A lot of recent reports that the 2026 WC could be expanded to 40 teams. What would this mean for CONCACAF? How many additional WC places would CONCACAF get? Would the HEX be expanded to 8? Also interesting that it's CONCACAF's turn to host the world cup in 2026. Could CONCACAF have 5 teams in the tournament?
Honestly I think CONCACAF doesn't deserve more until teams like Honduras (USA too) stop disappointing at the WC. I think 4.5 spots is fair but 5 sounds like a dream.
Just saw in a related thread that the FIFA reform proposal had the following WC allocations: http://resources.fifa.com/mm/Docume...2015.11.27Annexe4_Neutral.pdf?t=1449143282551 Annexe 4 to the 2016 FIFA Reform Committee Report 27.11.2015 Increased participation in the FIFA World Cup™ (men’s) AFC: 6 CAF: 7 CONCACAF: 5 CONMEBOL: 5 OFC: 1 UEFA: 14 Host: 1 The remaining team to reach the total number of 40 shall be determined based on sporting merits using a method yet to be defined.
I think CONCACAF is easily the third best confederation... the results in the WC show this. UEFA and CONMEBOL are clearly the top 2 WC results for the other 4 Confeds ConfedTotal TeamsTop 16Top 84th3rd2nd1rst CONCACAF 39 13 5 0 1* 0 0 CAF 39 9 3 0 0 0 0 AFC 32 5 2 1 0 0 0 OFC 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 *Thanks to the USA, CONCACAF is the only confed out of these 4 to finish in the top 3. Who else should get more slots?... there could be 8 new spots open. Edit: Currently the allocation is this.... - CAF: 5 - AFC: 4.5 - UEFA: 13 - CONCACAF: 3.5 - OFC: 0.5 - CONMEBOL: 4.5 - Host: 1 So both CAF and AFC have more spots allocated to them, yet CONCACAF is out performing them.
Beer must have obliterated my memory of Guatemala's quarterfinal berth at the 2014 World Cup. I can live with the Round of 16 appearance by the US.
Beer must have obliterated your reading comprehension because we're talking about CONCACAF as a whole, not just one country.
Honestly the USA's performances in the World Cup makes Concacaf look bad. Then you wonder others think Concacaf is a "minnow" confederation even though Mexico, Costa Rica, and a few others can compete against the best. Canada should try to improve really fast so it can knock out the USA in qualifying and Canada would be better in the World Cup.
Eight countries have reached the Round of 16 in the last two World Cups. They are Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina, USA Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, and Chile. That's the same amount from UEFA and CONCACAF. UEFA has more members, so a randomly selected CONCACAF country is more likely to have reached the Round of 16 in the last two World Cups than a randomly selected UEFA country.
I have to disagree. There is a huge gap between the top 3 CONCACAF countries and the rest of the region. There is a lot less of a discrepancy between the European leagues. A better measure would be to determine how the bottom 10 countries in Europe would do against the bottom 10 teams in the Carribean. I don't even think it's a contest.
I know that UEFA is stronger than CONCACAF overall. As for the Top 3 in CONCACAF, there's a big gap between third and fourth in the FIFA Rankings. CONCACAF countries other than Mexico, USA, and Costa Rica have had accomplishments. Jamaica was second in last year's Gold Cup and Honduras has qualified for the last two World Cups. Honduras is ninth in CONCACAF in the FIFA Rankings. Panama is fourth in CONCACAF in the FIFA Rankings, 1 point ahead of Trinidad and Tobago, who didn't even make the Semifinals of qualifying for World Cup 2014. I guess CONCACAF countries other than the Top 3 go up and down.
Armenia, a bottom UEFA team, will be playing friendlies vs El Salvador and Guatemala soon. We'll see how that goes.
Part of the beauty of the Hex is that it's a little dicey for the fringe teams in any given cycle. An expansion of the field would ruin the Hex for me. I love the drama of it.
The new CONCACAF president did a radio interview today where he indicated the qualifying format would likely be expanded for 2022. He mentioned the creation of the UEFA Nations League beginning in 2019 makes it difficult for CONCACAF teams to play any European friendlies in the future so teams may be more open to filling the void with a longer qualifying format.
How much earlier can qualifying start? CONCACAF started qualifying 252 days after the World Cup 2014 Final. If you make the top countries go through three group stages instead of two, with two rounds of groups of four and the Hexagonal, they would have to play 22 qualifiers.
even with 40 or say 64 teams would Canada even qualify? I wanna see them in the WC again. Even New Zealand qualified back in 2010.
The draw was done and for World Cup 2018 they will play fifth from CONMEBOL. Given how many goals they lost to Mexico by, could New Zealand have won a playoff for World Cup 2014 against any team in the Hexagonal?
It's a question of tactics and overall quality more than applying some sort of transitive property of goal difference though. New Zealand doesn't have much infrastructure/continuity. They can bring results one WC (2010) and look awful in a playoff v Mexico the next (2014). There is a lot of quality on the Mexican roster and the tactics employed by part timers from NZ might not play well at all in that scenario. Give them a playoff vs teams outside of CR/USA/MEX and their match approach could be sufficient given the limitations of other hex teams. They may also have more cohesion over a cycle if they know that they're likely to play a lower rates te in a playoff for a WC spot. Mexico is definitely 1-2 steps too far for them to have more than a punchers chance.
In a 40-team Worl Cup I'd give CONCACAF 4.5 spots (one more they currently have). Once you get beyond USA, Mexico and Costa Rica the standard drops significantly. Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Canada, Trinidad & Tobago can compete in their region, but not globally. 4.5 spots means that outside of top 3 we have one automatic berth and a playoff berth, that's enough to me. Obviously the HEX should be expanded to become OCT (8 teams).
Drop significantly is a stretch their isn't a significant drop between Honduras, Panama, Jamaica, TnT and Costa Rica a drop sure but not a significant one. Even when Mexico and the USA dip in form which seems to happen more frequently other countries outperform them. Honduras outperformed Mexico, and the USA at the most recent Olympics. Jamaica outperformed the USA at the most recent gold cup. Had Panama made the last World Cup it's possible they would have been as awful as Honduras but it's also possible they would have beaten somebody in their group. They are a team that fluctuates so much I could even argue they could have made it out of certain groups if they were clicking
I found a research paper written by Christian Stone & Michel Rod. They came up with their own system for fixing the current system... "One possible remedy to the current bias that seems to exist is to encourage more inter-confederation competition during the qualification stages. For instance, the amount of automatic qualification spots could be reduced for each region to allow only the very best of the region to gain automatic entry, with the remaining spots to be determined through inter-confederation playoffs. This would allow for a more dynamic system of qualification that should serve to redistribute the remaining World Cup berths between the confederations in a more appropriate and equitable manner. In years of relative strength, confederations would be able to access more World Cup places, while regions that show a relative weakness would see the number of member states that qualify fall." This chart shows their new system with more inter-confed playoffs. The entire paper can be found here. Taking CONCACAF as an example with currently 3.5 spots. In this new system CONCACAF will have 2 automatic spots and 2 playoff spots. So CONCACAF could have anywhere from 2 teams in the WC to 6 depending how they do in the playoffs. CONCACAF is currently broken up into 3 Tiers Tier 1 (FIFA rank 1 - 50) Mexico (FIFA 14) Costa Rica (Fifa 21) USA (Fifa 26) Tier 2 (FIFA rank 51 - 100) T & T (FIFA 68) Panama (FIFA 69) Jamaica (FIFA 71) ST Kitts (FIFA 81) Guatemala (FIFA 82) A & B (FIFA 83) Honduras (FIFA 84) Tier 3 (FIFA rank 101 - 208) Canada (FIFA 100) Haiti (FIFA 101) Nicaragua (FIFA 107) Puerto Rico (FIFA 114) Guyana (FIFA 128) Curacao (FIFA 131) El Salvador (FIFA 137) Dominican Rep (FIFA 138) Aruba (FIFA 148) Cuba (FIFA 151) and the next 16 ending with Bahamas (FIFA 205) There are a lot of teams around the world that fall into Tier 2 teams (50 in theory). This is the group that should be competing for the extra spots along with all the teams in tier 1 (50 teams in theory). CONCACAF is basically competing for the extra spots with AFC, OFC and CAF. We know UEFA and CONMEBOL are better and will get their share of the extra spots. OFC - CONCACAF is clearly better 1 team in the OFC (New Zealand, FIFA 93) is ranked in the tier 1 group. 0 teams in tier 2 All the other teams are Tier 3 (161 or worse - 10 Countries). AFC - CONCACAF is clearly better 1 team is a tier 1 group (Iran 39) 10 countries are Tier 2 35 countries are Tier 3 CAF - CONCACAF is equal or even better at the top, but CAF has more 2nd tier teams. 6 teams are tier 1 (but all ranked worse then the CONCACAF top 3) 23 teams are tier 2 25 teams are tier 3 Now getting to the 8 extra spots. I am not sure how I would allocate the 8 extra spots, but I do like the idea of having more home and away playoffs (or some kind of playoff) between CONFEDs, as long as each CONFED gets at the very least 1 automatic spot. Maybe most of the 8 extra spots could be playoff spots. Like this... AFC ----------- 4 Auto - 1.5 Playoff (4 or 7 WC spots) CAF ----------- 5 Auto - 1 Playoff (5 or 7 WC spots) CONCACAF -- 3 Auto - 1.5 Playoff (3 or 6 WC spots) CONMEBOL - 4 Auto - 2.5 Playoff (4 or 9 WC spots) OFC ----------- 1 Auto - 1.5 Playoff (1 or 4 WC spots) UEFA --------- 13 Auto - 2 Playoff (13 or 17 WC spots) HOST --------- 1 So CONCACAF could have 3 teams or 6 teams at the 2026 WC depending how they do in the playoffs. Edit: FIFA could even set up a mini Playoff tourney with the 20 playoff teams... And the top 10 of this World Cup Qualifying Playoff Tourney could qualify for the WC. The tourney could have 5 groups of 4 and the top 2 teams in each group goes to the WC. Each team would play 3 games total.
1. The paper should have had a separate line for the host spot. The paper said CONMEBOL gets 5.5 spots, which they had for World Cup 2014, but they have 4.5 for World Cup 2018. 2. The paper gave playoff spots for teams 4 through 9 in CONMEBOL and 6 through 15 in UEFA, which would be 16 of the 32 playoff teams. Using the September 2016 FIFA Rankings, those teams have an average rank of 20.4. The 16 playoff teams from the rest of the confederations have an average rank of 64.0. The second worst team of the 16 from UEFA and CONMEBOL would be ranked ahead of every team from the AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, and OFC combination except for USA. Venezuela is 9th in CONMEBOL, 60th in the world, and would be the worst team from the UEFA and CONMEBOL combination, but they would be better than 7 teams from the AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, and OFC combination.
Some reservations about qual expansion: -how would it reasonably work given there are only 11 decent teams (12 if Cuba could get things together)? You can't do a 4x4 to 1x8. It would add 4 minnows who likely don't want to deal witg the cost. Maybe a 2x6 to 1x8. That's 24 matches though. You could cut it to 18 if results from the prior round carried over for three opponents/team advancing from the same prelim. There's the time issue though. -the loss of fixtures from nations league is likely overstated. A lot of friendlies v UEFA come in May-June of WC and Euro years. Dead periods for Nations League due to prep and times when even non-tourney qualifiers want matches to prep for the next qualifying cycle. Non dead period friendlies by country since WC2010: USA (19), Canada (8), Mexico (6), 8 other decent to good sides (12 total, none more than 3). This could only be a problem for the first three countries listed. MEX is a top 15 friendly target outside of UEFA. They'll get their opportunities. Canada is a major expat marketing focus. Greeks, Ukrainians, Armenians, and other friendly opponents they've had in the last few years all like the outreach aspect and will continue to do so. The USA has both going for them. -there will be some resistance to this from the ECA and clubs outside of their organization. They'll argue against taking additional offseason time away to run the 40 team tourney and some calendar adjustments will likely be conceded, ie fewer international dates in the middle of the club season to eliminate off-weekends to get through the season a week earlier. This makes up for the extra time lost at the WC. If anything I could see the qual processes getting shorter. -this is further down the road, but I could see this ushering in a CONCACAF/CONMEBOL merger. FIFA has 2 goals in expanding: (1) gain favor with smaller FAs politically (2) protect their marketing revenue stream by ensuring big markets qualify. With the extra spot, a merger is easier because of the cushion afforded to markets like USA and Mexico. Hypothetically, we could have 4 major regions. UEFA and Africa as is, the Americas, and then OFC running a prelim that feeds into Asia. If all 4 regions had a base allocation of 6 spots, with the host, that leaves 15 spots to allocate. If done based upon percent each region places into the top 40 (using Elo here, but FIFA very similar) the allocation would look like this: UEFA 14.5 Asia/OFC 7 Africa 6 Americas 11.5 I'd have travel concerns with the Americas quals, but this offers USA/Mexico sufficient protection. Assuming a poor run, where U.S./MEX is teetering around 3rd/4th place hex level, there are 4 direct tickets for the bottom half of CONCACAF/bottom 4 of the hex. Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, USA, T&T. Very bad case here would probably be 4th best. Worst case a playoff at 5th.
I think the paper took to many "Automatic" spots away from UEFA and CONMEBOL. But as the paper states if UEFA wins all it's playoff spots then it would have 15 teams in the WC. More then any other Confed and almost half of the countries would be from UEFA. CONMEBOL only has 10 teams in it and the worst teams are ranked 60 and 75. If CONMEBOL wins all it's playoff spots 9 teams from this region could be at the WC... 1 team from this region would miss out. The problem is, and I think you are getting at, is 38 of the top 50 teams are UEFA or CONMEBOL. If the WC was based solely on the best teams on the planet then there is no OFC, no AFC (only Iran is ranked in the top 50 at 37) and possibly no CAF either (Their best team is ranked 34). Some good teams from UEFA and CONMEBOL need to miss out or it wont be a World Cup. Teams need to be represented from allover the world. If the current 32 team WC was solely based on the 31 theoretically best teams in the world then it would look like this... UEFA - 21 Teams CONMEBOL - 7 Teams CONCACAF - 3 Teams HOST - 1 Team CAF - 0 Teams, best Rank is 34 AFC - 0 Teams, best rank is 37 OFC - 0 Teams, best rank is 88 Some good teams from the better regions need to be eliminated to make it a true WC. One thing I like about this proposed playoff structure is illustrated in this quote form the paper.. "In addition to the anticipated improvement to the quality of the final 32 participants at the World Cup, the (playoff) solution offers the benefit of exposure to teams outside of their region. Teams that failed to automatically qualify for the cup through their regional games are still afforded a chance to qualify and guaranteed to face quality competition in the playoffs from teams outside their region. For many of the teams who will comprise the playoffs entrants the mere fact that World Cup qualification is possibly a couple of games away should serve to stimulate interest and legitimacy of the sport locally, generating additional football revenues through the extra gate revenue, television rights and other streams." Basically lesser ranked teams get a chance to play in a playoff against a quality opponent. Quality should win out most of the time.