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The Road to Qatar.


Binky

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With Canada's 2019 Gold Cup campaign coming to a disappointing conclusion after a 3-2 loss to Haiti, the focus for the senior Canadian Men's National Team must now shift to qualifying for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

CONCACAF qualifying is scheduled to slated to begin in March 2020, just 8 months from now. "The format for qualifying has not been confirmed. It was reported in 2016 that CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani proposed an inclusive qualification format, as the previous one was seen to be "archaic" and inequitable. He explained that "something needs to change because you can't have 85% of your members who are on the outside looking in two years before the World Cup... It doesn't make sense." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification_(CONCACAF)

John Herdman, coach of the Canadian Men's National Team has guaranteed that Canada will qualify for the 2022 World Cup Final in Qatar. -  https://canpl.ca/article/were-going-to-qualify-herdman-led-canada-targets-2022-world-cup

Less than a day after Canada's defeat to Haiti, that bold guarantee is difficult to envision. However, should Canada fail to qualify for Qatar 2022, would that constitute sufficient grounds for the CSA to terminate Herdman's 6-year contract?

Canada's Road to Qatar begins today. How is Herdman going to prepare for the CMNT for the CONCACAF qualifying rounds? If a country is going to be serious contender in qualifying for the World Cup, then it better win all of its home World Cup qualifying matches. In order to do so, how many friendly home matches against serious opposition should Herdman arrange between today and the end of February 2020? Will one home friendly against the USA be sufficient to realize Herdman's guarantee?

Edited by Binky
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If we were really a serious football nation the CSA would be having a good close look at this massive failure, of course sacking Herdman is not an option because this is their guy and frankly might be harsh at this point, I don't like these guarantees he's giving and his looking ahead to the semi final was a bad idea publicly anyway!

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I see I'm not the only one that went looking up World Cup Qualifying today after last night's result. Months ago the Wikipedia page talked about a general draw for qualifying for all the confederations happening in July. Now it is saying it was decided that each confederation would do their own on their own time. It's been a year since the last World Cup and we still don't know what the format will be or when the draw will take place.

After the CONCACAF Nations League there are 20 match dates before the draw for the 2022 World Cup according to this link https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/international-match-calendar-2018-2024-2709662.pdf?cloudid=p3ywicffz0zxeaomaajh

The Hex uses up 10 match dates, so it looks like Victor has probably successfully gotten rid of that. There has been talk of Nations League being used as part of the qualifying process. I wonder if they tell us before the Nations League gets started in September that you need to be in League A or B by the end of this years Nations League in order to take part in qualifying. That would give every team a chance. League A teams would be in for sure, League B teams would have to avoid relegation, and League C teams would have to promote. That would leave us with 22 teams and 20 match dates to whittle down the field.

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1 hour ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Any idea when the format and dates for the matches will be released?

Way back on October 9, 2016, The Guardian published the following interview with CONCACAF President Victor Montagliani. Almost three years hence, CONCACAF fans are still left in the dark as to how Victor Montagliani intends to fix, as he calls it, "our World Cup qualifying system, that is a bit archaic." Right now, I kinda miss that old archaic system, because at least under that system we would already know how, when and where the next CONCACAF World Cup qualifying matches are going to be played. A little clarity on this point at this time would be greatly appreciated by all, I'm sure.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/oct/09/concacaf-world-cup-qualifying-more-teams

 

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With time running short, is it possible that Victor Montagliani intends to use the current CONCACAF Nations League competition as a replacement for the CONCACAF World Cup qualification matches for Qatar 2022?

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5 minutes ago, Binky said:

With time running short, is it possible that Victor Montagliani intends to use the current CONCACAF Nations League competition as a replacement for the CONCACAF World Cup qualification matches for Qatar 2022?

Highly doubt that.

Teams in group c and d dont get a shot at qualifying? 

Edited by king1010
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4 minutes ago, king1010 said:

No. 

Teams in group c and d dont get a shot at qualifying? 

Thank you. It's good to know that Victor Montagliani fighting so hard for countries like the British Virgin Islands, so that they will not have such lengthy intervals between meaningful matches.😎

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16 minutes ago, king1010 said:

Highly doubt that.

Teams in group c and d dont get a shot at qualifying? 

Why did you edit so quickly from a definitive "No" to highly doubting? 

Edited by Binky
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39 minutes ago, king1010 said:

Cuz i felt like i sounded like a dick in my original post and didnt want to come off so brash. I clearly failed. 

No problem. I appreciate your honesty, because I can relate to feeling that way myself sometimes.

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I think Qatar is possible, but far from a shoe-in. Canada is not CONCACAF top tier right now (still would consider that US / Mexico) but I think we can competing with the next level. 

We demonstrated in this Gold Cup what we have (a very strong attack and a very decent midfield) and what we don't (a backline). I think we demonstrated that while we may not be better than Haiti / Costa Rica / Panama / Honduras, we can hang with them. I think for that reason we have a solid chance at spot 3, or the play-in in spot 4. 

I'm not writing off Qatar like some - that seems silly. I'm not as negative as some, that seems kneejerk. However I'm not as confident as Herdman once was, and quite frankly, he shouldn't be either. If he sticks around, which he likely will, he has some work to do. 

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1 hour ago, king1010 said:

Cuz i felt like i sounded like a dick in my original post and didnt want to come off so brash. I clearly failed. 

I think people deserve a 24 hr grace period after last night where the dumb, ignorant, or just generally mindless comments get written off as being clouded by red rage. 

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53 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

I think people deserve a 24 hr grace period after last night where the dumb, ignorant, or just generally mindless comments get written off as being clouded by red rage. 

I agree 100%, however the Gold Cup is now over for us, and I believe we should not dwell too long on what happened yesterday, because the time frame leading up to Qatar 2022 is growing shorter by the day.

FIFA usually holds the draw for the World Cup Final six months in advance of the actual tournament. Therefore, with the Qatar 2022 World Cup scheduled to be completed before Christmas 2022, that would mean the draw for the World Cup Final tournament would have to be made before June of 2022. That's only 2 years and eleven months from today.

In that time period, all the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying matches need to be completed. Therefore, it is not only fair, respectful and imperative to John Herdman and Canada, and all of the 40 other CONCACAF nations, that Victor Montagliani reveals his new, un-archaic qualifying format ASAP, so that everyone can get on with preparing for soccer's greatest tournament?

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They should adopt a concept that FIBA uses in qualification for the Basketball World Cup where results between advancing teams carry forward to the next round instead of having teams face each other 4 times.  The hex would only require 8 matchdays instead of 10.  

This has two benefits:

1) Saves matchdays because teams only play each other twice throughout qualifying.

2) Gives meaning to otherwise dead rubbers in earlier rounds.  

Remember September 2016 when Mexico put out a bunch of kids against Honduras on the final matchday when we needed Mexico to win to get to the hex?  If that result carried forward to the hex then Mexico would've likely put the pedal down with their best players and won handily.  Same thing happened a few cycles before when T&T got a 3-0 win against a US C-team that was already through to the Hex.  

 

 

 

 

Edited by CanadianSoccerFan
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I fear there will be very little time between the day that Victor Montagliani finally reveals his new CONCACAF World Cup qualifying format and the first day that CONCACAF World Cup qualifying begins, so to avoid as much criticism as possible.

Somehow I feel that when the new format is finally going to be revealed and the draw is made that I'm going to wish that he would have stuck with the old first round match-ups, the 3 semi-final groups, and the Hex format. I hope this is not going to turn into a form of campaigning to get as many minnow CONCACAF members to vote for him in the next election.

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13 minutes ago, Binky said:

I fear there will be very little time between the day that Victor Montagliani finally reveals his new CONCACAF World Cup qualifying format and the first day that CONCACAF World Cup qualifying begins, so to avoid as much criticism as possible.

Somehow I feel that when the new format is finally going to be revealed and the draw is made that I'm going to wish that he would have stuck with the old first round match-ups, the 3 semi-final groups, and the Hex format. I hope this is not going to turn into a form of campaigning to get as many minnow CONCACAF members to vote for him in the next election.

He was re-elected unopposed just a couple of months ago and he seems to be in the good books of most of the minnows due to the Nations League initiative.  

I just hope it's not some silly UEFA style format where 90% of the games are dead rubber blowouts

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Asia will has its WCQ draw on July 17. And the format has been revealed half year ago.

What matters most right  now is  quality friendlies with same level teams like Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, and Honduras.

Edited by lamptern
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9 minutes ago, BrennanFan said:

Montagliani is on record stating that as long as there are 32 teams qualifying for the Qatar world cup, Concacaf will keep the Hex for this cycle. Link is posted in another thread on this topic, somewhere on this forum.

Thanks. I'm happy with that, now let's have the draw.

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4 minutes ago, lamptern said:

Asia will has its WWQ draw on July 17. And the format has been revealed half year ago.

Victor Montagliani wanted to have a octagon instead of hex. 

That's goog for Canada. But what matters most right  is  quality friendlies with same level teams like Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, and Honduras.

So would that mean 14 match days, instead of 10 match days?

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