Ah, really? I didn't know anything about the upcoming tournament had been set yet! There isn't a CAF qualifiers thread here yet and Wikipedia hasn't been updated yet either. That's really interesting to hear, I'm now curious what kind of seeding craziness produced that pair. =EDIT= Ah, now I see that there is, in fact, a thread on the forums here, just in the main area and not in the World Cup subforum. It's been buried on the second page of the main area, and I haven't replied in or even liked a post from that thread yet - must've just completely slipped past my radar!
Okay, so now that I know what the 2022 Women's Cup of Nations qualifying looks like, let me totally revamp this: The qualifying campaign is absolutely nothing but playoffs, so it's hard to predict who will even make it to the group stage, but I'll wager the following: Anything marked with four stars doesn't matter, with the WAFU B winner being a lock for the World Cup, and the other two not really having a chance in the groups. Of the other nine, I need to pick three, so... I'd still wager that RSA and CMR are near locks, but that depends on group draw, and I have no clue for the fourth! Higher probabilities would be MLI, ZAM, TUN, and hosts MAR I think, though. The two teams to the intercontinental playoffs probably come from that group.
For my Ghana Black Queens which is our Women's national team I like our chances but also we have experience playing in WWC but our last appearance at a WWC was 2007 because we have been to 3 FIFA WWCs in our history (1999, 2003 and 2007) so for us it is overdue
The past two CAF qualifiers have seen a surprise. We had Ivory Coast in 2015 and 2019 had Mali almost get the upset in the semifinals.
Well, as I mentioned in my first post there, Africa is generally more fluid, so seeing new teams each year isn't really a surprise. Especially those two - Mali has been a regular at the tournament, just never quite making the knockout stage until this most recent edition, and Ivory Coast has consistently been one of Africa's top six teams by ranking even if they've usually run into problems making the tournament. Just think - even though both Cameroon and South Africa have regularly placed in the top four of the tournament, neither qualified for the world cup until 2015 for Cameroon and 2019 for South Africa because other teams would snag those spots in the tournaments that mattered! Africa just has a large number of teams that can take advantage of each other any given year.
Did CAF use merit-based seedings at all, or did they just make the matchups based on geographical criteria? It seems like in previous editions they gave the top teams byes to the later rounds, and made sure they didn't meet there either for the most part. From the looks of it, the craziest seeding system of all: no seeding! Wonder what the rationale is. Trying to save on travel expenses?
Yeah I didn't say it directly in the edit to my post after discovering the thread, but it's all regional, nothing more.
Draw delivers groups for 2021 Concacaf W Qualifiershttps://t.co/TqPZV6HFzeSorteo determina Grupos de la Clasificatoria para el Campeonato Concacaf Whttps://t.co/Gh8eKbEcKF#WeBelong pic.twitter.com/vD8YjSRUSO— Concacaf (@Concacaf) August 21, 2021
AFC Qualifiers Update: Iraq has also withdrawn from Group C. Singapore & Indonesia will play a 2 game series.
AFC Qualifiers Update: Taipei withdrew as hosts from Group A. Matches now rescheduled for Oct. 18 -24 at a TBA location. Group D qualifiers also rescheduled to Oct. 18 - 24.
Update by FIFA Council: FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ play-off tournament: 13-23 February 2023 (exclusively for the teams involved in this tournament) International window: 10-18 July 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023: 20 July-20 August 2023
What happens on the 19th July? Can clubs theoretically request players even if they play at the World Cup?
Clubs are supposed to release players x weeks in advance of a tournament. x being one week for the men world cup next year. I believe it is two weeks for the women and obviously they put an international window to get some friendlies or games for those who did not make the world cup.
Colombia designated host of "Copa America Femenina 2022" that grants 3 direct places for the 2023 Women World Cup + 2 places for the play-offs. Colombia será la sede de la Copa América femenina en 2022 (sport.es) I wonder what the Conmebol format will be. Does anyone know anything about that? Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Argentina start as favorites. I hope Venezuela manages to get in. I think the Vinotinto girls will have a lot of support due to the large number of Venezuelans living in Colombia.
No clue, and I'm not sure what would work best for five total slots, short of making it a full-continent round-robin like the men have - but that doesn't work for a one-month tournament with a single host, even for a single round-robin instead of the double the men do. Maybe they could do a four- or five-round Swiss-style tournament among the ten teams instead of a full round-robin?
They could use the same system as in 2018: 2 groups of five teams with first and second placed teams qualifying for the final round. They just have to add a play-off between the third placed teams. If the results from last Copa America are used for the pots of the draw like in 2018 we have: Colombia, Brazil Chile, Argentina Paraguay, Venezuela Bolivia, Uruguay Peru, Ecuador We would get the same pots if they would be based on world ranking.
I don't get why don't conmebol adopt the same two year long round robin qualifying process as the men, most of the players play in South America so logistically it shouldn't be an issue, maybe the 2024 copa america femenina can be for the two olympic spots and from 2024-2026 we can witness a 18 game home away spectacle, this would replace most of the meaningless friendlies and actually attract more spectators and tv revenue. Same should the be the case for AFC 2 groups of 5 or 6 home and away (especially if the North Korean team comes back) and maybe even a CONCACAF octoganol, I would love to see the USWNT play in the Azteca and central America. This in General would make womens international football far more exciting. Then Having the intercontinental tournament may not be neccesary. I propose UEFA 12 CAF 5 CONCACAF 4 CONMEBOL 4 OFC 1 HOST 1 AFC 1 for 2027 onwards with a normal mens style qualification format. When the 48 team mens world cup comes, mens international football will become less exciting so now is the perfect opportunity for the growth and promotion of womens international football after 2023.
Money. It's just money. Playing 18 games over a two year period with each travel game unique is a big money sink, and most C'BOL associations don't invest that much into their women's programs. Having a short, one-month tournament is much, much cheaper, whether you're traveling or hosting, plus it's an order of magnitude less time to cover with player pay than a two-year campaign. Similar reasoning for the other confeds. Bit of a tangent versus the rest of your post, but I do want to add a few thoughts about this. The current pre-World-Cup tournament isn't necessary either, as FIFA could've very easily just given extra half-berths to some of the confeds. However, the reason the women (and the men) have added a pre-World-Cup tournament is because most people agree that there needs to be more intercontinental play between mid-tier sides. It's not as bad of an issue for the men, but for the women, most teams outside of the top 20 never play anyone outside of their home confederation. That's not great for development in general, plus is also makes it very difficult to do any kind of ranking across confederations.
(Emphasis added.) This is true. Based on analytic work I have done, having 18% of a confederation’s games be cross-federation would not be enough to properly rank that confederation’s teams in relation to teams from other confederations.
But during the past year we have seen teams like Argentina Chile Colombia and Paraguay women's teams travel to places like the United States and Mexico for friendlies, even Deyna Castellanos came to Ecuador for a friendly which should've really been a qualifying game and same for the exciting match between Colombia and Chile in the terrible tropical conditions, and even the Bolivian women's team travel traveled to the Dominican republic for just a friendly, so money and travel I don't think is an issue.
I didn't say those associations couldn't spend the money - I said that they don't, i.e. they choose not to. The women's programs just aren't given the budget to do much. WoSo in C'BOL is woefully underfunded despite how much money is in C'BOL BroSo. Besides, one-off friendlies are a whole different beast than a full qualifying campaign. The group of four countries you mentioned at the top, along with Brazil, are the more investing C'BOL sides relatively speaking, (just look at who also dominate the Copa Libertadores Femenina - it's the same countries,) so the occasional friendly with those teams isn't unheard of, especially if those friendlies stay in the Western Hemisphere; the other five C'BOL countries, however, rarely even do that.