General - CONCACAF Nations League

[Kent]

12 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada,USA, Russia,Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands, Svalbard and you probably add a few more islands. 

P.S. This list isn't right. Faroe Islands aren't inside the arctic circle. Denmark only counts because of Greenland so it doesn't make sense to have them both separate. Svalbard is part of Norway so again it probably doesn't make sense to have them separate (although Norway proper is in the Arctic circle), and only has a population of 2,667.

Apologies for the off topic tangent.

[SpecialK]

5 minutes ago, Kent said:

That's all fine, but it's already enough of a stretch to give the CFU a full spot, it would be very outrageous for CFU to get 2 spots. CONCACAF includes CFU and only gets 3.5 spots. So if CFU deserves 2 spots, I guess that means North and Central America only deserve 1.5 spots.

So whether it's Jamaica, or Haiti or whoever, you have 1 team spreading the wealth with all the others in your CFU solution.

Ya your right 2 would be a stretch. But with one  at least one  Caribbean team would actually make it to the World Cup.  Also the local tournament would be highly competitive and it would cost way less, they wouldn’t have fly around across North and Central America. 

[Obinna]

50 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

Caribbean nations should break away from Concacaf and FIFA should just create a Caribbean  confederation. Give them 1-2 World Cup spots and they can fight for those spot and they can  receive World Cup up money and they can finally grow. 

Have them form a Caribbean football union, include Jamaica, T&T and Haiti too. Give them a half spot and let them play Oceania every cycle for a WC birth.

Take the .5 away from the rest of the CONCACAF nations and rename. 3 spots for North and Central America.

I think that'd be fair.

[SpecialK]

1 minute ago, Kent said:

P.S. This list isn't right. Faroe Islands aren't inside the arctic circle. Denmark only counts because of Greenland so it doesn't make sense to have them both separate. Svalbard is part of Norway so again it probably doesn't make sense to have them separate (although Norway proper is in the Arctic circle), and only has a population of 2,667.

Apologies for the off topic tangent.

Faroe Island is part of the Arctic  Council   and a FIFA member on its own. Svalbard is part of Norway but has its own ruling government and it’s a mix up one half  Norwegian the other half Russian. 

[devioustrevor]

It looks like it probably would've made sense for CONCACAF to do what UEFA did and just assign levels based on FIFA rankings.

Montserrat is really the only team I can think of that defintely is punching above it's weight.

[Kent]

If single game windows are the real problem (I somehow doubt it) then the solution could be to change the number of teams per league. As it stands right now League A and C have 12 teams, with 4 groups of 3 (so there would be some single game windows). League B currently is 16 teams with 4 groups of 4. CONCACAF could change it so that League C gets 16 teams and League B gets 12.

I still really doubt that would make the difference for them.

I sure hope these 10 nations have considered the sweet, sweet, OZ subscription money that will flood in next year before they rashly decide to withdraw.

[devioustrevor]

3 minutes ago, Kent said:

I sure hope these 10 nations have considered the sweet, sweet, OZ subscription money that will flood in next year before they rashly decide to withdraw.

Will there be sweet, sweet OZ money?  I still haven't seen or heard anything about subscription costs.

[SpecialK]

19 minutes ago, Kent said:

I have never understood the appeal of this Arctic Cup idea, unless it's just trying gerrymander a competition where people think we can do better. Are we THAT traumatized by Honduras

Ya I think so. Most senior fans here really don’t think we still that good. Now that’s changing but just look at past games against decent teams, we have done well. A draw against Scotland, our last gold cup was pretty good. Canada C team losing to South Korea by 2 goals. See this is problem we haven’t our Best squad vs any real  competition.  When we did have Friendly’s versus good teams they never bring the best squad I never understood that. Even against Scotland some our best guys weren’t there ?

i think Canada will be  competitive versus some of the big boys. We  are gonna shock some people.

[Kent]

20 minutes ago, devioustrevor said:

It looks like it probably would've made sense for CONCACAF to do what UEFA did and just assign levels based on FIFA rankings.

Montserrat is really the only team I can think of that defintely is punching above it's weight.

This got me curious. So here is the list of teams according to their current standings in qualification. Green teams are a league up from where they would have been if ranking was used to determine leagues. Red teams are a league down from where they would have been. There are no 2 league rises/drops at the moment.

League A (after matchday 2)

Curacao +1

Haiti

Canada

Cuba

Saint Kitts and Nevis +1

Jamaica

League B

Dominican Republic

Nicaragua

Martinique -1

El Salvador -1

Guyana

Suriname

Guadeloupe

Aruba +1

Bermuda

French Guiana

Antigua and Barbuda

Belize

Saint Lucia

Montserrat +1

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Barbados

League C

Dominica

Puerto Rico

Cayman Islands

British Virgin Islands

Bahamas

Anguilla

Bonaire -1

Grenada -1

Saint Martin

US Virgin Islands

Turks and Caicos Islands

Sint Maarten

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SpecialK said:

A Copa America would be great ! I still love to see an  Arctic  confederation . That would be really  competitive.  Most teams would be equally matched. 

Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada,USA, Russia,Iceland,Greenland,Faroe Islands, Svalbard and you probably add a few more islands. 

Man those games would draw and awesome to see. An Arctic Cup would awesome to watch. But it will never happen. Only in dreams haha 

The European countries would never leave UEFA and the USA would not leave Mexico 

[Guest]

57 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

Ya I think so. Most senior fans here really don’t think we still that good. Now that’s changing but just look at past games against decent teams, we have done well. A draw against Scotland, our last gold cup was pretty good. Canada C team losing to South Korea by 2 goals. See this is problem we haven’t our Best squad vs any real  competition.  When we did have Friendly’s versus good teams they never bring the best squad I never understood that. Even against Scotland some our best guys weren’t there ?

i think Canada will be  competitive versus some of the big boys. We  are gonna shock some people.

1. Don’t generalize fans and assume them as “seniors”

2. Drawing against Scotland in a friendly is not huge indicator of the improvement of our team

3. That was also South Korea’s C team

[SpecialK]

4 minutes ago, canta15 said:

The European countries would never leave UEFA and the USA would not leave Mexico 

That’s why it’s only a dream. But i believe it would  beneficial for all teams if they moved though. 

[Kent]

I was going to resp9nd to @Obinna in the Best XI thread but don’t want to derail further. This makes more sense here.

Have you heard somewhere that the next nations league will be in 2021/2022? I am assuming there isn’t time for nations league and WCQ at the same time, so I feel like we are getting Nations League once per 4 year cycle. I’m not sure if that means we will only have one Gold Cup per cycle now, with the League A participants and teams promoted from B making up the 16 teams.

Someone who has been following closely for longer, should we expect to find out all this stuff by the World Cup draw or will we need to just find out as we go along?

[Obinna]

33 minutes ago, Kent said:

I was going to resp9nd to @Obinna in the Best XI thread but don’t want to derail further. This makes more sense here.

Have you heard somewhere that the next nations league will be in 2021/2022? I am assuming there isn’t time for nations league and WCQ at the same time, so I feel like we are getting Nations League once per 4 year cycle. I’m not sure if that means we will only have one Gold Cup per cycle now, with the League A participants and teams promoted from B making up the 16 teams.

Someone who has been following closely for longer, should we expect to find out all this stuff by the World Cup draw or will we need to just find out as we go along?

I originally thought there'd be a 20/21 competition. The wiki page for 19/20 has a link to 20/21, but that link takes you back to the general nations league wiki page, so I am not so sure now. It could be that someone just hasn't taken the time to build a 20/21 yet, so a link was created to take users back to the general page.

Someone more in the know can clear this up for us, please.

Edit: UEFA will have a 20/21 tournament, so if we are following that model, I assume we will also have this, so @Kent this likely won't be once every 4 years.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Obinna

[ted]

21 hours ago, Keegan said:

Clearly teams that are getting smacked by 10+ goals and complaining about costs just need to bow out of the confederation. What’s the solution?

Here's a radical solution: Since FIFA is prepared to ignore national boundaries for sporting" reasons (home countries) why not do the opposite with the Caribbean and declare them one "nation" for FIFA purposes and let them field a single team from players from all the smaller countries?

 

[Keegan]

2 minutes ago, ted said:

Here's a radical solution: Since FIFA is prepared to ignore national boundaries for sporting" reasons (home countries) why not do the opposite with the Caribbean and declare them one "nation" for FIFA purposes and let them field a single team from players from all the smaller countries?

 

Sort of like a West Indies cricket idea then? I like it but FIFA wouldn’t want to set that precedent. 

Also, logically you have to believe that the nations league must be every 2 years since its acting as Gold Cup qualifying. 

Edited October 19, 2018 by Keegan

[jpg75]

I don't think we want that either. It would create a really strong team that would probably be better than us.

[devioustrevor]

37 minutes ago, Keegan said:

Sort of like a West Indies cricket idea then? I like it but FIFA wouldn’t want to set that precedent. 

Also, logically you have to believe that the nations league must be every 2 years since its acting as Gold Cup qualifying. 

Besides, a West Indies soccer team would probably be made up enitrely of players from Jamaica and T&T.

With the exception of maybe Atiba Harris from St. Kitts and Nevis, I can't off the top of my head think of anyone that could displace the best players from either of the two Caribbean giants.  I forgot Nakhi Wells from Bermuda as well.

[Obinna]

The downside of a west indies team is it would set the region back even further. If the idea is to elevate the region by getting them more games, wouldn't a west indies team mean less growth of the game for the majority of these islands?

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Kent said:

I was going to resp9nd to @Obinna in the Best XI thread but don’t want to derail further. This makes more sense here.

Have you heard somewhere that the next nations league will be in 2021/2022? I am assuming there isn’t time for nations league and WCQ at the same time, so I feel like we are getting Nations League once per 4 year cycle. I’m not sure if that means we will only have one Gold Cup per cycle now, with the League A participants and teams promoted from B making up the 16 teams.

Someone who has been following closely for longer, should we expect to find out all this stuff by the World Cup draw or will we need to just find out as we go along?

The last wcq schedule had us playing Honduras on the first game of the semi final round in November 2015. If we stick to basically the same cycle as before that means we will have wcq games in November 2019. But as we know September, October and November 2019 international dates are reserved for the 2019-2020 nations league. The next date after that is March 2020 which is reserved for the nations league final so we can’t have a wcq schedule for then either. I’ll assume we will have wcq begin in the summer and fall of 2020 (8 dates I think). The question is, if nations league starts up again in September/October/ November 2021 will there be enough dates left to finish up wcq before December 2022??

[Kent]

10 minutes ago, Alex said:

The last wcq schedule had us playing Honduras on the first game of the semi final round in November 2015. If we stick to basically the same cycle as before that means we will have wcq games in November 2019. But as we know September, October and November 2019 international dates are reserved for the 2019-2020 nations league. The next date after that is March 2020 which is reserved for the nations league final so we can’t have a wcq schedule for then either. I’ll assume we will have wcq begin in the summer and fall of 2020 (8 dates I think). The question is, if nations league starts up again in September/October/ November 2021 will there be enough dates left to finish up wcq before December 2022??

It's also worth pointing out that by the time that Canada vs Honduras game was played, 23 teams had already been eliminated from CONCACAF. I think there is definitely going to be a change in format this year. I had been thinking it would go to a more European style, but if these rumours of Caribbean teams being unhappy because they have to play more than 2 competitive games in a cycle are true, then maybe they wouldn't like that format, which would force them to play something like 10 more games or so.

[BenFisk'sBiggestFan]

Why dont they make the lowest league more like a series of tournaments, where they play several games in a couple days in one place? They could even do it by proximity if needed. It is better than nothing at all.

[El Diego]

23 minutes ago, BenFisk'sBiggestFan said:

Why dont they make the lowest league more like a series of tournaments, where they play several games in a couple days in one place? They could even do it by proximity if needed. It is better than nothing at all.

I was thinking something similar to this. It makes so much sense for subsequent tournaments. Make it like UEFA where winners of Leagues A-D make Gold Cup (or whatever you need to do to make up numbers) and stage it over like 2 weeks. Not sure how much time you'd need to make it all work, but it's a way to start thinking of a solution.

[devioustrevor]

The Nations League is a Gold Cup qualifier.  Simply give the nations the option to not enter if they don't want a chance to qualify for the Gold Cup.  If they'd rather preserve their resources for World Cup qualifying, so be it.

I hate to sound heartless, but if they don't have the resources for this competition, then they should realize that and choose to withdraw.  Many nations around the world withdraw from World Cup and continental qualifying for just that reason.  There is nothing to be ashamed of, I think most rational people realize that nations of 20, 50, 100-thousand people just lack the financial ability to field a team in competition.  CONCACAF and Oceania are the two federations burdened with the problem of having so many of it's associations being sparsely-populated, remote islands.

[tyler453]

3 hours ago, devioustrevor said:

The Nations League is a Gold Cup qualifier.  Simply give the nations the option to not enter if they don't want a chance to qualify for the Gold Cup.  If they'd rather preserve their resources for World Cup qualifying, so be it.

I hate to sound heartless, but if they don't have the resources for this competition, then they should realize that and choose to withdraw.  Many nations around the world withdraw from World Cup and continental qualifying for just that reason.  There is nothing to be ashamed of, I think most rational people realize that nations of 20, 50, 100-thousand people just lack the financial ability to field a team in competition.  CONCACAF and Oceania are the two federations burdened with the problem of having so many of it's associations being sparsely-populated, remote islands.

Yeah, the thing I don't understand is that apparently every member of CONCACAF had to vote yes on the creation of this Nation's League. If you had any doubts about the financial viability of it on your end, why did you vote yes in the first place? Now teams leaving would derail things to a certain extent. I think all Pot C and D teams are playing each other in the final 2 matchdays anyways though which means it would likely only stand to benefit a Pot C team.