It may not feel like one. They'd have first control of tickets I gather like we do at our games here. If it's LA or DC they'd have more fans than we would.
Two thoughts. 1. Even if they hold it say in DC where they would have a lot of fans we still wouldn't have to travel. 2. If they did this though would they just swap our other game with them to down there? If they plan to do that then I would assume we would have control of ticket sales for the Sept match?
They are probably going to have to play their Sept. 5 home game against Honduras in the US too so seems like it wouldn't be a schedule swap. US shouldn't be nice and agree to a swap either, that Jan. window being home vs. El Salvador, away at Canada, and home vs. Honduras is the best stretch of travel we get.
Ocho simulator is a wrapped up. Using standard 100 points for Home field (and USA/ES still in ES). Current Elo: Mexico - 1873 USA - 1805 Canada - 1692 Costa Rica - 1635 Honduras - 1612 Jamaica - 1595 Panama - 1558 El Salvador - 1535 We get approximately: USA Qualify Direct - 92% USA Play-Off - 5% USA Eliminated - 3% This seems high, but the 8 team format is a bit more forgiving, and since we've got over 100 points on the 3rd place team, we're favored to get a lot of points everywhere but at Azteca. Mexico is 98/1/1 Canada 51/22/27 Costa Rica 24/22/54 Honduras 15/18/67 Jamaica 11/15/74 Panama 5/10/85 El Salvador 3/6/91 Fun with sims... in 10,000 (well more than 10,000 since a refresh and one second later another 10,000 appear, and I do it a lot...beats working!) some crazy things can happen. Here's a few involving the US. Mexico 25 pts, El Salvador 15 pts, ALL 6 other nations tied on 18 points. In this one we go through finishing second with +5GD (tied with CR, but we were +4 in goals scored) Mexico and Canada finish 1-2, we go through 3rd after finishing tied with Costa Rica and Panama. How'd it happen? Panama and Costa Rica go into match day 14 three points ahead of us, draws and they are 3-4. Already qualified Canada goes down to Panama and thumps them 3-0 and their GD is now 5th best. USA match day 14 travel to Costa Rica. It's a must win, and we have to make up 2 goal difference, but goals scored is also in play, we're also down 2. And we do it! 2-0 win!!! That's tied on points and GD, and it's tied on goals scored as well! It goes to the next tiebreaker which is points between the teams in games against each other. Earlier the USA drew 0-0 at home vs the Ticos. We get the 3rd auto spot via the the match 14 victory. Mexico, the USA, Canada, Costa Rica, and Jamaica ALL TIE for 1st on 21 points. 3 are going through, 1 to the playoff, and 1's staying home. Costa Rica, Mexico, and Canada qualify, with +10, +8, and +5 GD, respectively. The USA and Jamaica are tied for 4th, with a +1 GD. Goals scored, nope, both are 19 GF with 18 GA. Match day 4, USA and Jamaica drew in the US 1-1. Match day 8, in Jamaica, the teams also drew 1-1. The teams cannot be separated by head to head points, GD, GS, or the next tie breaker, away goals between the teams. This one is decided by fair play points (can't simulate). Then drawing of lots which I can. We won If anybody wants me to run specific scenarios or more info let me know.
D.C. United approached about staging El Salvador's World Cup home qualifier Sept 2 at Audi Field vs US, source says. DC area is ES hotbed. RFK Stadium (decommissioned) no longer available. ES seeking alternatives because of pandemic-related crowd restrictions at home. #dcu #usmnt— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) July 14, 2021
I would take that deal. Would potentially neutralize a lot of the problems that we face playing away from home in WCQ, including field conditions, travel and lodging, climate, etc.
Thanks for doing this! What was the average point total for slots 1-5? Particularly interested in 3 and 4, really.
I would agree to play them anywhere in the US that doesn't force us to travel further than we would have by going to El Salvador.
22-23 to finish third, on average. So probably around 25 to be safe. I expect to do better but it’s good to know.
25 is very safe, though not foolproof. I'm not sure what mathematically guarantees safety, but 29 seems to be it. There are scenarios, about 1 in a 100,000 sims or so where USA is on 28 points and finishes 4th, and 27 points about 1 in 10,000, in the 4th spot as well. Here's one sim example, the USA is Top 3 on 27 or above every time. 27 is also the USA's mode, occurring in 9% of the sims. Lower point totals with top3%, 4th%, Elim% are below: 26 - 99.8%, 0.2%, 0% 25 - 99.1%, 0.9%, 0% 24 - 96.6%, 3.4%, 0% 23 - 93.3%, 6.4%, 0.4% 22 - 84.2%, 14.9%, 0.9% 21 - 64.5%, 29.3%, 6.3% 20 - 52.0%, 37.6%, 10.5% 19 - 20.0%, 51.4%, 28.6% 18 - 10.2%, 39.8%, 50.0% 17 - 1.5%, 19.7%, 78.8% 16 - 0%, 12.8%, 87.2% 15 or Lower - 0%, 0%, 100%
I apologize for being lazy and not knowing where to search for an old thread, but do you recall what probability your sim had given our 5th-place finish in the hex last cycle?
🇲🇽 fans are banned from the first two WCQ Games due to u23 incidents , Games vs 🇮🇸 , 🇨🇷 , 🇺🇸 & now 🇹🇹 are under investigation for the homophobic slur & 🇹🇹 FA officially sent out a complaint about the racism from some🇲🇽 fans to playersIt’s unclear what will happen after all this pic.twitter.com/vSxX2tapHL— Edgar Moreno 🇺🇸🇲🇽 (@ConcacafEdgar) July 14, 2021 I wish FIFA had the stones to deduct points from Mex for WCQ, if they think these slaps on the wrist are going to stop these fans they are dead wrong
Don't bring that up! The initial sim that I posted which was done I think after all games played right before the start of the Hex had... USA - 1st (11.96%), 2nd (28.49%), 3rd (37.79%), 4th (16.18%), 5th (4.57%), 6th (1.01%) We are in much better shape now than then (we were behind CR at the start!), with that sim direct qualification at 78% vs. 92% for this one. That sim had the USA (actual) final point total of 12 in 5% of the sims, which was actually the 9th most likley point total, so not all that rare. Of course, the simulator finished with this before Couva... Loss and Eliminated = 0.43%
Giving USA a 10% chance to lose against T&T, Panama a 21% chance to beat Costa Rica, and Honduras a 21% chance to beat Mexico amounts to about .43% if all three of those results occur. Does that seem about what the probabilities were for each independent case?
Yeah, something like that. Looks like I had USA lose at about 8.5%. I don't really want to go back and re-live the rest of it
Prediction... 1. USA 2. Mexico 3. Canada 4. Jamaica 5. Honduras 6. Costa Rica 7. El Salvador 8. Panama September @ El Salvador US 3-0 Vs Canada US 4-2 @Honduras US 1-0 October Vs Jamaica US 3-0 @Panama US 2-1 Vs Costa Rica US 2-1 November Vs Mexico US 2-0 @jamaica US 2-1 January/February Vs El Salvador US 6-0 @CANADA US 5-3 Vs Honduras US 5-1 March @Mexico US 2-1 Vs Panama US 6-0 @costa Rica US 1-0
Awesome stuff. And good to see its pretty consistent with my more simple model (good to see for me and my model, I mean). I varied the home advantage by team as noted earlier in the thread, and that seemed most to impact Canada's chances, but the US chances and the likely number of points needed to qualify are all consistent given the assumptions. When I reduce the US Elo by about 50-60 points, I get about a 10% drop in direct qualification chances to around 83%. I'd be interested in know if you find that too. I am concerned the top part of the US pool is untested in qualifying and might be inflated in Elo for predicting results in this scenario.