Glenn Davis's report is that the semifinals will be a not-quite doubleheader in Houston. If he's right, US/Honduras will be at BBVA while Mexico and Costa Rica play at NRG on the same night.
FIFA has added a FIFA rankings release date. I assume at the request of CONCACAF, they have added a ranking date on June 11th. http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ The FIFA international match window is June 1st to 9th The UEFA EURO and the Copa America start on June 12th https://resources.fifa.com/image/up...ar-2018-2024.pdf?cloudid=vypxfhb9frfxwu25v23z Not before June 11th now, but as I said, CONCACAF can do a pre-draw in May if they want.
Houston and Dallas to host CONCACAF nations league finals https://www.yahoo.com/sports/housto...acaf-nations-league-final-four-031242444.html
as a Houstonian, this is pleasing, as I feel like we end up hosting a bunch of US-Mexico friendlies as de facto road games. but i wish the US game was indoors at NRG. is it that we can't take being the undercard in the same stadium? because "June in Texas." either that or they want to sell more than 70k seats they will sell for CR-Mexico by making it two separate sales.
http://www.concacafnationsleague.co...r-concacaf-nations-league-finals-in-june-2020 http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/202...al-on-june-4-at-houstons-bbva-compass-stadium It's all official now. The tabloids had the news over a month before the official announcement. Not bad! No news yet about the HEX schedule yet.
https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/06/2...ancel-concacaf-september-world-cup-qualifying September window is canceled -- October at earliest -- and Concacaf qualifying will be messed around with when things do start. "The challenges presented by postponements to the football calendar, and the incomplete FIFA rankings cycle in our confederation, means our current World Cup Qualifying process has been compromised and will be changed. We will now work with the new framework provided and liaise with FIFA to finalize a new World Cup Qualification format for the Concacaf region....." To be blunt, I do not expect international soccer to proceed at the same rapid speed as a fairly political domestic timetable. We are influenced by a chunk of the country that wants normalcy at any cost. We are willing to get a whole team sick to try and reboot soccer mid-spike. The region is not going to play along with that. Even if they were playing friendlies the EU has us banned for any road game ideas. We might have trouble scheduling a game. We love to host. Many teams wouldn't want to come here right now. Many teams might not want to play us period. People need to realize that from the outside our attitude towards our spike looks crazed. People need to realize flu + covid will come back worse in the fall. I think it's possible no international soccer this year.
My biggest concern for US qualifying and every plan I've heard out of CONCACAF -- an OCT, starting with an extended winter break -- leads me to think there's a very good chance we will be without European players in much of qualifying. Can an American playing in Europe come over here and even return to Europe? If they can, will their team want them to do so if it means a two week quarantine? Will they even want to risk it?
Last I heard American citizens were banned from entering Europe. I would be curious if our players already there could come home this summer -- as it stands there may be little gap before "2021 season" starts anyway. Loophole I can think of is dual nationals with an EU passport. But I haven't sorted out if it's a "US plane" ban or a "US passport" ban. One of the swiss cheese holes in Donald's "China ban" was a dual national American could hop aboard the same Wuhan plane a strict Chinese passport holder could not, and they were not strictly quarantined when they came home. Some dual nationals got people sick here when they returned. So the question is, could Weah wave their other passport instead. But you have your finger on one of the logistical issues, which is that international soccer is not usually the whole team gathers in x and flies to y together, but instead you're aggregating people from all over in one place, various transportation, and we take health and getting through passport lines and not being banned for granted. It's now like, if they left country x would they be allowed to return to Europe? Would foreign based players looking at our mess pass on a request to play? But to me the fact we are such a mess, for the time being, moots the discussion. No one would want to play us. Or next to no one. No one is going to want to start qualifying under these circumstances. Last, UK is no longer EU post Brexit. I think we are used to thinking about them as part of it, and they are still UEFA for soccer. But for purposes of border control, I think we have UK quarantine -- which I think Pulisic had to serve when he returned -- but not the ban. So the handful of UK based could play but would have to serve quarantine. Which might be an effective ban for inseason windows. Who is going to call a player who would have to miss 2 pro weeks on return.
Unrelated point but it's interesting that the FA continues to treat UEFA players as domestics post Brexit for work permit purposes. Previously this would have been a legal offshoot of "right to work" within EU -- ie -- a EU passport holder can live and work anywhere in Europe they want to. So our EU passport players could play in the UK. If they changed that to match Brexit you would then have a split between CCV type players who have UK passports versus Pulisic (Croatia), Miazga (Poland), Yedlin (Latvia). Maybe they would grandfather-in previously registered players.
If FIFA is dictating things and Europe is under control, and if CONCACAF is run by a Canadian and Canada and most of the Caribbean is under control ... I'm not sure the US is going to get a lot of sympathy. But perhaps we just play our qualifying somewhere else? Canada in winter may not be a good option (though probably the best virus option), but maybe we play everything in Cuba or Costa Rica or something.
My guess would be that CONCACAF tries to wrap up Nations League and some Gold Cup qualifiers in November and then get qualifying going in March, but who knows what will happen with the feared "second wave". We're not exactly handling the 1st one very well. It's anyone's guess at this point, we don't even know how many matchdays we'll have before Qatar
My parsing of the way they worded their announcement -- is that covid "compromised" the old plan by killing the March window and the Nations League final/June window, which they had planned into the rankings that were then going to define the field(s). "We told you you'd maybe get 4 more games and you didn't...." My guess would be their wish would be that they could go back to the old way, two windows of games, pick by rank, then speed up the fixtures. If covid doesn't allow them to do that, they may come up with some new concept. I would assume any such idea would be over-inclusive compared to the hex concept, to get buy-in. One way would be an accelerated process but maybe with more teams with a chance, a la Gold Cup, women's qualifying, youth qualifying. Neutral site, etc., as you suggest. I see covid as a long term thing, couple years at least. So you pick someplace safe and try and get it over with. Not here. Issue there is going to be the "Dallas" potentiality. The site is perhaps safe but the teams may be coming from unsafe locations. What do you do for safety? Testing? Quarantine? What if a team starts to test positive? MLS basically punted that question, except the games are supposed to count for the regular season, at least in group play. If the league ever plays out, they'd have to fix that. Can you send a sick team home then?? FWIW at one point Florida was running victory laps and acting like they were safe. Now? Not so much. Setting aside politics, what looks safe if you award a bid ahead of time might not be so later on. Another thing to factor in is this thing might have to be closed-doors and the usual attraction -- or even gross distortion -- is making money off attendance hosting. Who's gonna host a tournament that "costs?" TV might offset but a crowd-less tournament is not a money tree.
If disease is any risk you would have to hold the tournament in one of the countries with excellent medicine. Canada would rate high because they have world cup hosting experience and facilities but they also have low covid numbers and good hospital systems. Basically the US without the covid issue. Cuba would have medicine but not enough stadia. They were still fixing the lights on the national stadium and had to hold those neutral site games in the Caymans last year. And you'd need more than one venue for a tournament or neutral site round robin.
Personally I think we will play for time and take advantage of the fact this was going to be a late tournament anyhow. I would watch for the lead of the other regions. Asia had started, but stopped. No one is playing yet. I'd watch how they play out, if UEFA in particular abandons the original rankings concept for something else.
"You and your family usually need to apply to continue living in the UK after 31 December 2020 if you’re from any of the following: the EU (except Ireland) Iceland Liechtenstein Norway Switzerland" https://www.gov.uk/staying-uk-eu-citizen My understanding was that EU passport holders were allowed in before under EU right to live/work. They are out of the EU. You no longer have a right to live/work in the UK by being an EU citizen, as a general rule. At least as of 12/20. (Unless you're RoI.) "The government plans to pass a law in the next year which will end EU citizens' freedom of movement from the end of the transition. That means they will need a visa to work or live in the UK long term." but "The UK government has said it will protect the rights of any EU citizens already living in the UK on 31 December 2020 - currently roughly 3.5 million people. While they have the right to remain, they must apply for a new legal status in order to prove this. To do this, they will have to register with the government's EU settlement scheme, which is open until 30 June 2021." and "Anyone who can prove they have been in the UK continuously for five years or more should be eligible for settled status, which must be applied for online. ...... Those living in the UK for shorter periods of time should qualify for pre-settled status, which can be upgraded to settled status once the applicant has reached the five-year milestone." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49973387 The implication to me is existing EU passport players would be grandfathered in -- as long as they stayed put -- as well as players who transfer in this summer -- if they apply for this scheme. It is unclear what will happen for new players after December 2020. Soccer already has its own particular immigration rules. In theory they could prop up the EPL by continuing with work permit rules similar to what they use now. Or it could become more like the UK in general in which case the EPL will have fewer EU players chosen for work permit clearance or being already grandfathered.
https://www.concacaf.com/en/article...al-qualification-to-fifa-world-cup-qatar-2022 The First Round (30 teams) will be played between the Concacaf Member Associations ranked 6-35 based on the FIFA rankings as of July 16, 2020. The 30 men’s national teams will be drawn into six groups of five in a seeded draw. Each team will play every other team in their group once, playing a total of four matches; two home and two away. These games will be played in the FIFA match windows of October 2020 and November 2020. At the end of the First Round the six group winners will progress to the Second Round. --- The Second Round (six teams) will be played between the group winners from the First Round. The teams will play home and away in a direct elimination format in the FIFA match window of March 2021. The three winners will progress to the Final Round. ---- The Final Round (eight teams) of the Concacaf Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 will see the three winners from the Second Round join the Concacaf Member Associations ranked 1-5 based on the FIFA rankings as of July 16th, 2020. Final Round teams: 1. Mexico 2. USA 3. Costa Rica 4. Jamaica 5. Honduras 6. Second Round Winner 7. Second Round Winner 8. Second Round Winner. The Final Round will begin in the double FIFA match window in June 2021 and continue in the FIFA match windows of September, October, November 2021 and January and March 2022. The eight teams will play each other home and away, with each team playing 14 matches. At the end of the Final Round, the top three finishing teams will qualify directly to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. The fourth placed team will qualify for the FIFA Intercontinental Playoff, scheduled to be played in June 2022. ------- The 2019/20 Concacaf Nations League Finals will now take place in the FIFA match window of March 2021, at a venue in the United States to be determined.
We are thus On To The Ocho officially. Personally, editorially, I think the calendar is heavy on wish fulfillment, I will be curious if any of this plays out as planned, but it's the official schedule going forward. "Assuming," our schedule would be NL March 2020, Ocho June 2021-March 2022. June will be a 4 game window and there will be an added January window. June June September October November January March. The only room for friendlies would be before next March -- if any can even happen -- and then maybe May before the 4 game window. So generally speaking we're on to games that count, with what that may imply for marginal players who had been hurt/out of favor. I sat on this the other day when someone mentioned it, because this still feels pie in the sky, but I will be curious how this interacts with foreign seasons -- particularly European -- where there had been talk of running 2021-22 and 2022-23 somewhat off-schedule because of the winter tournament.
2021 Gold Cup will be July 10, 2021, and the Final will take place on August 1, 2021. 12 teams will play some sort of tournament before GC 2021, in the US, to try and get in to 4 remaining slots out of 16, with Panama, Suriname, Martinique, Curacao, CR, ES, Mexico, US, Jamaica, Grenada, Honduras, and Canada. That timing sounds like a US B team event. Again, "assuming."
i was reading an article where soto signed at norwich and had an epiphany. assuming we're playing games per the schedule, including the olympics, who is playing gold cup?? basically, i've heard him ticketed to the olympic team. but olympics got punted back a year to july/august 2021. however, gold cup is now set for july/august 2021 as well. and we're playing july EPL games and would also mess around with the 21-22 league schedules in service of qatar 22. so you may not have some of the over-age A team first team regulars due to league conflict combined with wanting them for the incessant quali schedule. natural response, normally? call the B team and younger, ie, U23 type players. except, olympics. so the U23s cannot be in 2 places at once. and, it bears noting, with the way the schedule is drawn up, it occurred to me August was the only experimental window we had. cause they basically booked solid march 2021-end of quali. which i would anticipate would encourage GB to do status quo rostering, wise or unwise. so this raises the questions who goes to the olympics and who does gold cup and when is there a chance to try younger players (eg weah soto), or do they end up basically trapped by the schedule into U23 instead you avoid this quandary if you miss the olympics again you could send an experiment to NL another option would be send the U20s to olympics and U23s + domestics to gold cup, but U20 has its own world cup that spring, which doesn't make a ton of sense you can see where this will encourage punting experiments until already qualified -- either that or you have to take a full qualifier flyer on someone this all assumes covid doesn't wash this all away, a distinct possibility
Getting word #USMNT might end up playing a friendly with Euro-based squad at Wales in FIFA fixture window in November. (UEFA teams have three dates in Nov window.) USA v Wales friendly this past March in Cardiff was called off because of pandemic.— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) August 4, 2020