The Road to Qatar.

[narduch]

14 minutes ago, Kent said:

The reason why it seems like a screw up to me is because I always got the impression that they came up with their plan in a vacuum. They came up with a schedule and then what, just assumed all the governments would backtrack on their restrictions? They never ever talked about contingency plans or showed any signs they realized there was a pandemic going on and countries have their borders shut to varying degrees.

And it was all only 2 weeks ago 

[Trois Reds]

I have a feeling Concacaf's contingency plans for something like this has always been "neutral site tournaments in Florida" with Plan C being "neutral site tournaments somewhere else in the U.S." Right now they probably have no idea what to do if the Covid issue doesn't get fixed there.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Trois Reds

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

6 hours ago, gator said:

I've watched Ravel Morrison in his two stints at QPR, has bags of talent but there is a reason he has played 104 games for 10 different clubs!

And if you buy him a few sweets he will be out with a "dental emergency" 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2184678/Ravel-Morrison-seven-teeth-removed-emergency-surgery.html

 

(In all seriousness, I feel bad for him.  He never seemed quite able to deal with the adult responsibilities of being a footballer and he had agent that derailed his career at my club.)  

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

On 8/31/2020 at 6:43 PM, Olympique_de_Marseille said:

CONCACAF are having a ZOOM meeting tomorrow (Tuesday), they will decide what is to be done and if WCQ get postponed:

https://www.elsalvador.com/deportes/futbol/hugo-carrillo-fesfut-aprendizaje-covid/747626/2020/

The rumour is CONCACAF will host a press conference tomorrow to announce that WCQ has been postponed until 2021. https://twitter.com/delvalle_ESPN/status/1300529229461946368

The other rumour is that they will look at the bubble option in the USA for Jan/Feb.

Any old school V's remember late 1997/1998/1999 where, if Wikipedia is correct, the team didn't play for 6 months, then played Macedonia, then didn't play 11½ months?

Anybody go through withdrawal symptoms? 

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_men's_national_soccer_team_results

Edited September 2, 2020 by Olympique_de_Marseille

[Kent]

5 hours ago, Obinna said:

Fair enough if you had that impression. I just assumed their plans were predicated on cooperative governments. I mean, that is pretty obvious right? 

And is there a contingency that doesn't hinge on cooperative governments? Even a bubble somewhere depends on players being allowed in or out. It is much more complicated than MLS creating a bubble.

I agree that it is much more complicated than the MLS bubble. The screw up isn’t now saying games can’t happen this year, it was two weeks ago pretending the games could just happen. What they did seemed basically like if MLS just announced they would be playing in a bubble in Florida, while Florida has its borders closed and without bothering to ask Florida if it’s OK.

Anyways, the whole situation sucks. We get a reason to get excited about the national team and then there are no games all year, and we still don’t know when games will be possible again.

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

3 minutes ago, Kent said:

I agree that it is much more complicated than the MLS bubble.

There is the flexibility of separate groups that will not play each other.

6 groups; so you pick 6 of the following:

Florida:
-Bradenton (IMG Academy)
-Orlando
-Greater Miami

Texas:
-Frisco(Dallas)
-Houston
-Austin (Bold Stadium)
-San Antonio
-Edinburg

California:
-Los Angeles (LAFC)
-Los Angeles (Galaxy)
-Orange County SC (where we played in January 2020)
-San Diego (San Diego Loyal SC)
-San Jose (Earthquakes)
-Sacramento

Canada:
-BC Place (our group, if we can play at home)

[Big_M]

Wow the montagliani joke continues..blunder after blunder..awful format after awful format..someone get this guy out of there..please..PLEASE

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

TV hosts in El Salvador are speaking of bubbles as early as November:

https://www.elgrafico.com/futbol/CONCACAF-pretende-hacer-una-burbuja-para-sacar-adelante-las-eliminatorias-20200901-0017.html

[lamptern]

How can Nations League Euro 20-21 proceeds as planned? 

[narduch]

7 hours ago, lamptern said:

How can Nations League Euro 20-21 proceeds as planned? 

For the most part Europe did a good job handling covid.

They just completed some Champions League and Europa league qualifying fairly successfully.

There are a few concacaf nations that have done as bad a job as he US wih respect to covid.

[Ivan]

10 hours ago, Big_M said:

Wow the montagliani joke continues..blunder after blunder..awful format after awful format..someone get this guy out of there..please..PLEASE

WTF??  You can't be ******* serious.

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

1 hour ago, narduch said:

For the most part Europe did a good job handling covid.

They just completed some Champions League and Europa league qualifying fairly successfully.

There are a few concacaf nations that have done as bad a job as he US wih respect to covid.

Talking about how things were handled is probably best done in another place and you need to be careful with numbers because countries count deaths differently but with the official numbers we have, it is important to remember that Belgium, Spain, UK, Italy and Sweden all still have higher deaths per capita than the States.

The States just have almost 5x the population of the UK (the largest of that group), have a lot of other stuff going on and fill the news no matter what is going on. 

They are starting to tighten things back up some places over here unfortunately, so still a ways to go in judging responses. 

[narduch]

Well we could also talk about all the players getting covid on their breaks now.

Newmar, Di Maria, etc.

[SpursFlu]

I think that's the new strategy a younger buddy was telling me how a lot of university students were trying to get it in the last few weeks so they wouldn't have to deal with when the fall semester starts. Im sure a lot of the players are trying to get a positive test so they don't have to worry about it once the season starts

Edited September 2, 2020 by SpursFlu

[red card]

6 hours ago, narduch said:

For the most part Europe did a good job handling covid.

They just completed some Champions League and Europa league qualifying fairly successfully.

There are a few concacaf nations that have done as bad a job as he US wih respect to covid.

Europe has also fairly similar policies and more relaxed policies across countries about travel, quarantine days etc..Concacaf countries have a lot more varying policies and wide gap in capabilities.

With US having the most relaxed policies about travel, bunch of stadiums that can be used, good weather sites and good access to testing/health needs, best place to play in a quasi-MLB type bubble that can be set up for every FIFA window.

This will cost money and costs can only recouped through only tv/ad revenue. Concacaf will need to bite the bullet a bit.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by red card

[SpursFlu]

most of those group games would create few ticket dollars anyways. Just hammer it out in 1 location. The next phase home and away you'll want with fans for sure.

Just make money back by inviting a super rich country desperately looking for credibility to join your continental tournament 

[ddoouugg]

could see them setting up in Cuba, players in the all inclusives, concacaf paying tho fix up a stadium or 2. local government keeping the locals away.     might need to use some non american sponsors to help pay for it though.  

[CanadianSoccerFan]

Vic is on One Nation tonight so we may find out more

 

[Shway]

yes Uncle Vic, we get to hear how he's going to help Canada...i mean Concacaf.

[red card]

Oct was aspirational. Nov if we get lucky. But always thought it would be March according to Vic. 

 

 

[SkuseisLoose]

So has Europe got to the point where they just don’t care. France has like 150,000 active COVID cases and have fans in the stands. I really don’t see why we still have such stringent border restrictions (except the US) when pretty much the rest of the western world has started opening up.

[SpursFlu]

A lot of money has been sunk in to this. If we don't play this out now people are gonna ask some big questions. Like why did we do what we did and why did we spend like we spent. So we're all along for the big ride now until the money's gone and then people can pat each other on the back and say we did it. I guess until next year. I know the tv tells us everday Americans are evil and dirty but I'm not sure why they're any different than anyone else. I think thats called bigotry 

Edited September 3, 2020 by SpursFlu

[BuzzAndSting]

It's quite simple, different people, and therefore different governments, have different priorities, values and context.

Edit: I quoted the wrong post, meant to quote @SkuseisLoose.

Edited September 3, 2020 by BuzzAndSting

[Obinna]

40 minutes ago, BuzzAndSting said:

It's quite simple, different people, and therefore different governments, have different priorities, values and context.

Edit: I quoted the wrong post, meant to quote @SkuseisLoose.

Yeah but they can all be grouped under "Western world", as he said.

So I took understood him to be saying: Why are we acting different than those from other countries with similar values, people and governments?

Edited September 3, 2020 by Obinna

[Obinna]

1 hour ago, SpursFlu said:

A lot of money has been sunk in to this. If we don't play this out now people are gonna ask some big questions. Like why did we do what we did and why did we spend like we spent. So we're all along for the big ride now until the money's gone and then people can pat each other on the back and say we did it. I guess until next year. I know the tv tells us everday Americans are evil and dirty but I'm not sure why they're any different than anyone else. I think thats called bigotry 

They are alright in my books. Unless they are USMNT fans. Then they are evil and dirty 😈