maplebanana

We just beat them 3 times in a row in under a month. Not sure what you're looking for wrt Haiti. I've been a CanMNT fan for only about 15 years, so those longer suffering fans can maybe inject some additional context. But in my experience thus far, Canada used to narrowly beat minnows (like St Kitts/PR in 2014 WCQ), 50/50 to semi-minnows (Cuba in 2012, Martinique in 2013 GC), lose outright to CONCACAF 2nd tier (CR/Honduras/Panama/Jamaica), and lose really outright to the USA/MEX. Now we're demolishing minnows, beating handily semi-minnows, TBD against second tier and competitive with USA (including our only victory in 30 years). We have clearly moved up a tranche. You could argue that Herdman is blessed with generational talent but you can't say that this is the same ol' Canada.

OK, that slide tackle by Miller was pretty good.

Surely, we must have a better option than Kamal Miller?

@Shway heard correctly. If you file a switch, but are never fielded, you can apply to switch back. So 'one time switch' is a bit of a misnomer and FIFA refers to it as a 'change of association'. Reference: FIFA in January 2021, Article 9, Paragraph 5: "5. A player that was: a) granted a change of association; and b) was not fielded in a match in any (official or unofficial) competition in any kind of football by the new association, may request a change of association back to his former association provided he continues to hold the nationality of such association." https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/ccab990abf45fcf6/original/ro8mje8vw98yp3rvfbmi-pdf.pdf So *now* Ayo is officially official.

Doesn't look like it. Since 2003, there has only been one third place match (2015).

That quote is directly from FIFA: So, unless FIFA changes their mind, or Mexico decides not to use the women's side as a sacrificial lamb, it looks like Mexico could field fans against us after all.

Not sure if this has been brought up before (apologies if redundant), but it's possible we'll have to play in front of fans at Azteca after all: "Adding insult to injury, the women's national team could be called upon to be a sacrificial lamb, as one of its upcoming matches in September could technically be used to fulfill part of the two-game fan suspension. A statement sent by FIFA to ESPN Mexico indicated that "The sanction refers to the two next official home matches to be played by representatives of the Mexican Football Federation independent of their category."" So that would mean a women's game, plus the MEX-JAM game behind closed doors would serve the suspension. Source: https://www.espn.com/soccer/mexico-mex/story/4428938/how-allegiance-to-an-anti-gay-fan-chant-at-mexico-soccer-games-might-sink-el-tris-world-cup-fortunes

Vitoria is scary slow. He's the Danny Devito to Phonzie's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This was my first CanMNT game attending live. Possibly first game watching ever (live or TV). I thought this just happened all the time.

Miller reminds me of all the bad parts of Doneil Henry.

Tajon putting on a show!

My wife now knows the sound this website makes when a new reply is posted in a thread I have open. 'Oh, soccer stuff'. 'But I'm trying to write a treatise on the volatility of the new Elo-based FIFA rankings and its implication for group seeding in the 2026 world cup' 'That's nice.'

The new rankings procedure indeed makes it harder to move up and down, but after a few years I've seen more movement than I expected (I read this link a few years back too). A couple of notes on their analysis: 1) Germany/Slovakia: I don't know where they got those original points values. Maybe it was under the old system, but under the new system I believe they took the #1 and #210 teams and evenly spaced them out points-wise. If you look today, the #1 team is Belgium (1783) and #28 is Japan (1509). This is only a 274 pt delta. Since this modified Elo is based on a zero-sum model, if Japan beat Belgium they would gain the points that Belgium loses, in this case about 7.5 points or a 15 pt swing for a friendly. So the 274 pt swing is made up by 18.3 wins in friendlies. Considerably less if it was let's say Canada vs Mexico in official competitions. So, yes the point still stands that it is hard to climb rankings. But it's not as rigidly locked as this Germany/Slovakia example. 2) Simulation: I didn't see any details of the simulation. If I was to write a Monte Carlo simulation of this, the key metric that would define how it goes is how to calculate individual win probability. If the assumption that 'better ranked teams have a proportionately higher chance of winning', then of course any large number of simulations will yield the steady-state result of the original ranking. The more interesting thing would be to analyze the standard deviation of teams throughout those 500 simulations. Does a team like Canada, currently #70, end up as #40 1% of the time? or does it end up as 70 +/- 3 99% of the time? The measure of the variability in a Monte Carlo simulation is the metric to look at, not the single end result of one simulation. Ultimately, to me the Elo-style ranking makes sense. I just wish that, given the magnitude of the points and differential, that they would change: a) bake home/away and GD into the calculation of We (expected result), and b) increase the multipliers across the board to increase volatility.

I think the evaluation period is still over 4 years, so results from June 2017 will start to roll off the back end. I was trying to confirm this on the FIFA site but it's a little vague. One thing's for sure, there is no longer an 'average points per year' factor, meaning there is no benefit to avoiding friendlies purely to keep an average up. I will get to this after I make my MATLAB-based Monte Carlo simulation. By the time I get to it though, FIFA will have probably changed the rankings methodology again.

Yup. Ever since they changed the way the rankings were calculated, no home/away, goal differential, or confederation weighting considerations anymore. The rankings are kind of messed up. If San Marino goes to Wembley and beats England 5-0 in WCQ, they would get 24.2 pts which would take their ranking from #210 (dead last) to #207, solidly behind Turks and Caicos at #206. If they win the home leg again against England 10-0 (or 1-0), they would vault all the way to #204.