maplebanana

I think you're referring to Shayne Lavery, the 20 year old forward. But the Canadian I know who plays for NI is Caolan Lavery, who has never had a senior cap for NI. Are they related?

According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_men's_national_soccer_team_results The (2nd) most recent victory was 34 years ago (4/2/85), but the prior time they played the USA was also a victory (11/1/80). So the last back-to-back wins was also 34 years ago, just that they were 5 years apart instead of 1 month.

Damn. What an odd rule. I still want to face China one day though. I want to see blood and tears! I guess we're stuck with Curacao, Panama, BVI, Guatemala, or Sint Maarten in CONCACAF. I wonder if two teams met halfway on a neutral ground, would that count?

Maybe it's the Friday afternoon crazy talk in my head, but I would love to see a friendly against China in November. They play in Dubai on Nov 14 but it looks like they're free for the rest of the window. Put them in Vancouver or Toronto, and that'd be a big draw to put some money into CSA coffers. I landed on them when I looked at the Elo rankings, trying to find a team that is high FIFA ranked but low Elo ranking (the opposite of us). They are about the same as us FIFA points wise, so we'd get 5 for a win. Selfishly, as a Canadian who is described by his Chinese colleagues as 'hardcore Canadian', but is in fact of Chinese ethnicity, I would also like it as an opportunity to put to bed the question of 'who would you cheer for?' Because the answer is 'I hope Canada wins 8-1, just so that they can feel the pain I felt in 2012'.

Panama beating Mexico in CNL = 18.76 Panama beating UAE in friendly = 5.47

Updating and reuploading plot I made earlier. Examples: Easy Win: Our friends Dominica would net us 1.83 Tough Win: Curacao would net us 4.98 (this would be risky as hell since they are basically tied with us) Stretch Goal: Jamaica would net us 6.07 Given that we'd be in Florida, would a friendly at Bradenton make sense? T&T would net us 3.1...

Yes. A 1-0 loss to the USA puts us at 9 pts and +8, with the USA being 6 pts and +6. So if they beat Cuba 1-0 we are through. If they win 2-0 they win the tiebreak (goals for).

As someone who once taught undergrad Quantum Mechanics, and as someone who can't even get his liberty-village-living, soccer-loving friend to attend, I can confirm this is to be true.

sorry to spam the board with more math, but in case I don't have time to calculate the points, I made a plot that you can look it up: I limited it to -500 ... +500 because there are no teams 500 better or 500 worse than us right now. As you can see, the plot asymptotically approaches 0 for beating really bad teams, and approaches the multiplier value for beating really good teams. The multipliers here just scale the whole curve, and the points gained for beating the same rank as you is exactly 0.5 x multiplier. Hope this helps.

Best case, if we win the group via 4 wins, beat CRC in SF and MEX in F, we'd get 26.2 (GS) + 15.8 (CRC SF) + 17.9 (MEX F) = 59.9 pts. That would put us 30 pts ahead of ES. ES has 2 games in hand on us, but they can't get 30 points in those because the teams they're playing are all lower than them. I suppose our most 'likely' way to get in is to make it to the final of CNL, win some decent competitive friendlies in the other 2 windows, and hope that some of the minnows can get results (draws or wins both help) against ES in CNL.

I believe the way they did it was start at something like 1600 for the at-the-time-current FIFA ranking for #1, then #2 gets 1596, #3 gets 1592, etc down to #211. That way by switching the ranking methodology, no one in that instant would get shuffled around and only future changes would be added. So you are right that their simulations may not be entirely accurate, but the difficulty in moving spots is still quite evident. @dyslexic nam if we had beaten Haiti in the GC we would have gotten 16.4 pts which would have put us slightly above Panama and in striking distance of El Salvador, but still out of the Hex and still likely out in the end (because of 6 easy games for ES in CNL).

Damn, you made me make a spreadsheet and everything to calculate this. Weighting = 15 for CNL group stage. USA W/D/L = +10/+2.5/-5 Cuba W/D/L = +3.1/-4.4/-11.9 So for your combinations above: 1) 2 Cuba wins, 2 USA losses = 2*3.1 - 2*5 = -3.8 2) 2 Cuba wins, 1 USA draw, 1 USA loss = 2*3.1 + 2.5 -5 = +3.7 3) 2 Cuba wins, 2 USA draws = 2*3.1 + 2*2.5 = +11.2 4) 2 Cuba wins, 1 USA win, 1 USA loss = 2*3.1 + 10 - 5 = +11.2 5) 2 Cuba wins, 1 USA win, 1 USA draw = 2*3.1 + 10 + 2.5 = 18.7 6) 2 Cuba wins, 2 USA wins = 2*3.1 + 2*10 = 26.2 So if everything goes according to the ranking we'll lose points (scenario 1). If we become suddenly amazing and win all 4 (scenario 6), we'll add only 26 points which puts us still behind El Salvador today, even though they will most certainly add to their points since they have 6 games in CNL against minnows and we have only 4 games. Short of some miracle of us winning friendlies against a bunch of good teams *and* us winning the CNL, we are almost mathematically out of the hex already.

Yes, your math is correct. My assumption is that the *max* points we could have gotten from 7 friendlies with 7 Canada-equivalents was 35. In actuality, it would be less than 35 because after you beat them the first time, your ranking points go up and theirs go down. So with each successive win you get slightly less and less against the same opponent. So to properly do the math you'd have to do some kind of series summation, and it's been too long since I was in math class. The most amazing thing is (and to answer your other question), there is no correction for home/away or margin of victory. So if San Marino (#211) went to Belgium (#1) and beat them 5-0 in a friendly, that would net them 10 points. Which would be good enough to move them from #211 to .... #211 but a bit closer to #210. If San Marino beat Belgium, in Belgium, 19 times in a row, it still wouldn't be enough to get them to the top 100! In @Lofty's link you can see what happens when they did thousands of simulations. No one moves spots. The old FIFA ranking wasn't super accurate but this new one is completely insane.

The new FIFA rankings are unfortunately not simple math: https://img.fifa.com/image/upload/edbm045h0udbwkqew35a.pdf A friendly inside the window has a multiplier of 10, but the points you get for beating a team with the same number of ranking points as you is 5: Points = 10 * (W - We), where W is 1/0.5/0 for win/draw/lose and We = 1 / (10^(opponent pts - canada pts/600) + 1). If Canada played another team with 1314 rankings points, that becomes We = 1/(10^0+1) = 1/(1+1) = 0.5. So... Points = 10 * (1-0.5) = 5. So 7 friendlies against 7 Canada-equivalent teams would have netted us 35 pts, not 70. Unfortunately, the rating system ensures that no one will seemingly ever move. For example, what happens if we beat the #1 team in the world (Belgium, with 1746 pts)? We = 1/(10^((1746-1314)/600)+1) = 0.16, so Points = 8.4. We would have to beat Belgium 25 times in a row to climb ahead of them (not be #1, just climb ahead of them as they fall to around #20 and we get to ~#19). Now, instead, let's go beat up the Dominican Republic: We = 1/(10^((1021-1314)/600)+1) = 0.75, so points = 2.5. In other words, we get the same number of points beating Dominican Republic twice (2.5 x 2) as beating Panama (roughly the same ranking points as us). Coles notes version: a) This WCQ format sucks, b) This FIFA ranking system sucks even more, and c) We should play more friendlies and it doesn't matter really against who. But anyway, I'm sure all this stuff above has not convinced anyone who would be otherwise inclined to *not* bring fire and pitchforks to Herdman's door, so carry on with the extremely productive outrage.

That's not a good reason to say everything is OK. Qualifying is literally in everyone's own hands. Montserrat, if they win every game from now on, can also make it to the world cup. The problem is that this format has set us up with an unjustified huge barrier in comparison to other teams of similar quality. Others have outlined in more detail, but there is no excuse for the cavern of difficulty difference between the #6 seed and the #7 seed. Ultimately, this format benefits the top 2 (USA/mexico no longer have to play prelims) and the bottom 20 (who get to play more WCQ games). This all comes at the expense of the mid tier powers, of which we are one of them.