What would decide the teams from those confederations in it? Just guests? Winner and Runner Up of major regional tournament finals? So random and odd but definitely better than a typical off year Gold Cup. When its held would be hugely important.
I think it was also just not feasible to host in Qatar in the summer. And they obviously weren’t going to host it in the winter.
Interestingly it looks like we are trying to schedule fall friendlies against Argentina and Brazil New notebook from me + @PaulTenorio:✔️MLS still tracking towards best-of-3 format to begin playoffs, considering 9 teams per conf.✔️USSF looking to build training center; Atlanta, Cary, N.C. in consideration✔️USMNT aiming for friendlies vs. ARG, BRA https://t.co/M5df5aMQiS— Sam Stejskal (@samstejskal) February 6, 2023 I wonder how that'll work with the rumored friendly against Germany and at least two of the three windows this fall being taken up by Nations League. If it all works out our lead up to the Copa America would be March Nations League games, Nations League Finals, Gold Cup, friendlies against 2 of Germany, Argentina, and Brazil, Nations League group games that double as Copa America qualifiers, Nations League finals, and the Copa America itself.
CONMEBOL’s alliance with CONCACAF is a direct response to Saudi Arabia’s coalition with Egypt and Greece. Votes for 2030 are at play here. The Copa América is a bargaining tool. https://t.co/CEktEValhq— Felipe Cárdenas (@FelipeCar) February 9, 2023
is this a type of acceptable bribery? No hard cash was exchanged but Copa America in the US = a lot of cash for C'bol... I still hope this signal that C'bol alliance with UEFA is still on the works and this joint Copa was about securing votes for 2030. I have no problem having 6 C'caf team joining Copa America on a permanent basis (if Copa most of the times in SA) and I would love if C'caf club teams would participate in Libertadores. But IMHO participating in UEFA's NL is the future.
I think this is the sort of thing that is deemed acceptable as opposed to being considered outright bribery. The same way Saudi Arabia is offering to front all the costs for Greece and Egypt as part of their World Cup bid. I think having a closer relationship with COMNEBOL is more likely than Europe letting us into Nations League or CONCACAF letting us go to it.
https://sports.yahoo.com/concacaf-c...s-league-format-usmnt-schedule-180014168.html CONCACAF has unveiled how the format for Copa America qualification.
You knew they were going to make as easy as possible on us and Mexico, but I also like that we open up the possibility of stronger friendlies. So, no more Grenadas. The worst we will get is a Top 8 team, and then likely 2 Top 4 teams. US Soccer doing pretty well here even without any soccer leadership.
Argentina is doing friendlies against Curacao and Panama this coming window so in theory we should be able to get them sometime this fall. I think like us it's hard for them to get quality friendlies against non-CONMEBOL countries. We should also get a friendly against Germany this fall as well as they'll have some open dates given they qualify automatically as Euro hosts.
Very nice. It would take Couva level ineptitude to fail to qualify for Copa America. So, El Tri certainly has to be worried lol, and w/us, hopefully we can get some games under us w/the new coach before all of this opens up? But yeah, you couldn't ask for an easier format. No excuses for failing to qualify especially in what is likely going to be a down cycle for much of non-Canada, and USA. El Tri and Costa Rica rebuilding, Honduras and Panama continuing their reboot, Jamaica a mess as per usual, El Salvador probably had their high water mark in 2021-2022. No excuse for failing to qualify for this thing.
Against non-CR, Mexico, Canada teams out there, we've won every two sided tie except twice against Honduras in WCQ going back in the Ocho and Hex. There's probably a nightmare scenario where we have to go to CR and Honduras or something, but it would take a lot for this team to lose. We usually do well enough at home that the away leg can be a bog downed mess and not matter. Costa Rica is probably the scary one, if they drop out of the Top 4. EDIT: Noted that the Second Chance is a single game at a "neutral site." I wonder if that means the US, or an actual neutral site.
Weird quirks: the top four are decided by the March CONCACAF rankings, which I assume come out in a few days as January's is dating Jan 1. But if it goes through March, it is conceivable that Canada could drop below ... Panama? Really? The other part of Nations League A is two six team groups doing a Swiss format system, which I had never heard of. Here's wikipedia: A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other competitors. Competitors meet one-on-one in each round and are paired using a set of rules designed to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score, but does not play the same opponent more than once. The winner is the competitor with the highest aggregate points earned in all rounds. With an even number of participants, all competitors play in each round.... ...During all but the first round, competitors are paired based on approximately how they have performed so far. In the first round, competitors are paired either randomly or according to some pattern that has been found to serve a given game or sport well. If it is desired for top-ranked participants to meet in the last rounds, the pattern must start them in different brackets, just the same as is done in seeding of pre-ranked players for a single elimination tournament. In subsequent rounds, competitors are sorted according to their cumulative scores and are assigned opponents with the same or similar score up to that point. The pairing rules have to be quite complicated, as they have to ensure that no two players ever oppose each other twice, and to avoid giving a player some advantage as a result of chance. ------ So, they basically treat it more like a dynamically seeded tournament where they don't play the 10 games to go back and forth. That seems really unfair based on home and away, frankly, especially in CONCACAF. The chances of the top teams getting out of there might be lower than one thinks. ------- WCQ qualification is "one time" -- In Round 2, those 30 will be seeded into six groups of five. Each five-team group will be a single-round-robin. After four games, the top two in each group will advance to a 12-team final round. In Round 3, those 12 teams will be drawn into three groups of four. These will be double-round-robins, with each group winner qualifying for the World Cup. The two best runners-up — based on points and, if necessary, tiebreakers — will earn berths in intercontinental playoffs. (CONCACAF will have a minimum of six teams in the tournament, and a maximum of eight.) A duodeca would have been more fun. Wonder how they will seed the final groups.
I’d be way less worried about Costa Rica if we’d ever gotten a result there. Navas is still going to be around, but they’re generally between generations at current and I don’t know if they are going to be at the same level they’ve been.
Probably it will be new rankings after the March window, as nothing has happened so far this year except out-of-window friendlies. Canada has a 63 point lead over Panama, and Panama has only one NL game, at Costa Rica. Canada lost 40 points for going 0-fer in the World Cup--I'm not going to dig into the ranking formula, but it probably won't lose a 63-point advantage in a single Nations League window.
The Athletic used the term "centralized location." The format looks mostly forgiving, (with a couple of issues) but I still think it's stupid that the US has to qualify in a tournament it hosts. And while friendlies probably are much more profitable for US soccer, as a fan I don't care that much for them. The lack of stakes in those games turns them into practices/auditions.