2020 Tokyo Olympics: Non-U.S. team and tournament news [R]

I love Caribbean club team names.

Humble Lion FC

 

Guatemala actually goes into Costa Rica and gets a 2-0 win, but it's not enough to make up for their 3-0 loss at home in the first leg.

Los Ticos advance to the final qualifying tournament, and if rumors are to be believed, they will host

 

FEDEFUTBOL(Costa Rica's FA) President Rodolfo Villalobos says the tournament will be in the USA in January or February 2020.

http://www.teletica.com/231482_pres...olimpico-de-concacaf-se-realice-en-costa-rica

It was scheduled to be in Costa Rica in October but no details had been released.

CONCACAF gonna CONCACAF!
Jan/Feb means it will be in the southern US obviously....

 

Caribbean nations are so schizo as programs.
Let's be clear, a full-strength Jamaica blows St. Kitts & Nevis out of the water (Leon Bailey and those cats). Their full national team has called up a bunch of players in this age group this calendar year. That team that embarrassed the US in their pre-Gold Cup friendly featured them. Its another CONCACAF example of parity after one nations top dog(s) are unavailable.

This is just like the US as we go without Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Weah, etc. in qualifying The gap between us and the likes of El Salvador then is not as great as we tend to hope/think/believe.

 

This is bad if true. The ideal scenario would be for at least part of the tournament to be played over the March international dates, which would make it more feasible to get a few Euro-based players.

 

Plus, domestic guys won't be in midseason shape, though maybe their availability improves somewhat. This would seem to necessitate a long pre-tournament training camp. U.S. Soccer can't be too happy if this is accurate.

 

Yeah, I was thinking the upside of January qualifying is that at least all of the MLS guys will be available, but they'll be out of shape. I also wonder if we could get some of the guys in Germany during that window, if it falls during their winter break.

 

Camp cupcake could essentially be a domestic U23 camp in preparation for this tournament. If the timing can work.........................

A January/February camp also means similar players for Mexico, Honduras and Costa Rica may not be available. Rigoberto Rivas of Inter Milan and Honduras, for instance. I'll put our depth (if not our elite talents) up against any of the teams in this region.

I don't think the US is getting Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Weah, etc. regardless of when the tournament is. So its kinda of a moot point.

 

Just watched an old episode of Burn Notice last night and they and to go to the Dominican Republic. A kid was kicking a soccer ball and I thought to myself he should be tossing a baseball. Then I got to wondering if they ever did anything in soccer. Guess occasionally but definitely a baseball country. Could they do a turnaround like Panama some day? May depend on if any player ever makes it big from there as I suspect that would get a lot of kids trying to be the next one after that.

 

At the moment ~12% of major leagues are Dominican (in terms of opening day 2019 rosters). A crazy percentage when you think about it. Just for comparison, there were 6 Canadians. Not 6 percent. 6 human beings. The DR is so baseball crazy, and the boys specialize completely in baseball at really young ages, that its not surprising that soccer hasn't been so popular or successful.

There is actually a comparison to be made about how MLB clubs exploit Dominican youngsters to how big Euro clubs have done the same with soccer players. There are certain protections by FIFA to cut down on abuse, which is not the case with baseball.

The promise and peril of the Dominican baseball pipeline
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-25/promise-and-peril-dominican-baseball-pipeline

 

Yes, but do you know who hosts?

 

Central American tabloids reporting the Guadalajara rumour giving UNCAF itself as their source:
http://twitter.com/ByDougMcIntyre/status/1156302862311460865
http://www.elgrafico.com/futbol/Preolimpico-sub-23-de-CONCACAF-ya-tiene-fecha-y-sede-20190814-0013.html

Tournament would be from March 20th to April 1st.

2 groups of 4.

Both those facts imply an identical format to the previous edition, which would give us the following:

Group A:
Game #1 Friday March 20th
Game #2 Sunday March 22nd
Game #3 Wednesday March 25th

Group B:
Game #1 Saturday March 21st
Game #2 Monday March 23rd
Game #3 Thursday March 26th

Semi-Final Sunday March 29th
Final Wednesday April 1st

Reminder: FIFA window is only from March 23rd to March 31st!

 

Haiti and the Dominican Republic have qualified for the qualifiers ( ), but winning playoff games this week.

North Texas SC's Ronaldo Damus scores for Haiti U23s in Olympic Qualifier  https://t.co/WYmOszlvkR #NTXSC #DTID #FCDallas

— 3rd Degree (@3rdDegreeNet) September 24, 2019

So the field is set................the usual suspects WITHOUT Jamaica and T&T.

 

For what it's worth, South Africa's U20s were the only one of those three countries to qualify for the 2017 FIFA finals (97/98s). Senegal and South Africa qualified for 2019 (99/00s). Does this mean anything? I don't know!

 

I just happened to go over to YouTube looking for something else (that I didn't find, you'll be sorry to hear) and South Korea-Australia was winding down.



Looks like South Korea has booked a ticket.