well they can do both...if copa america can have 6 guest teams...gold cup can too..... besides, what are the carribean teams doing for themselves??
People have more or less made this point: The US in high summer in the day time is also a unique kind of environment. It's possible our coach won't have much idea what it's like. A dress rehearsal is a good idea.
all well and good. fact remains that if this federation was worth its salt it would find a way to seriously test this squad ans top lining up wales c team and bosnia d team for matches
That's up to chance. And it's more likely you get a dud. Here were the other groups: Peru, Ecuador, Haiti Mexico/Uruguay, Venezuela, Jamaica Chile, Panama, Bolivia 3/4 of the groups were totally unsatisfactory. And the opponents in ours were considered formidable at home in part because of how awful we were at the time. Then 3 of the KO stage sides were Venezuela, Peru, & Ecuador. I'd like to ensure we play a real tourney, instead of potentially 4 teams we should comfortably beat at home, then Brasil or Argentina who should beat us. I want to see virtually even matches for info-gathering. A neutral setting where we aren't 1-seeded should provide that.
I'd like to be tested on the road but what we bring to the table is money in the form of hosting. It's not even a conversation, I expect. Why invite the US if you aren't getting a massive payout? And the added bonus of South Americans countries to perhaps scout and play in the stadiums that will be used for the World Cup?
I get it. We should all want the Gold Cup, Copa America, etc. to be at venues outside of the US. That serves as a better test. But its not actually the USSF's decision to play these events here. You asked in a post above what the Carribean teams are doing for themselves? They're the voting block putting the Gold Cup in the US in order to maximize the money they can make. There's also the fact that Mexico wants the event in the US. Should I remind everybody that SUM is Mexico's partner, AND last I knew was the worldwide marketing partner of CONMEBOL? So if people want to fabricate SUM conspiracies, go for it.
How about lining up the teams that had the biggest upsets in the World Cup and the only non-UEFA/CONMEBOL team to make the round of 8, plus Uruguay? It's gotten harder to get good friendlies, but USSF actually hit a pretty decent bit with Morocco, Uruguay, Japan and Saudi Arabia as prep.
I'd bet a huge percentage of the Caribbean Federation budgets comes from Gold Cup revenues. There's no way it gets held outside the US/Canada/Mexico. And Canada probably can't sustain ticket sales for nearly as many games geographically and I'm not sure you could charge nearly the prices in Mexico for non-Mexico matches. It might be nice to do a joint version but everyone is still playing home games for revenue reasons.
Somebody in South America has to agree to host. Ecuador fumbled it away, Peru supposedly was interested but I haven't heard anything more. And one of the selling points of doing this twice in 8 years is building the connections to make us a regular participant in the tourney. I'd prefer to play it in Colombia, or Brazi or Argentina or Peru etc too, but sounds like it isn't happening for now. If any cycle offers a sound bit of reasoning to have us host again its the fact that we're the chief host for '26. In terms of pots, I get the sense it would be: Pot 1: USA Brazil Argentina Mexico Pot 2: Uruguay Colombia Peru Ecuador Pot 3: Chile Costa Rica Canada Paraguay Pot 4: Venezuela Boliva Panama Jamaica Something like that? I'd feel good getting a good side from Pot 2, Pot 3 and Pot 4 are basically a mix of solid to good, and horrific. That's kind of how it goes. We can't fix this all, and getting in Copa America period is a win, road would be win win, but seems unlikely, and if the cost of that is us being a regular in Copa America's I'll take it everyday.
My dying wish… The ten north and central federations join Conmebol and take 2 WC spots with them leaving one guaranteed spot for the Caribbean with a half spot playoff between the caribbiean and North/South American federation. Carribean gets one guaranteed slot. Conmebol arrogantly thinks this would just mean the 10 existing nations now get 8 spots.. and we have serious games, and serious competition every year. Id even offer to keep teams in the gold cup and host…so as not to kill CAF’s cash flow.
Leaving aside the weird Caribbean hate here, the thing I don't think people fully realize is that forget the Eastern Seaboard, a flight from Dallas to Frankfurt is 9hrs 20min. A flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires is 10hr 25min. The lack of time difference helps, but South America is just too far away to be deeply integrated with the United States soccer-wise at club or international level.
It's also worth noting that beyond I guess Oceania when Australia was still there, this isn't a situation like Conmebol, CAF, AFC or UEFA, where there is legit competition for the titles. Essentially the Gold Cup has been a USA/Mexico affair nearly every single cup going back decades. Yes Panama got robbed in '15, Canada won in 2000 I think, but if you look at the 32 Finalists since it started 30 years ago or so you get: 12/16 Appearances: USA 10/16 Appearances: Mexico 2/2 Appearances: Brazil 2/16 Appearances: Panama 2/16 Appearances: Jamaica 1/16 Appearances: Canada 1/16 Appearances Costa Rica 1/16 Appearances Honduras 1 Appearance: Colombia So when you look at it that way, amongst Concacaf teams, you have Panama and Jamaica making it twice, and Canada, Costa Rica and Honduras making it once, and every single other final featured Mexico or USA, or both, or a guess from Conmebol. Basically, the rest of the confederation doesn't give a ---- because on a neutral they have no chance unless the USA has imploded (Jamaica and Panama making the final 3 times last decade) El Tri is off (it happens), or both the USA and/or El Tri are sending B teams. So why not go for the money grab. It's gross, I'd prefer it rotate, at least amongst Hex teams like the U20 and U17 championships do (if they can do that, why not this?), but clearly the money is too good and the title, not nearly prestigious enough (especially w/o the confed cup connection). I understand their disinterest, it's not odd that they pass considering the track record. Other confederations are real competitions, tons of countries have won the Euro's, and Cup of Nations, in Conmebol, the Copa America has been won by a wide variety of teams the past decade alone, not just Brazil or Argentina, 4 different teams won it between 2011 and 2021. I'll grant that from '97-'07 Brazil totally dominated (won 4 of 5) but peel back the curtain before that and it's competitive again 1975 thru 1995, 5 different nations won, and Uruguay was particularly dominant (Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil won it in that window, with only Uruguay and Argentina winning multiple titles). W/the Gold Cup, it's always been a joke. It's Mexico, and the US, and whatever hex squad doesn't suck that cycle, and it got bad enough to wear we brought in competition from conmebol to spice it up, and they immediately ate up the competition. Its worth noting that a miserable Qatar side was only beaten by the US, in the semi's in an off year cup in '21. This is not a good tournament. I get why the road apples would rather take the cash then spend the money to host a tournament when the tournament itself aint great, and there is little competition when it comes to who makes the Semi's and the final. That's why building this relationship with conmebol is HUGE. We have no other avenue to legit competition other than major international tournaments like youth world cups. That's it.
Since the World Cup's gonna be 48 teams, that seems like a pretty decent simulation, to be honest. Right now Panama's #53 in the world, per Elo rankings...pretty similar to world cup team Saudi Arabia and some solid squads like Egypt and Nigeria. Venezuela and Chile are in the mid-40s, just slightly worse than squads like Senegal and Wales. All and all, yeah, everything else being equal you'd rather play better than worse teams, but it's not the worst preparation. Especially since, to my mind, the key problem for the US in '26 is to progress from "advancing to the round of 16" to "advancing easily."
its not just the gold cup im talkng about oveall scheduling. ussf needs to get creative and find a way to truly test this team and its players outside the region
Copa América 2024 in USA? CONCACAF president addresses "speculation" “All I have to say is that it is speculation,” said Montagliani, a Canada native. “We are always discussing these matters with all the confederations. But what's important, I think, is there's a bit of misinformation around some of these tournaments. “It's really not the jurisdiction of a federation or a league to have those discussions,” he continued. “Those discussions are held by the confederations; it's between confederations. My Gold Cup is mine, nobody talks [about] the Gold Cup other than me. Copa America belongs to Conmebol and my partner Alejandro Dominguez. That's where the discussion happens.” “We will have those discussions, we've had them, we will continue with all of them to see how we can better our own competitions, maybe create new ones,” Montagliani said. “We will probably have some sort of announcements on any of that stuff probably early in the 2023 stage, because we understand how important it is to have these competitions.” 2024 Copa América is currently slated for June and July
Grant Wahl talked about this on his podcast today. Said discussions are still at the CONMEBOL/CONCACAF level and that US Soccer hasn't been brought in yet. Said the main discussion point is going to be what cut US Soccer gets versus CONMEBOL as CONMEBOL feels like they got fleeced in 2016.
Is it not legit because it’s only CONCACAF nations? If so, if playing those nations doesn’t make it legit, isn’t this true literally every cycle? Because how can qualifying be legit if the Gold Cup isn’t? This just struck me as a strange combination of sentences.
In my opinion, if this were to be a regular thing, it would be the 2nd best tournament in the world. The 16 nation Euros were great, but the 24 team one can eat a dick. Why? The upside is growing the game. And probably a huge infusion of cash. (It won’t be like 2016 because my understanding is that CONMEBOL had no idea how much money it would make and so negotiated poor terms.)p. But it’ll still be juicy.) Since we won’t play any road qualifiers, and the next Cup is here, what is the downside?