove yourself on the field. I am all about competition. This does not promote competition
     
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  10. yurch10

    yurch10 Member+

    Feb 13, 2004
    So now the Gold Cup is pretty much a joke, and we lose a bunch of pre-Hex qualifiers...unless we can somehow get into Copa (are we a part of 2020 version?), then the US basically has 10 games, and 3-4 games in the World Cup. About 14 consequential games every 4 years. Pretty lame.
     
  11. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    phillyfan593 said the June 2020 FIFA Rankings will be used, so a lot of games will be played before then. The next rankings come out Thursday July 25.

    Oceania has 11 teams. In the last 2 WCQs, 4 teams played a round-robin group that advanced the winner. The remaining 8 teams competed for the playoff spot. The 4 teams that started earliest had 1/(4*8) = 1/32 of a spot in the interconfederational playoff. The Concacaf teams in groups of 4, will have to win five aggregates, with three against group winners, one against the fourth place Hexagonal team, and one in the interconfederational playoff. That means they have 1/64 of a spot in the interconfederational playoff and 1/128 of a spot in the World Cup. Put another way, if all 211 members of FIFA had 1/128 of a spot in the World Cup, it would have 211/128 = 1.65 teams, and it has almost 20 times that amount. Comparing it to the bottom teams in WCQs for 2010 who had to win an aggregate and a group of four to reach the Semifinals, they had 1/8 of a spot in the Semifinals, 1/16 of a spot in the Hexagonal, and 1/16*(3.5/6) = 3.5/96 = 1/27.43 of a spot in the World Cup.

    I wonder if the Hexagonal will have five pairs of matchdays or will have pairs and individual games like Asia's last group stage. If you don't WCQs in June 2021 because of the Gold Cup, the Hexagonal could do something like this:

    June 2020: 2
    September 2020: 1
    October 2020: 2
    November 2020: 1
    March 2021: 1
    September 2021: 1
    October 2021: 2
    November 2021: Concacaf playoff
    March 2022: Interconfederational playoff

    I would prefer all the games in pairs, but then there will be unused FIFA matchdays during the Hexagonal or the Hexagonal will finish way before the top team from everybody else is ready for the playoff. Unused matchdays are good for friendlies only if teams from other confederations are available. Hypothetically, the Hexagonal could have two games each in June 2020, September 2020, October 2020, November 2020, and March 2021, but then the top three would have about 20 months until the World Cup, and the fourth place team would have about 8 months until the Concacaf playoff.

    I will have to think about how much to make each round worth in my WCQ prediction contest.
     
  12. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Robert Borden posted the schedule in the Concacaf forum, so some of my previous post is irrelevant. The Hexagonal will be in September 2020, October 2020, November 2020, March 2021, and September 2021. Having three consecutive pairs of games be November then March then September is too long a wait IMO, and that's how the Semifinals for 2018 were done. The gap from beginning to end will be the longest ever. The previous longest was November-March-June-September-October for 2018. In both cases, it's because of a national team tournament, before the 2016 Copa America and now the 2021 Gold Cup. The teams 7th through 35th will play their group stage in September, October, and November 2020. Their knockout rounds will be in March, June, and September 2021, so four teams will have WCQs and the Gold Cup in summer 2021. The Concacaf playoff will be in October 2021.
     
  13. Chicago76

    Chicago76 Member+

    Jun 9, 2002

    They aren't very accurate, but the problem is largely avoided because there is such a wide discrepancy between the CONCACAF sides. USA/MEX/Costa Rica are all top 6 staples. The next three come from the best of another (and I'm being generous here) 8 sides. The thing is those 8 sides over the long term aren't that different, but in any cycle there's quite a bit of difference between whoever is 4-6 and whoever is 8-10. Enough that the rankings do a pretty good job.

    FWIW: the current ranking system correctly identified 5, 6, and 5 teams in the last 3 hexes 3 years in advance. The odd team out tended to have a trickier group. So either one in which the number 2 team in the 3x4 was a fairly strong #4 or #5 type of team in the hex or they fell victim to a scheduling problem, ie, the team that finished 2nd in the 3x4 ahead of them had Mexico/USA late in the group when there was nothing for USA/Mex to play for while they did not have that luxury.
     
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  14. Guinho

    Guinho Member+

    San Jose Earthquakes, bless their hearts
    Estonia
    May 27, 2001
    San Francisco, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    That’s total garbage. There should be qualification based on results on the field, not some arbitrary ranking. Now everyone will need to arrange friendlies to game the system. I can’t believe the concacaf members voted for this. They’ll almost never get to play the big teams this way.

    From a statistical theoretical sense, the prior system was one of the better qualification systems out there. This is silly. Great, so the US saves six matches. I guess that’s good for the players
     
  15. Chicago76

    Chicago76 Member+

    Jun 9, 2002
    It's a one off thing due to the Nations League calendar and this being the last 32 team WC. Overall, I liked the 3x4 moving to the Hex, but there were some weaknesses there too.

    The biggest problem with that system came down to small groups with a lot of disparity between teams 1-4 in those groups. You could pencil in USA/MEX/CR. Looking at it from a team in the #5-#9 level overall, there was a lot of variability in the path in those 4 team groups. If you got a strong #2 and were one of the two groups without a minnow, you were pretty hosed. Ranking the groups by overall 2-4 strength last time:

    Panama, Haiti, Jamaica
    Honduras, Canada, El Salvador
    T&T, Guatemala, St. V&G

    T&T were gifted a path and group leaders USA weren't done many favors either in terms of Hex prep. Haiti and Canada, by virtue of the draw, were placed in a really difficult position with 2 of the top 5 teams in the region in their groups.

    The one advantage of the new system is that it gives teams on the Haiti and Canada level a chance to prove themselves among their peers. The best one will emerge. The winner will get a few minnows for roster experiments early on, then 6 knockout style matches in three rounds with a solid slate of opponents coming from a group of Panama, Canada, Curacao, T&T, and Haiti. Then a chance in a home/away playoff. From the perspective of a team in the 5-11 range, in certain ways this isn't as susceptible to draw luck in the 3x4 to get to the Hex.

    In the last 3 cycles, there has not been a team ranked at this point in the cycle outside of the top 6 who has managed a direct qual spot anyway. Closest was Honduras at this point in the 2010 cycle at 6th. They were grouped pretty tightly with 5-7, but there was a pretty big drop from 7 to 8 and an even bigger one from 8 to 9. Canada was kind of a "paper #4" then. Their Gold Cup performance elevated them a lot more than it would today because they hadn't played a lot of fixtures in the years leading up. With an emphasis on more scheduling, I don't think they would have received the same bump, so Honduras might have been a #5 anyway.

    I don't love this system, but it's not nearly as bad as it looks at first glance.
     
  16. Chicago76

    Chicago76 Member+

    Jun 9, 2002
    Just thought about something that I don't think has been mentioned yet regarding qualifying going forward in a 48 team cup world: the 2022 system seems like it dovetails into that fairly well.

    Concacaf will have 6 spots in 2026 + 1 playoff spot for the interconfed tournament. I could see them adapting the "playoff" flight to account for that.

    29 teams ranked 7-35 in 6 groups of 4 or 5. 6 group winners advance. They join teams 1-6 in 2 groups of 6. Top 3 in both groups qualify. #4s compete in a playoff to advance to the interconfed playoff tournament.

    The hex is as good as gone post 2022. It becomes really important to create a robust selection process for teams 7-12, which is what those prelim groups involving so many teams does. Seeing multiple St V&G types in the 2x6 due to knockout pairings would really screw with the bracket balance. Imagine two of those being drawn into a single group of 6 with 3 direct spots and 1 playoff on the line.
     

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