C'mon kiddies, let's get this going.. I'm stuck here in the Washington/Baltimore area looking at prediction of nearly two feet of snow tomorrow alone.. It's Mock Draw time... I'm drawing the 12 groups together, picking a group winner and then drawing the semi-final rounds (noting of course that if the USA, Mexico and Costa Rica somehow someway manage to survive their opening rounds, they can't possibly play each other until the final Hexagonal)... I will continue all the way through till the Hexagonal is set... The first draw is to see which seeded team will play in the two team group.. This group will be Group 12.. T&T wins the initial draw.. They go right to Group 12.. The groups will now appear as complete after I draw first the seeded teams, then the corresponding Pot D teams to fill out the draw.. Group 1: El Salvador US Virgin Islands Antigua Winner - El Salvador Group 2: Mexico British Virgin Islands St. Lucia Winner - Mexico Group 3: Canada Cuba Guyana Winner - Canada Group 4: St. Vincents and Grenadine Dominican Republic Netherlands Antilles Winner - St. Vince Group 5: Guatemala Anguilla Dominica Winner - Guatemala Group 6: Honduras St. Kitts and Nevis Nicaragua Winner - Honduras Group 7: USA Aruba Belize Winner - USA Group 8: Barbados Bahamas Bermuda - no ************, this is how it drew out Winner - Barbados Group 9: Panama Cayman Islands Haiti Winner - Haiti Group 10: Jamaica Turks & Caicos Puerto Rico Winner - Jamaica Group 11: Costa Rica Greneda Montserrat Winner - Costa Rica Group 12: T&T Suriname Winner - T&T SEMI-FINAL ROUND: Top 2 teams make it to Hexagonal Group 1: Costa Rica Honduras Barbados Jamaica Honduras and Costa Rica go through, tough break for the Reggae Boys Group 2: USA El Salvador T&T Haiti USA and T&T go through.. Arena and most USA fans would take this draw in a friggin heartbeat.. Group 3: Mexico St. Vincents Guatemala Canada Mexico and Canada go through.. Why does Mexico always get St. Vincents? FINAL ROUND: USA Costa Rica Honduras Mexico Canada T&T There you go folks, no need to actually play these games now... Enjoy........
dont be so sure...i heard from a long-lost friend of mine that freddy adu is getting his arubian citizenship next week b/c he is protesting the possible war on iraq and has decided to denounce his new american passport. <we got 8" of snow overnight and 8" more are expected tomorrow afternoon, it is certainly coming your way>
Snow, eh? Seems like it's always snowing back east this winter.. Anyways, I'm first looking at the first round draws and it's just amazing how lopsided almost all of them are. The only truly competitive group I see is: Group 9 Panama Cayman Islands Haiti Winner - Haiti I can imagine Panama contesting this one. Well...... then there's: Group 11: Costa Rica Greneda Montserrat Winner - Costa Rica I know CR looks good on paper by my prediction is that the upset will go to Montserrat! Yes! The Volcanos! Not only that but they will win clear through to the Hex where they will come in forth! Bank on it! Of course forth place in the Hex means they have to play home-and-home with an Asian team. We all know that there's only one team for Montserrat to play: BHUTAN! Let the pre-game hype begin! Revenge! Rebirth! Karma! (The Bhutanese star forward's last name, first name "Instant".) Original Sin! (The name of the Montserrat d-mid.) The best qualifying games in the whole world! YES!
after this winter, i'll be looking for those US away matches next february.... are you kidding me? we can end up playing away games at US Virgin Islands Antigua British Virgin Islands St. Lucia St. Vincents and Grenadine Dominican Republic Anguilla St. Kitts and Nevis Aruba Belize Barbados Bahamas Bermuda Cayman Islands Jamaica Turks & Caicos Puerto Rico Costa Rica Greneda Montserrat T&T my wife will definitely follow the US team now!
Boy there are some semi-final draws that could be miserable... USA Guatemala Jamaica Honduras ...for example.
Hmm... Actually, I am quite looking forward to the US playing a few of those dot islands. Great scuba diving can be found at most. Hmm.. ok.. Belize isn't an island.... but great diving none the less.
Nope, not gonna happen. I'm guessing that given what we know about the make-up of the pots, and using logic (yes, I understand that when dealing with CONCACAF and FIFA the word "logic" is verboten, but go with me here), every Semifinal group of 4 will have an A, B, C, C set up with no reseeding if a D team knocks off one of the above. Honduras and Jamiaca would not be in the same group. Although my guess is that whomever gets Guatemala in their group is going to have problems.
I think Soccer America has confirmed this. Its posted somehwere on one of the many threads on the qualifying format.
Or the U.S. could get Haiti in a two game series with Peter Predergast and Rodolfo Sibrian as referees. Oh well, there is always 2010. Seriously, the U.S. has never, ever, ever gotten an easy group in qualifying. Expect the worst and don't count on miracles like Trinidad overcoming 150-1 odds to beat Honduras in Honduras AND Costa Rica not going easy on Mexico AND Mexico scoring two goals in Jamaica to break Jamaica's 59 game home undefeated streak, thus taking away the home crowd advantage Jamaica would have had in Foxboro. We lucked out big time and beat out Honduras by a single point. Next time, don't count on luck saving us from a tough Confederation and anti-American feelings. Just my opinions.
I hear where you're coming from. BOTH of the last two sets of WCQ's we had CR and Guatemala in our Semifinal group. Once we had Barbados, the other time TnT. Whereas both times one of the semifinal groups had none of their teams go on to the World Cup. And in '98, Canada and ES made it through from one semis group only to finish BOTTOM TWO in the final round. Then again, I'm inclined to say that we're due an easier group this time.
I don't think we will get an easy group this time. We never do. I would take it a step further and look back into the qualifying rounds from 1954 to 1986. During much of that time, the U.S. was drawn into a preliminary round including Mexico and often Canada. This was a "geographic" draw. The problem is Mexico was universally regarded as the strongest team in CONCACAF and the US seemingly always had to beat the top team simply to advance to the next round of qualifying. In many cases Canada, a relatively strong team at that time, suffered a similar fate. This assured that the US never qualified but another often inferior team did. It certainly had something to do with how poorly CONCACAF (with the exception of highly-regarded Mexico) did at the World Cup. But the hated nortenos were kept out of the World Cup and soccer's growth was stunted. In that light, the lousy draws we got the last 2 qualifying rounds do not seem so strange. For the 1998 Cup qualifying, by and large we had decent referees. The referees for the 2002 qualifying were absolutely outrageous. Don't kid yourself. It may sound like a silver lining to play an easy team on a beautiful island next March. But we could be drawn against a tough team like Haiti, with awful referees. If that happens we may well be talking about 2010. Just my opinions
Why does the CONCACAF draw sound like a Beach Boys song? "Aruba, Jamaica, ooooh I wanna take ya, Bermuda, Bahamas, c'mon pretty momma..."
WRONG, oh so last week breath. If you check your current FIFA rankings, you'll notice that AFGHANISTAN has just leapfrogged Montserrat, knocking them BACK to last in the FIFA rankings. All based on Afghanistan's LOSING three games in the South Asia Football Federation Cup to such monstrous powerhouses as Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka! I do believe that Afghanistan would be the appropriate team to play. Sure, there's the rivalry issue with Bhutan, but why not start a second rivalry just to keep things really interesting?
Before 1982, CONCACAF only had one spot in the WC, except for 1970 when Mexico hosted, so there were no undeserving teams qualifying at the expense of the US or Canada. In 1970, the US was eliminated by Haiti. In 1982, the first time that CONCACAF had two spots in the US, the US was indeed grouped with Mexico and Canada in the first round and finished last. But Mexico and Canada both failed to qualify for the WC (finishing behind Honduras and El Salvador in the final tournament), so you can't convincingly argue that the regional draw hurt the US. CONCACAF ditched the regional draw starting in 1986. I'll hold off on other comments until the official mock draw comes out.
I'm with Flannigan Although I often find myself referring to what should be the plan for 2006, I don't think any of us should forget how thoroughly we got jobbed in the summer of 2000. It only takes a third ref to pull that kind of b.s. in a third game, or us to take two losses, instead of a loss and a draw, for us to be screwed completely. Just imagine if we had gotten that kind of officiating against say, Honduras in our first match with them in 2001. That whole campaign was nearly sabotaged by refs first, and then by injuries second. While we definitely should be excited about the future, and should be looking forward to the campaign next year, we shouldn't forget what a farce 2000 was and how easily one can get screwed in away games. Sometimes it's almost as if refs fear they'll get whacked if they don't give extremely excessive home cooking calls in some stadiums in Latin America, but in the US of A refs rightly don't have to fear much of anything (except Pittsburgh Steelers fans in the seventies according to Madden) so we rarely seem to get compensatory home cooking on the scale we saw in 2000. I understand home cooking, it happens, but in 2000 it was outright absurd, I nearly broke my tv set I was in such a rage, and I do not want to have replace the new one I got last year if I see more of the same b.s. Hopefully the veterans will prepare the young guys for what kind of b.s. they'll have to deal with at times down south. If Landon's gonna lose his head at times in friendlies in the USA, I don't know what we'll see from him if we have to play in Guatemala or Costa Rica or elsewhere and we see more of the same.
Re: Re: Unofficial CONCACAF Qualifying Mock Draw... Oh dear Lord, 1 1/3 feet of snow. Duck and cover.