Possible Qualifying Formats

I was just thinking about this. CONCACAF has 40 countries, so with only 3.5 spots a multi-phase process is (of course) necessary. About 28 of these are island nations; only two of those 28 are even remotely good. Hence, most of the parign down early should come there.

My idea:

1. Figure out some way to get that group of 28 Caribbean countries down to four easily. (likely advancers: Jamaica, T&T, two among Cuba, Haiti and Barbados.)

2. Canada and the non-automatic Central American countries (there's eight or nine of them total) play in two groups to decide four more spots. (likely: Honduras, Guatemala, El Sal, and Canada.)

3. The next-highest Caribbean country (the loser among that Cuba / Haiti / Barbados group) and the next-highest Group 2 country (maybe Panama?) get a playoff to decide who moves to the final round.

4. Last year's qualifiers (US, MEX, CR) get free passes to the final round, described at #5 below.

5. The first four get us to 12 teams. From here, hijack the old '02 process at the semifinal round, break the 12 teams into two groups of six, and let the winners of each group advance. The two second place teams play two-leg playoff, with the winner getting the third auto spot and the loser going off to Asia.

 

I prefer keeping the current system for a few reasons:

1. The hex is the most exciting thing in CONCACAF right now. Why change?

2. To choose the "correct" 3.5 teams, we want to maximize the number of games played between the top teams.

3. I don't like the two group system because it's so open to imbalances between the groups (see AFC qualifying) and it'll reduce the number of games between the top teams. If CONCACAF was a little deeper and there were 10-12 realistic contenders, then this might work better.

4. Octagonal is probably too many games...easier to find 10 dates in the international calendar. Maybe it could work if they modify the early-round setup.

 

I would rather just keep it with 6 teams. Don't want it splint into groups cause there is always the fluke issue in which a good team doesn't qualify.

 

The Hex is fine. Top 3 teams go through and that 4th place team is still alive for a spot in the tournament. If it aint broke don't fix it.

 

I would like to know how many matchdates are listed in the 2004-2005 Coordinated Calendar for qualifying. How many dates can we use for our qualies? We have to take into account for two more dates for the Asian playoff round.

Also, I would like a better notion of how many teams are in the Carribbean and Central America. My calculations below just work with the basic numbers, without accounting for the regions.

If you want a six-team final, try this:

Top six teams seeded into round 4. Using the just-published Fifa rankings [which are just as good, or just as bad, as anything else, but I consider the rankings within a confederation as close to true]: (1) Mexico, (2) United States, (3) Costa Rica, (4) Honduras, (5) Trinidad and Tobago, (6) Jamaica

Seed teams 7-12 into round 3: (7) Canada, (8 tie) Cuba, (8 tie) Haiti, (10) Guatemala, (11) El Salvador, (12) Barbados

Play two qualifying rounds to get the other 23 teams down to 6. They face the 7-12 seeds in round 3. Those winners face the 1-6 seeds in round 4. The first four rounds are home-and-home series. Six winners to the hex.

Total matchdates: 18, plus two for the playoff: 20. The top seeds play at most 12.

If you want 8 teams in two groups (similar format to whittle down to 8):

Seed teams 1-8 to round 4; 9-16 to round 3: includes (13) St. Kitts and Nevis, (14) St. Lucia, (15) Panama, (16) Grenada

Other 19 teams play two rounds to get to 8. Those 8 play 9-16; those winners play 1-8; 8 teams to the groups.

The second place teams can play-off against each other, or just give the one with the better record a bid, and have the other play-off with Asia.

Total matchdates: 14 + 2 (second-place teams, optional) + 2 (Asia) = 16 or 18. Again, the seeded teams play at most 12.

(One other side-note: having two groups will eliminate the notion that the WCQ top team will be the unoffical champion of Concacaf. This may [repeat, may] cause the Gold Cup to have more significance.)

 

Yep, see China instead of Iran.

 

But that will be a problem no matter what happens in Concacaf - it just means the split happens in an earlier round & even worse, a round held with less matches & less room for error, as well as held too far in advance of the World Cup to be indicative of how good the teams are by the time the World Cup is actually held. For example, its possible we could have a semi-final group featuring the US, Honduras & Canada. All three could finish in the top 4 of a Hex, but one won't even get there, while potenially weaker teams would get to the hex instead.

There are more than 6 quality teams in Concacaf nowadays, as evidenced by the fact we got an additional half-spot. As such, the Hex system is out-moded & out-dated. The 4th place team could easily have a losing record in the Hex but then go on to qualify for the World Cup, which would be outrageous. Time to do an Octagonal, or my personal preference, two groups of 5 or 6, as suggested in the original post

 

the more superior teams get "passes" to the later rounds so the earlier splits aren't such a problem for the bigger teams. The "lesser good" teams should be able to survive earlier rounds. The hex is the way to go.

 

Not a very convincing argument for Guatemalan supporters, based upon what happened in qualifying for 2002.

 

Keep the Hex

I personally like the Hex at the end. I definitely don't want to see any home and home eliminations at anything past the first couple rounds. Once you get to that point where you have teams like Honduras, Canada, Guatemala, etc., the quality is high enough that I don't think it's fair to risk having a pretty good team eliminated by another pretty good team due to the luck of the draw or have a good team eliminated by one poor result.

Keep it exactly like it is and 4th place team in the Hex goes to the playoff.

 

qualification format

There are 35 teams rankedin Concacaf according to fifa.

I would have the bottom 30 teams play a home
and away match.The top 5 teams from the 2001
hexagonal would have byes.Their would be 15
winners+the 5 byes so this would take the number
of teams down quickly from 35 to 20.From the
#6 team on down teams are seeded according to
fifa ranking.First round matchups are as follows....
if the qualifiers where held today.....
#6 Trinidad+Tobago vs #35 Montserrat
#7 Canada vs #34 Turks and Caicos Islands
#8 Cuba vs # 33 Puerto Rico
#9 Haiti vs # 32 US Virgin Islands
#10 Guatamala vs #31 Anguilla
#11 El Salvador vs #30 Aruba
#12 Barbados vs #29 Bahamas
#13 St Kitts and Nevis vs #28 Nicaragua
#14 St Lucia vs #27 Netherlands Antilles
#15 Panama vs#26 Dominica
#16 Grenada vs#25 Bermuda
#17 Surinam vs #24 Guyana
#18 St. Vincent + the grend. vs #23 Cayman Is.
#19 Dominican Replublic vs #22 British Vir. Is.
#20 Antigua and Barbuda vs #21 Belize
-2 games played maximum per team

20 teams left= 5 groups of 4
each group will have a #1 seed(the bye teams)
each group will have a #2 seed(#6to #10)
each group will have a #3 seed(#11to #15)
each group will have a #4 seed(#16 to#20)
-If the #15 seed is upset in the 1st round,the
#16 seed could become a #3 seed in the 2nd round.
The #26 seed that is moving on would be a #4 seed
*winners +runners up advance from each group
-6 games played maximum per team

10 teams left=2 groups of 5
each group will have seeds ranked #1 to #5.
Seeds based on hex first,then fifa rankings
I.E,

group 1 group 2
#1 Costa Rica Mexico
#2 United States Honduras
#3 Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago
#4 Canada Cuba
#5 Haiti Guatemala

-8 games played maximum per team
*group winners advance to World cup
*runners up play off for the 3rd world cup spot
-2 more games played for runners up

-4th place Concacaf vs 5th place Asia
-2 more games played for 4th place Concacaf

Max games played for a team such as Canada is
20.Max games played for a team such as the
United States is 18.

 

Octagonal Format
Top four teams from previous Hex or Oct get byes to the new Oct

US, CR, Mex, Hon

Four teams that finished in the lower half of the previous Oct get byes to the semis. Since we only have two teams from the Hex. I would propose using following the Fifa rankings of the teams that advanced to the previous semis

Jam, T&T, Can, Guat

That leaves 4 central american teams that attempted to qualify last campaign and 23 caribbean countries that tried to qualify last campaign.

Central American group has one qualifying group top two advance to semis. total of 6 games.

Bottom 14 ranked teams in Carib face off in home and home. Rank again and add in the teams that got byes you now have 16 teams home and home again. Down to 8 split into two groups top two goes to semis. 8-10 games depending on byes.

10 teams in semis. Jam, T&T, Can, Guat, two CA, four Carib. Two groups of five. Top two advance to Oct. 8 games.

8 teams in Oct. 14 games.

And for those of you who think 14 games is too many for one year. The Oct could start two to three months or so before the Hex normally would. There's nothing to say that the final qualifying stage has to be during a set time.

 

IMO it's much better to have a split in an earlier round than the round where actual World Cup spots are on the line.

Given the results of the most recent qualifying, that would be a completely reasonable group.

Lots of teams could potentially finish in the top 4 of a hex...that doesn't mean that none of them should be eliminated before the final round.

CONCACAF could make one change though...for the semifinals play 2 groups of 6. The top 3 teams from each group advance to the hex, with records against teams from their semifinal group carrying over. Then each team just plays six games against the teams from the other semifinal group.

This way we reduce the chances of an unbalanced draw in the semifinal round, and eliminate the situation where a team that finishes in the top 3 in their group is eliminated (IOW, noone who has a valid claim on one of the three automatic spots is eliminated). We retain the hex, and teams still play 16 games total.

How is that outrageous? Under a two-group system, all you're doing is making the schedule easier.

[/b][/quote]
Time to do an Octagonal, or my personal preference, two groups of 5 or 6, as suggested in the original post [/B][/QUOTE]

An Octagonal would be fine if they can fit the dates into the international calendar.

How would a two-group system alleviate any of the problems you claimed above for the current system? You'd introduce a large luck factor into the most important round of qualifying, and you'd still have to deal with the same preliminary and semifinal round problems you have now.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean for the quoting in the above post to look so confusing with the bold/non-bold & everything. Hopefully everything is clear as to who said what.

 

Half the teams in Africa were eliminated in two-leg series in April 2000. Senegal and Nigeria had quite a bit of trouble in these.

Asia also elminates a lot of teams based on a couple early games. Many teams don't even get home games.

These are the two confederations most similar to us in terms of number of entrants and world cup spots, and both of them take a somewhat similar approach.

I see the point, but it's kind of useless to cram things into the year prior to the World Cup if you're then going to choose a system that does a bad job of determining the best teams. Not to mention that qualifying ends 8 months before the WC, another period of time when a lot can change.

Why is 8 or 10 okay while 6 is not? Why not 12 or 18 or 36?

The major goal--really the only goal--of qualifying is to determine the top three (and now the fourth) teams, and to do it with great care. The best way of doing that is to take the top x teams, and have them play a full tournament.

Since we can't play a full tournament with all 35 teams, we have to cut corners at some point. I think it's best that we do so at the earlier stages of the competition for several reasons:

1. The teams eliminated in earlier stages are less likely to be among the top four teams. If a team "incorrectly" fails to make the final 12, or 8, or 6, or whatever, it's not fatal because they were likely not among the top four anyway. In the final round, we can't screw up at all.

2. No one will qualify for the World Cup itself as a direct result of a favorable group draw. If a team advances from an early round due to a favorable draw, they'll just get eliminated later.

3. Concentrating the best teams in the final round produces a higher level of soccer.

The region suffers even more if we don't send the right teams to the World Cup and they perform poorly.

The "interest & promotion" thing is really secondary IMO when it comes to WC qualifying...that's what the Gold Cup should be for. That said, the last hex was very exciting, and if people aren't interested in the competition once their own team is eliminated then that's their own problem.

Not at the price of having two groups.

And so your solution for this is to make the schedules easier by watering down the level of competition? Why don't we just have 3 groups of 12 teams? That way we can ensure that all the qualifiers will have fantastic winning records and goal differentials.

A team's record has to be considered within the context of their opposition. I'm not sure why you'd be more impressed by a team with a better record against weaker opposition.

The only important thing is that we choose a system that does the best job of determining teams 1-3, and team 4. The way to do that is to maximize the number of games played between the top teams, and minimize "luck of the draw" effects.

That seems quite unlikely to me if you take into account the team's record from earlier rounds. And I don't know why you wouldn't. And a slightly sub-.500 record would be perfectly reasonable for a team claiming to be the fourth-best in a confederation, if it was compiled against the rest of the top six.

I think that's silly. We want to minimize the effect of fluke results, injuries, and suspensions, and choose the best teams. Since we can't do this with 100% accuracy for the whole tournament, I feel that we should try to be most accurate in the final stage of the tournament, for the reasons I outlined above.

There would be a giant luck factor because of:

1. The separation into two groups .

2. Watered-down competition means fewer meaningful games which increases the impact of flukish results.

Currently there is no luck factor involved in the final tournament other than those that are inherent in the sport.

What sort of seeding system? I'm betting it will involve fairly old results. By the logic you used earlier in your post, wouldn't it be better to have qualifying rounds so we can determine the current top teams?

How will these qualifying rounds be set up? Are you really comfortable having team #8 advance directly to the finals, while team #9 has to beat out 25 other teams? At least under the current system, only 3 or 4 teams get byes into the semi-final round, and all of those teams have either qualified for the previous WC or just missed. By the time we get to teams 8-9, we're pretty much talking about about varying degrees of mediocre teams, and I don't think any of them should walk into the finals.

 

Re: Re: Possible Qualifying Formats

I can't imagine that someone is actually thinking of this...

This "carry-over-results-from-earlier-rounds" should have been buried after the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament [where the USA started the final round with one point from a previous-round tie]. I do believe it was used in, something like, the latest world volleyball championship.

But, please, no.

Here is another idea from that, but I admit it is probably only marginally better....

Have two "semifinal" groups. The two winners qualify. Teams 2 and 3 from the groups play in one more group, to determine qualifier #3 and the Asian-playoff opponent.

 

I think the odds are pretty good that this is how the semifinals and finals will end up.

Though I like the hexagonal, I don't think anyone will be satisfied with someone with a losing record ending up in the World Cup. It would open the potential for teams being satisfied with a tie no matter whether they were home or away.

I think it's a positive thing as well, looking at the last couple sets of qualifiers where Guatemala was probably better than TnT. I think CONCACAF is to the point where an octagonal final round would be quite entertaining/nerve-wracking.

 

You said that it didn't happen in any other confederation--I showed that other confeds do it, and in more extreme fashion.

Your use of "two years in advance" is incorrect (the semifinal round ended 18 months before the start of the WC) and misleading (as qualifying had to be completed 6 months before the start of the WC).

"cram" may not have been the best word, but the point was that it would be stupid to make the qualifying later if you're then going to take a poor approach towards choosing the best teams.

That's completely subjective. Out of the last semifinal round, there was only one team that clearly didn't belong (St. Vincent), and there are other teams that didn't make the semis (Cuba and Haiti) that are obviously better. So I'd say there are 13 "semifinal quality" teams in CONCACAF.

As for "hex quality"--of the six teams that qualified, T&T was iffy, and Guatemala would be the obvious replacement. All the other non-qualifiers were a clear step below. Six looks like a good number to me.

At any given point I'd say there are about 6 top sides with a realistic chance making the top 4.

I thought I was quite clear that the ideal format would be one 35-team group. More teams is better, as long as the one-group system is preserved. The limiting factor is the number of dates available on the calendar, plus the concern that in too big a group, more teams will be eliminated early on and stop giving a full effort.

You still haven't explained what is wrong with that. If we appended the USVI, Puerto Rico, Aruba, and the Bahamas onto the group to make 10 teams, would you be more impressed with the fourth-place team then?

Because the level of competition in each group would not be as high as it currently is in the hex. If you had 2 groups of 5 or 6 last time, you would have had clearly inferior teams like Panama, El Salvador, and Barbados in the finals. T&T was the bottom team in the hex, but they trounced Canada and Panama in the semis.

Look at the UEFA Group with the Netherlands last time. They played 10 games, but only 4 of them were really meaningful.

This problem would be pretty much solved by my two-group semifinal proposal.

Also, I don't think you can be so positive that Canada and T&T didn't deserve to be in the hex. It's quite likely in any tournament situation that there is going to be some team that gets off to a bad start and just implodes. If Guatemala replace T&T in the last hex, it just would have been someone else doing the collapsing.

Ask the Asians what can happen with two groups. IMO the 3 WC02 qualifiers are clearly ahead of everyone else right now--splitting them into two groups would cause an immediate imbalance.

An octagonal would be fine if it fits into the calendar.

It didn't happen in 1998 or 2002. And it's still irrelevant.

Playing 10 games against the top opponents in CONCACAF is pressure.

The main concern in the final round is "accuracy". Both Mexico and the US had a very poor stretch in the past hex, but both still qualified for the WC and did very well. No one would argue that those teams didn't deserve to qualify. A two-group format would lessen the likelihood that the team could overcome such a bad run, which in the case of the US was due largely to injuries.

Just thought it was funny that up top you were complaining about teams being excluded from the final round of qualifying based on results from "two years" prior to the World Cup--and here you are placing (and excluding) teams directly into the final round based on even older results!

I don't think you can use past Gold Cup results, because plenty of countries don't bother to put together their best team and it wouldn't be fair to decide after the fact that these games count for WC seeding purposes. You could start with the next one.

That just creates a new semi-final round with the same problems as the current one.

 

Re: Re: Re: Possible Qualifying Formats

The world basketball championships uses it. What don't you like about it?

 

Re: Re: Possible Qualifying Formats

I've given up responding to every point, point by point, because my inability to figure out how its done, but also because we clearly have different viewpoints & we'll just keep going round and round in circles, and as I said life is too short to keep repeating myself. Furthermore we are getting further and further into subjective criteria & preferences. You don't care that a team with a losing record in the final round could qualify for the World Cup, I think it would be absolutely ridiculous, but we'll just have to agree to disagree. You have also stated that I still haven't explained what's wrong with the system, but I've already spent too much time doing so & I don't see the point in repeating myself - if you don't agree, fair enough, but my explanations are there.

I would respond to a few points, however. You stated that the seeding criteria that I suggest would be older - if the seeding is done in fall 2003 for qualification starting in 2004, the then-current FIFA rankings & a Gold Cup that's played less than a year previously (in late July 2003), I don't see how that criteria would make it older than 2 years. The only thing over 2 years old would be previous qualification efforts & I doubt you would want those thrown out.

Also, I don't think my "8 to 10 good teams" criteria is totally subjective, as you suggest - especially when I provided objective criteria - that's roughly how many Concacaf teams are allowed to compete in the Gold Cup. What is a subjective opinion of mine is that the Gold Cup has improved with the addition of more Concacaf teams, but that's another debate.

Also it is too bad for those teams like Mexico if they don't take their own Continental championship seriously - perhaps this would convince them to do so & we could get the Gold Cup the legitimacy it needs & deserves.

My "two years" for all intents & purposes, is correct - Canada was done by mid-July of 2000, all but mathematically eliminated after just 3 games.

Keep in mind in 1996 Canada beat El Salvador twice in the semi-final group, then in 1997 were so poor that we drew 0-0 at home & were thrashed by them 4-1 in El Salvador. That is a shining example of the problems of the current system. Teams can get bad or get better in a hurry, and 2 years before the World Cup is an awfully long time. Yes, there is 9 months between final qualifying & the World Cup, but that's a necessary evil.

Over & out!

 

Re: Re: Re: Possible Qualifying Formats

Fair enough.

Not really. I just disagree with your complaints, and think that the same problems would be present in your system anyway.

You keep claiming that the current setup does a poor job of choosing the six teams for the hex because a team like Guatemala who finished third in a tough semifinal group can't get in--but you ignore the fact that the same problem would exist in a two-group final setup, where it is much costlier.

All the results used for the seeding would be from more than two years before the World Cup. I thought you didn't like that.

If you want to believe that the Gold Cup format is based on merit and not the cost of renting the Orange Bowl or how many teams Inter-Forever feels are marketable.

Sure--I was just noting that for purposes of WC06 qualifying it wouldn't really be right to use the results of the 2002 Gold Cup for seeding because the teams were not made aware of the importance of the matches beforehand. If you want to use future Gold Cups for seeding, that would be fine as long as the teams know in advance what they're playing for.

That's an absurdly small sample size, especially as the semi-final match in San Salvador was completely meaningless, and Canada was already practically eliminated before the 4-1 loss in the hex.