The current format would be the tougher road, then, unless you think that the US or Mexico playing home and away to Saint Lucia is "tougher".
I side with those who believe South American competition is the goal, not more CONCACRAP. I'd love to merge with CONMEBOL. Our NT suffers from a lack of real competition. Away CONCACAF games can be tough but it's more due to the conditions, not level of play. I'd much prefer seeking out greater level of play and quality of opponent on a regular basis. I also think MLS should aim for participating in Copa Libertadores(requires a changing of the stupid salary/roster structure) but that's probably for a different thread. Point is both our domestic league and NT should be aiming for better international competition instead of being so insulated to CONCACRAP. Our domestic based players need much more experience against quality competition and different styles of play.
It's going to be easier and we'll pay cash for it. A money transfer to the programs of the little islands. San Marino has a decent pitch, kept in good state thanks to the TV revenues of their games against the UEFA powers. If we do the same for our minnows, perhaps we won't be whining so much about the state of their stadiums.
Like I said, we already hold a confederation wide tournament twice every 4 years for no other real purpose than to subsidize those countries. If those countries can't keep their programs afloat with what they already get from C-CAF, maybe there should be conversation about why they are even attempting to have national teams.
They don't play against the big money-draws in Gold Cup qualifiers. USA and Mexico (and Canada, god knows why) get a free pass to the final stage.
From what I gather, the TV rights are where the European minnows get their big slice of the cake. If we play Antigua, you have many more people watching than when they play Aruba.
All in all, I think the politics evolve somewhat over the next 10-20 years and we see a different landscape to deal with in Caribs/CA. Currently, I don't think we are any better off with a different qualification system. Klinsmann would lose to just about any SAmerican team away, and some at home, meaning forget qualification. Air miles Seattle to Buenos Aires 7000 mi before taking connections into account. I.o.w., more than 14 hours in the air, alone, plus waiting, terminal time, cabs, hotels........Then play and jump on a plane to.......Manaus? Or maybe a quick jaunt to Miami to play Honduras brutal.
But the Gold Cup isn't exactly as inclusive as you suggest. Only 12 teams play in the Gold Cup, meaning that most of these Caribbean minnows never get a chance to play in the tournament. I realize there is a Caribbean Cup to qualify for the Gold Cup, but because the Gold Cup is so restrictive in terms of number of of participants, most of these smaller Caribbean nations never get an opportunity to play in a Gold Cup, so they aren't getting that many games or the opportunities to gain revenue and develop long term from playing in enough meaningful matches against decent teams (like the USA, Mexico, Costa Rica). If the Gold Cup were a 32 team tournament or even a 24 team tournament, I think your point would be better taken. Personally, I think a 32 team Gold Cup (held every 4 years) would be cool, but that's beside the point. The new CONCACAF president is basically saying "how can we expect to see these Caribbean nations improve over time when they play so few meaningful games, and when most of them literally only get 2 World Cup qualifying matches every four years." I think that's a fair point, and I don't think the biennial Gold Cup as it exists today (with only 12 teams) addresses that issue at all.
Spoiler Alert: those Caribbean nations in question aren't going to improve by a whole lot, ever. You could give them all block grants of a billion dollars but them getting the right to lose 25-0 in a two-legged playoff to Mexico isn't going to help them improve. I will say that you bring up a good point vis a vis making the GC more exclusive. Expanding the Gold Cup would be a far better solution than messing with qualifying. At least then you'd give them 3 games against a range of competition every two years.
Don't care for messing with our Hex. It has become a tradition in our region and needs to stay as is. It works as close as we can get to CONMEBOL's 10 nation league set up. Also, one should be careful what one wishes for when speaking of merging with CONMEBOL for WCQ. Dem games are iron sharpeth iron battles! For sure as others have mentioned, the competitiveness of CONMEBOL qualifying would challenge our soccer culture to up our game. But nothing would be more detrimental to the beautiful game in our nation than not qualifying for the World Cup. This has to be considered! And as much as I do not like our guys having to take 4 flights just to get to SVnG to play our qualifying games I sure would figure trips in and out of Colombia, as rocky road it is in certain nations, would be even more dangerous/trying from a certain point of view. I do recall we used to send in our Navy SEALs to cover our transport of our team in and out of El Salvador or perhaps Honduras years back in WCQ, don't know if our Fed still uses this diplomatic entourage these days but going to Colombia and at least Venezuela would be something to think on. This even before a ball is kicked in anger. Imagine if shit hit the fan on the field, dodgy PK is awarded our guys and Colombia fails to make the mundial one year. Try getting outta that stadium that night! Much less back to the airport and back home! Ever witness what Australia used to have to endure when going into their away legs for that last spot in WCQ versus Uruguay or Argentina. There was some 30 for 30, ESPN of Australia like made for TV retrospect on the Socceroos WCQ. Just walking from the team bus to the hotel, or team bus from the doors of the airport and the local police gave zero fuks for the Australian team's safety. They got spat on, cussed at with venom and all sorts of local pranks on them in their stay for that last spot in the World Cup. Yes it means this much to South American people. Don't think so? Ask them. And this for the Socceroos or the All Whites. Think about the evil, meanie, world police, capitalist pigs, soccer donkey yanquis flying in and looking to knock their nation outta a World Cup. National team support and national pride does run such deep in South America. Meh. I hear you on the distance but if safety can be had for American and Canuck teams going down to some cities in South American and conceivably knocking out their local football clubs in Copa Libertadores action then there really are only two other factors to deal with on such long flights in Group play and perhaps kockout play. So really maybe 4 trips all the way to the deep South of our Americas. First, a player can catch up on sleep. Then eat. Then sleep. Then watch a good flick. Then sleep some more. Secondly, travel is long but it does not require any radical change in time zones. It is not like the team would be with that long trip playing in some wacky time differential. It will be in the same time zones as our continental 4 zones plus that Eastern one of Brasil and Uruguay n Argentina. It's not like it's a soccer team from Hawaii going to Nova Scotia and back!
I pretty much agree, but just to play devil's advocate, what's stopping Barbados with a population of 285k from being at the same competitive level as Iceland with a population of 320k? But yeah, the likelihood of many of them improving enough to actually be competitive for the US is really low. So I'm all for their improvement for their own sake, just as long as it's not to our detriment. The US playing any of them is a waste of our time right now, so it should happen as rarely as possible and only on our fields.
Climate, the relative socioeconomic status of both countries, the cultural eccentricities of both countries, the probable unwillingness of Barbados to a) have a strong, organized FA and b) be willing to commit to a generational overhaul of the game in Barbados. UEFA is also a far richer federation in general. They have multiple moneymaking countries with which to pool TV contact funds. We have two.
I suspect the Gold Cup is a 12 team tournament instead of 16 because people don't want to pay enough money to watch teams 9-12 let alone 13-16. Iceland's GDP per capita is 3 times as large as Barbados', it is also probably more evenly distributed.
I just realized this Montagliani guy is Canadian. Maybe he's just using the Caribbean as cover for his plan to give the Great White Minnow of the North some more games.
They might not.... BUT here is how it could help us. If lets say C-CAF does a Euro style WCQ, and lets say US Virgin Islands and Aruba are in a group together... Like this: Costa Rica Honduras Nicaragua El Salvador Aruba US Virgin Islands Anguilla Teams like US Virgin Islands and Aruba will have a possible 12 WCQ matches to play in which could help some of these countries climb the FIFA ranks. If C-CAF gets more countries in the top 50 it will be better for our region. At the moment we have 3 in the top 50... hell, it would even be nice if we could get more countries into the top 100. (Currently 11 C-CAF countries are in the top 100). This means 24 are ranked 100 or worse. The higher ranked the teams are in our region will benefit the entire region.
So we're going to make CRC and HON play 6 additional games for no good reason? Aruba, the USVI and Anguilla aren't going to be cracking the top 100 of anything. How are those 12 games, half of which will involve them getting beaten by double digits, going to help them? Is there going to be some kid on Aruba thinking about representing his country while watching them get beaten by a SEC score? I mean, sure, the idea of getting as many C-CAF teams in the top 100 is a great one, but if you look at the current rankings, you have A&B & St Kitts overperforming their ability relative to their rank, and Canada, Cuba and the Sallies probably underperforming it, and thats about it. Who else is realistically left in CCAF that's going to make some sort of leap?
The more I think about this idea, the more I like it. 10 team CONMEBOL 10 team CONCACAF (under whatever new name) ~30 team Caribbean Have the Gold Cup / Copa America every four years in one of two formats: 1) A combined 3 confederation tournament, with 6 CONMEBOL, 6 NA, and 4 Caribbean 2) Separate confederation tournaments, with an agreement that the NA federation will help out the Caribbean federation financially in some way. Each confederation does WCQ separately regardless of the above.
There's nothing to tempt CONMEBOL there. Why reduce their entrants to six, when the weakest team in that region would be likely to make the Hex here?
2 reasons: 1) It allows them to set up qualifiers, which generate money and would provide meaningful competition. Same goes for the North American region. 2) If they want to host it in North America, like this year's Copa America, they'd have to let CONCACAF teams in, and if it's truly a joint tournament, then the numbers should accommodate that. I could potentially go with 7-7-2 over 6-6-4.
So your central thesis is that CONMEBOL would want to combine for competitive reasons? That's already the most competitive region for qualifying.
The group of 7 is a big problem. A group of 7 requires 14 matchdays, with each team playing 12 games and having 2 matchdays off. Forgetting about how many games any specific team would have to play, your format requires 34 matchdays. Keeping Round 1 to groups of 6 would require 30 matchdays, which is still too many. In addition to WCQs, Caribbean teams play Caribbean Cup qualifiers on FIFA Matchdays. 2016 and 2020 are equivalent years within the four year cycle. In 2016, there were Caribbean Cup Qualifiers in March, June, and October. Caribbean teams who reached the WCQ Semifinals were given a bye until October or later. If CONCACAF has 18 teams playing WCQs in 2020, there would be more Caribbean teams in that round than in the Semifinals with the current format. Also note that if a CONCACAF team has to play an interconfederational playoff, there are only 8 FIFA Matchdays left in the year before the World Cup, so the Hexagonal would have to play additional games on non-FIFA matchdays, in the summer (when many leagues in UEFA have off), or start in late 2020. If the Hexagonal had 2 games in March 2021, 4 games in June 2021, 2 games in September 2021, and 2 games in October 2021, the June games and the Gold Cup would wreak havoc with MLS having to take weeks off or play more games with players missing. I think the bottom teams should play no more than 6 games. Here's one way to have a group stage with 18 teams like you proposed while using fewer matchdays: Round 1: 6 matchdays required, which is 4 fewer than for groups of 6 and 8 fewer than for groups of 7 Teams 8 through 35 play in 7 groups of 4 7 group winners and the top second place team advance to Round 3 6 second place teams advance to Round 2 Round 2: 2 matchdays required The 6 teams play in 3 two leg series to advance 3 of them to Round 3 Round 3: 3 groups of 6 like you proposed with 10 matchdays required Teams 1 through 7, the 8 teams that advanced from Round 1, and the 3 teams that advanced from Round 2 would make 18 teams. It could be complicated doing a draw for this round. What I would propose is that each group would have 1 team from 1 through 3, 1 team from 4 through 6, 1 team from Round 2, and 2 or 3 group winners from Round 1. One group would have 3 group winners from Round, one group would have two group winners and the best second place team from Round 1, and one group would have two group winners from Round 1, and team 7 who starts in Round 3. All countries, and some areas that are not countries, have national teams. A country should not be required to have a certain amount of money to have a national team. You looked at the Top 100, but what matters more is the Top 150. The FIFA Ranking formula includes the ranking of your opponent, with all teams ranked 150th or worse treated the same. CONCACAF has 16 out of 35 countries in the 150s or worse.