Yeah, as if the Concacaf non-USSF honchos based in Miami, and absolutely nothing to do with US Soccer, were thinking of this scheme all on their own, and Blazering righteously on the up and up. That's Cordeiro you can haul gold to the bank with, for sure. ......Now, other than that, your post makes 100% grade A USSF Prime total sense.
Don't blame FIFA for that bulls@#t. They just allocate slots for every confederation. With that type of qualifying cycle CONCACAF will be weaker than ever in Qatar 2022. Even worse - unbiased fans will start questioning the sanity of giving CONCACAF the 2026 World Cup.
Panama is not in a group with Cuba. Cuba are in group with Canada and USA. Almost certainly they will lose all their games.
Which is still far lower than 18. The level of CONCACAF will decline significantly in the next World Cup.
Sorry, but the fact that they're missing out on qualification games against St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Guatemala is't going to do jack shit for the quality of CONCACAF. That's just dumb.
And yet we'll end up playing a equivilent or higher tier of CONCACAF team through the Nations League and friendly dates than we would anyway instead of the semifinal round.
This format appeases the smaller countries by giving them more competitive games later in the cycle. It will piss off Panama & maybe a few others if they’re not in the Hex, but oh well
Many thanks to everyone who took at shot at running the numbers for Canada. Worth noting that games against Martinique et al. absolutely do not count for FIFA - as far as they're concerned, the Martinique NT doesn't exist.
I found my error on Honduras and now agree it is 1349. The error didn't change any other teams' totals once they are rounded off to integers.
Panama, Honduras, Canada, Jamaica, T&T, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Curacao Those are the countries (along with US/Mex/CR who aren't falling out of the top 6) who could have realistic aspirations of making at least the Hex at this point. In the past, they would have gotten the opportunity to play for the final 3 spots and either earn one or fail to do so on the field. Now, 3 of them will be gifted spots and the other 6 will have a colossal hill to climb. It's a pathetic joke. It doesn't really matter to my team, but as a fan of the sport it's terrible.
ok , so based on the press conference that our Fed pres just gave today, we (Panama) can get a max of 28 points from the LoN , and ESV can get a max of 17. Plus we supposedly have 4 friendlies in 2019, that can give us a max of 12 points total. I think he said ESV only has 2 friendlies left. I have no idea if his math is correct.
I hear you but when it’s one country one vote, there’s a whole lot more countries that are guaranteed more competitive matches & thus a bigger payday. That’s why it happened
I mean, by that logic why not just pick the 3 automatic bids by lottery and everyone else can play for the half spot. It's the only way most teams in CONCACAF would have any chance at making the WC, after all. There has to be a line drawn against this crap somewhere.
I don’t think they will get a bigger pay day with the new format. I suspect we will have a few FA’s decide they don’t want to complete a long and expensive World Cup qualifying campaign. They also won’t have the TV rights to Mexico or the USA games which is where the big pay day was during qualifying for the smaller countries. This format doesn’t appear to benefit many countries I am very surprised the Caribbean countries signed off on this
This may be a dumb question, but does CONCACAF actually make more money by having The US and Mexico qualify for a World Cup?
CONCACAF makes more money by having teams advance farther in the World Cup. In the long run, I'm sure CONCACAF's television contracts for the Gold Cup, WQC and anything else they run and own the rights to are benefitted by a strong US and Mexican team, as those constitute, I think, well over 50% of the population and probably closer to 80% of the wealth in the CONCACAF region (yes, I made that last number up, but I bet it's close and maybe even low). I think people underestimate how important it is to CONCACAF and all it's nations to perform well at the WC. The money from there gets distributed pretty evenly -- when Mexico makes the round of 16, Trinidad gets more money for their federation, I think, than if Trinidad went and lost all three games. Add in that CONCACAF needs to defend its bids desperately, and there's a real reason why the CONCACAF structure has always tried to restrict upsets.
But then all you guys won't have the "Jozy scored 7 goals in qualifying" Stat anymore once St Vincent is out of play. Sad face.
FIFA may as well do away with qualifying and just let the top 32 (48 after Qatar) based on rankings into the cup. [emoji33]
close concacaf makes more money when the bigger teams do better everywhere. they get bigger tv contracts and match revenues, the world cup gets the same and that trickles down to concacaf so the answer is yes. Nobody will watch panama in a wc or haiti or whatever little country makes it instead of the us.
As the international game slowly dies, I can see it happening. Right now the Top 48: UEFA = 29 C-BOL = 8 CAF = 4 AFC = 4 C-CAF = 3 OFC = 0 The New Zealand situation, and that of teams like Panama and Jamaica, proves how having weak rivals in your own region affects negatively your ranking. The Kiwis are not the #119 team in the world, but they're stuck there playing mostly those little islands. The entire ranking system benefits the most those teams that are already in a strong confederation, and the more decent rivals they have to face, the better.
Which is why ratings for 2014 tanked when Costa Rica made the QFs, and everyone turned off the 2018 final when Croatia made it instead of England