archer21

El Salvador is ranked 10th on there lol. Absolutely ridiculous that they’ll be in the hex

Yeah that’s bad for us for sure. We REALLY need Panama to beat ES. Or ES to drop points to Belize somehow. That’s a tall task though, they’re a legit minnow.

Theoretically we could play Honduras and Czech Republic but there’s no guarantee those teams will agree to play us. Also, I don’t love our chances of beating Czech Republic. As has been said, Honduras will not lose points in the Nations League knockouts, so there’s no way we catch Honduras.

I think that’s basically all correct. Don’t wanna take the time to make sure the numbers are exact but there are a couple other scenarios that get us 11.3 points behind, such as we draw both and Panama beats ES, or we win and draw and Panama draws with ES.

Why would they agree to play in Canada and freeze their nuts off?

@Olympique_de_Marseille where did you get this from? According to @Kyle_The_Hill ES is playing Costa Rica. I just assumed you were correct when you said that fell through but I haven’t actually seen any proof of that.

There’s no difference in points based on who is the home team.

Agreed, winning 2 out of window matches won’t do much for them. All 4 of those wins will get them maybe 14 points or something. Assuming we win our matches we’ll still have a healthy lead. And if we don’t win our matches we aren’t catching ES anyways so it doesn’t matter.

This doesn’t make much sense. Playing the 27 and 28th back to back then flying to Thailand? No way.

Can’t imagine this could be true. If it’s a 6200 capacity, concessions/security, etc would be cheaper than at a huge stadium as well. So yeah you’re making less than at a huge stadium but you should still make profit if your costs are lower.

Yeah pretty much. If they get a win and a draw they’ll get about 2 points (assuming 2 wins gets them 7 like they said) though which gets us within 9 points. Would make it so that we could still catch them, especially if we play a couple out of window matches. ES would at least have to play a couple more minnows and have another chance to slip up again.

Obviously 6 for Costa Rica and about 4 for Trinidad. I’m sure Kyle can give more accurate number but he posted a couple pages back that they’d be 4 points when rounded to the nearest integer.

Need them to lose to Panama. Even if they beat the minnow, they’ll lose about 3 points.

Honestly, I think the worse team they play the better chance ES makes the Hex. I don’t think they’re good enough to go 4-0 against teams that would get them 4 points. So say they go 2-1-1, they only gain 1 point (-1 for draw, -6 for loss). The odds of them going 4-0 against a team they’d get 3 points from goes way up, which would get them 12 points and make it damn near impossible for us to come back. Or they could draw one of those matches and get 7 points, still making it very difficult for us.

Guess I missed that part. You’re right, that strategy for ES is definitely the smartest way to go. Didn’t make sense for them to play teams that they’d likely lose points against. On the bright side, if they do lose those matches, they’ll lose more points for it.