CanadianSoccerFan

Moved up a measly 2 spots (6 points) for beating the 16th ranked team away from home. https://football-ranking.com/fifa-rankings The ranking math is truly farcical. We could beat the US 10 games in a row and still have fewer ranking points.

I'm all in favour of CONCACAF hosting a tournament with guest teams but call it something other than the Gold Cup.

Qatar played in 2 Gold Cups, the 2nd of which was AFTER the world cup in 2023 and just so happened to be within the timeframe of the government-owned Qatar Airway sponsorship contract. What competition were they "preparing" for??? https://www.concacaf.com/news/concacaf-and-qatar-airways-agree-to-multi-year-confederation-wide-partnership/ At the 2021 Gold Cup, they paid Fox to get their QF with El Salvador moved from FS1 to the main Fox network in Saturday night primetime with an ad inventory of Qatar propaganda. They even paid fans to dress up as Qatar fans. Qatar Airways, with barely any flights to South America signs up as CONMEBOL's biggest sponsor and Qatar just appears in the Copa 8 months later. They were even announced as a guest team for 2020 (moved to 2021) but they had to pull out due to rescheduling. https://en.as.com/en/2018/11/02/soccer/1541148083_700769.html After all the things Qatar has bought and paid for. All you have to ask yourself is this. If you take away the government owned airline sponsorship deals, does CONMEBOL or CONCACAF have any interest in "inviting" Qatar? We all know the answer.

The invites always have an economic element. Qatar bought their way in through a sham sponsorship deal. TBF they did the same with the Gold Cup. Japan is a favourite due to the TV contract and sponsorship. We don't tick these boxes unfortunately. We do have political muscle with Victor

That was the case in 2016 but not in 2024. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/40360793/how-much-money-us-soccer-make-copa-america-2024 Watch the whole clip from Marsch. He repeatedly insinuates CONMEBOL is rigging the tournament against CONCACAF teams.

Doubt we're getting invited back after this

We've come a long way from buffering illegal streams from Cyprus and Belarus

They really shrank the pitch

Interesting twitter thread detailing Mexico's problems. The economic strength of Liga MX has created an inflated market for Mexican players, preventing them from leaving heir comfort zone.

Venezuela up to 36 in the live FIFA ranking https://football-ranking.com/fifa-rankings

Referee's phone number went viral on Twitter

Some next level lip synching from Akon & friends to open proceedings...

Solid scrap in the tunnel

We need to hope Qatar stops buying their way in. There's two Asian berths in 2025 so I won't hold my breath.