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The Road to Qatar.


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I'm hoping El Salvador keep those friendlies they've scheduled as I'm not convinced they'd be overly successful given who they're playing. If the intercontinental playoff is against South America, forget it, we need to be in the Hex. If it's against one of the other 2 regions, I don't mind the 7-35 side, especially if it's Oceania.

In addition to what we schedule, I'll be interested to see what Saint Kitts and Nevis and Suriname schedule between now and June 2020. There's a real incentive for one of those countries to be ahead of the other in the June 2020 rankings. Of the countries on the 7-35 side, Saint Kitts and Nevis is currently 8th with 1074 points and Suriname is only 1 point behind them. The benefit to finishing 8th is you're a top seed for the first round and you don't have anyone in your group that is ranked higher than you are. One of those 2 countries will avoid the likes of Canada, Curacao, Panama, and Haiti in the group stage, while the other could potentially be in a group with one of them. That's quite a significant difference for only being 1 point apart right now in the rankings.

Edited by jtpc
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19 hours ago, Daryn27 said:

Unless CONCACAF draws against OCIEANA in the intercontinental playoff I don’t see how anyone would not want us to be in the hex? You have 3 automatic berths and if you can’t get 3rd then we can still get fourth only 2 out of 6 hex teams are eliminated completely whereas the best you can do the lower route is hope to win and hope not to get drawn against CONEMBOL. 
 

The Hex is the best route hands down there isn’t even a debate to be had. 

You're assuming Canada has a very good chance for the 3 auto berths. But in reality, that is not the case.

I would say in the HEX, Canada is realistically playing for 1.5 spots vs 1 in the 7-35 playdown. Non-Canadian Concacaf watchers would say Canada is playing for 0.5 spot in the HEX since Canada hasn't demonstrated in the past 30 years of being a top 3 in the region.

In the HEX, Canada has out do Honduras, Jamaica & CR but not everything is under our control since results against Mexico & US come into play.

In the playdowns, it's likely vs Curacao, Panama & Haiti. And it's all under Canada's control but it also means less forgiveness if there is a major stumble.

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6 minutes ago, red card said:

You're assuming Canada has a very good chance for the 3 auto berths. But in reality, that is not the case.

I would say in the HEX, Canada is realistically playing for 1.5 spots vs 1 in the 7-35 playdown. Non-Canadian Concacaf watchers would say Canada is playing for 0.5 spot in the HEX since Canada hasn't demonstrated in the past 30 years of being a top 3 in the region.

In the HEX, Canada has out do Honduras, Jamaica & CR but not everything is under our control since results against Mexico & US come into play.

In the playdowns, it's likely vs Curacao, Panama & Haiti. And it's all under Canada's control but it also means less forgiveness if there is a major stumble.

We arent playing for 1 spot in the 7 to 35, we’re playing for 0.5 sports and basically 0.1 spots if drawn against south america. 
 

Also the historical top 3 in concacaf which we havent been able to crack is not as strong as it used to be. 

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1 hour ago, narduch said:

If they cancel all their friendlies we are ******.

No way are we scheduling enough friendlies to catch them (never mind needing to win them all as well).

I'm telling you, a small cruise ship crowd-funded by V passengers that tours the players around Caribbean minnow ports is the way to go.   We arrange B team friendlies against team that have nothing to lose.  1-2 points a game for a few weeks and voila

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If they cancel their friendlies, we need to at least gain about 8 points in March. That would put the pressure on them to schedule June friendlies or leave us the chance to gain another 8 in June and pass them. Beating 4 teams that would gain us 4 points each isn’t that unrealistic for us. What type of team would give us that many points? They’d be ranked slightly below us right?

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5 minutes ago, archer21 said:

If they cancel their friendlies, we need to at least gain about 8 points in March. That would put the pressure on them to schedule June friendlies or leave us the chance to gain another 8 in June and pass them. Beating 4 teams that would gain us 4 points each isn’t that unrealistic for us. What type of team would give us that many points? They’d be ranked slightly below us right?

A tour along the adriatic or thereabouts? Slovenia, Montenegro and Albania all ranked ahead of us in spots 64-66. 

 

There are also African nations we can invite over ranked either slightly ahead of us or above us. South Africa (72), Guinea (74), Uganda (77). If we played any of these teams we'd get around 5 points per win if i'm not mistaken. 

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4 minutes ago, adrenaline11 said:

Even if El Salvador lost against Iceland and the US, they would only drop 3.5 points and the gap between us and them would be ~12 points. It wouldn't be much help to us.

It would if we simultaneously played 2 games

I don't think we should go on the road. Set up shop in Vancouver.. play weekend, Wednesday, Weekend. Bring them in knock an down. Bundle the tickets as a package. BC Place isn't used much in Jan anyways

Edited by SpursFlu
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1 hour ago, Kyle_The_Hill said:

Cuba would have been a friendly not a Nations League match. So we would have gained 2 points with a win not 5. If we want to gain 5 points for a friendly win it needs to be against a nation around our ranking.

I understand it’s not a nations league game I’m just saying that we should have had a friendly in place so that in the event of a loss against the states like we had it wouldn’t be a 15 point difference more closer to 10 points.

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Yes, it should have been 0.5 spot for the 7-35 route. 

But Canada hasn't proven it on the pitch, it is a top 3 team. On paper, we're approaching it while others are falling back. So we're climbing the hill but we haven't reached the top yet. 

In the end, I'm not all that fussed about either route ex the HEX would have brought more mainstream attention.

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59 minutes ago, red card said:

You're assuming Canada has a very good chance for the 3 auto berths. But in reality, that is not the case.

I would say in the HEX, Canada is realistically playing for 1.5 spots vs 1 in the 7-35 playdown. Non-Canadian Concacaf watchers would say Canada is playing for 0.5 spot in the HEX since Canada hasn't demonstrated in the past 30 years of being a top 3 in the region.

In the HEX, Canada has out do Honduras, Jamaica & CR but not everything is under our control since results against Mexico & US come into play.

In the playdowns, it's likely vs Curacao, Panama & Haiti. And it's all under Canada's control but it also means less forgiveness if there is a major stumble.

Yes but then if we make it through the lower playoff to the 4th place match who will we go up against? Either Costa Rica, Honduras, or Jamaica. I’d rather face them in a pool format where one result may not cost us but it would in a two game playoff against them. 
 

I’d rather compete for 1.5 spots against Honduras, Costa Rica, and Jamaica then compete for 0.5 spots against Panama, Haiti, Curaçao, then one of Honduras, Costa Rica, or Jamaica then face a South American country like Colombia, Chile, or Uruguay.

Edited by Daryn27
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39 minutes ago, Daryn27 said:

Yes but then if we make it through the lower playoff to the 4th place match who will we go up against? Either Costa Rica, Honduras, or Jamaica. I’d rather face them in a pool format where one result may not cost us but it would in a two game playoff against them. 
 

I’d rather compete for 1.5 spots against Honduras, Costa Rica, and Jamaica then compete for 0.5 spots against Panama, Haiti, Curaçao, then one of Honduras, Costa Rica, or Jamaica then face a South American country like Colombia, Chile, or Uruguay.

This right here x1000

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57 minutes ago, archer21 said:

If they cancel their friendlies, we need to at least gain about 8 points in March. That would put the pressure on them to schedule June friendlies or leave us the chance to gain another 8 in June and pass them. Beating 4 teams that would gain us 4 points each isn’t that unrealistic for us. What type of team would give us that many points? They’d be ranked slightly below us right?

That is close to what I said, a page back.  I would probably go for 5 pointers in March - around equal rankings. Albania, Saudi Arabia, North Macedonia, Guinea, China etc.  

(4ish pointers would be Haiti (worth a bit more), Israel, Georgia, Madagascar, Vietnam.)

 

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On 11/21/2019 at 6:43 AM, Floortom said:

Would be great to get some sort of accountability from CONCACAF on this format - why did they think this was best option ?

Almost everyone likes the Hex and with the Nations League there wasn't time hold qualifying for the Hex. They probably could have had playoffs for the last couple places. I'd have liked our chances in those.

They were going to use their own CONCACAF rankings system (which seemed a little better than FIFA's rankings) to determine the teams in the Hex. When FIFA approved the qualifying format they said they had to use FIFA's rankings.

Canada was ranked higher in the CONCACAF rankings. I wonder if Montagliani thought Canada was safely into the Hex under that system.

Edited by Rivaldo
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4 hours ago, Daryn27 said:

Yes but then if we make it through the lower playoff to the 4th place match who will we go up against? Either Costa Rica, Honduras, or Jamaica. I’d rather face them in a pool format where one result may not cost us but it would in a two game playoff against them. 
 

I’d rather compete for 1.5 spots against Honduras, Costa Rica, and Jamaica then compete for 0.5 spots against Panama, Haiti, Curaçao, then one of Honduras, Costa Rica, or Jamaica then face a South American country like Colombia, Chile, or Uruguay.

The lower seed champion would arguably be better prepared.

They would have the experience of playing (and winning) two-legged match ups. Meanwhile, the fourth placed hex team would be coming in relatively cold.

I feel like our debate is missing this important talking point: The advantage goes to the lower seed champion.

Also, if we are arguing for the hex in order to avoid south america, we are essentially hoping we can best honduras, costa rica and jamaica for that 1 spot. 

If things go perfect we can do it, but things rarely go perfect and this is a round none of our players or coaches have experience in. We are underdogs in the hex, to say the least.

Both paths are gonna be hard as hell.

Edited by Obinna
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22 minutes ago, Lofty said:

You are probably right in saying that we have a better chance with the top path but I don't think the difference is as big as you seem to be implying. For me, the main advantage of the top path is the experience gained by playing lots of matches against the top teams in CONCACAF.

The flip side to this is that there are no soft games in the hex route.  Start off slow against the wrong team and you are in deep trouble.  The low route at least gives you an easy round robin to warm up and then you build to harder tests as you go.  You would still potentially end up playing some good opposition - the SF, Final, 4th place game and intercontinental playoff would all all solid opponents for us - you just have a margin of error at the start.  

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5 hours ago, WestHamCanadianinOxford said:

That is close to what I said, a page back.  I would probably go for 5 pointers in March - around equal rankings. Albania, Saudi Arabia, North Macedonia, Guinea, China etc.  

(4ish pointers would be Haiti (worth a bit more), Israel, Georgia, Madagascar, Vietnam.)

 

Yeah I read your post earlier. Sorry, not trying to steal your posts lol. I just figured going for 4 points would make the games even that much more likely to pull out a win (which may be the case as some of those 4 point teams you listed are pretty poor). Those 5 point teams are certainly winnable as well though, and it would leave us more room for error in the June window.

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2 hours ago, Obinna said:

Both paths are gonna be hard as hell.

This sums it up in a nutshell.  Either way will be a challenge because we are Canada not Mexico.  Play games to potentially get into the hex, or at least prepare for the “hunger games” if we fall short we would have some games to increase our preparation for the qualifying process.

Edited by Club Linesman
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