archer21

I understand we are all worried that it will be very difficult to finish 3rd in the Hex, but the alternative is the get through 2 of Curacao, Panama, and Haiti in semis/finals, THEN playing someone like Jamaica. THEN intercontinental playoffs. We’re gonna have to get by some really good teams no matter what. The HEX leaves more room for error IMO because we can lose a couple matches away from home and still get through. Panama finished 3rd in the Hex in 2018 WCQ with 13 points. We could get that by beating 3 teams at home, 1 on the road, and 1 draw. That’s very achievable.

I don’t think Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Honduras are much better than Haiti, Panama, and Curacao so by that logic, if we didn’t finish top 3 in the Hex (if we made it) something is wrong as well.

The Hex still gives us a way better chance of making it to the World Cup IMO. The fact that there’s a chance to get direct qualification trumps any other argument for me. Not that I think we’ll definitely finish top 3, but there is a chance. And even if we finish 4th, we’d play a weaker team than if we won the loser’s bracket. Then to just lose in the intercontinental playoff. i don’t get the argument that the lower route is better because we won’t finish 3rd anyway, but then say that we have a chance to beat someone like Chile over 2 legs, who would be 2nd best in CONCACAF. I guess if we knew we’d be playing Oceania then I would maybe buy it.

So basically beat 4 teams around our ranking for 20 points between March and June. That’s give us a 6 point lead and make ES have to at least play a couple games, which they’d probably be favoured in but hopefully they’d drop one of them or at least draw. Of course, there’s also the non FIFA windows too where we could hopefully play 3 games again to add points. Margin for error is basically 0 now though.

Does anyone know someone in Canada soccer that they could ask about whether the ES game is for points or not? Surely the CSA would know. Or is there a reporter that everyone could tweet at looking for an answer?

This game against Iceland is absolutely massive for our chances IMO. If we’re only 9 points away, I could see them playing those types of friendlies. If we lose and are back to 14 points away, they’ll probably just stay in hiding I’d think. Or at the most, play someone like Bahamas that they can easily grab a couple insurance points.

They could very easily lose 7 points, which would put us down by 2 if we beat Iceland. Even if they get a loss and a draw, we’d be 7 points back which is very manageable for us to pick up in March with 2 matchups we’d be heavy favourites in.

Any chance you could post the points won/lost in matches for ES against Switzerland/Hungary?

If there are no June rankings and they go off of the most recent rankings in June (April) were totally screwed either way. Can’t imagine this would be the case though.

Hopefully Costa Rica upsets them but yeah more than likely USA or Mexico (probably USA)

Agreed, but let’s make them start playing games first of all. Say we do what I suggested and go for 8 points in March. They may decide to play 2 weak teams to try to get 6 points. If they lose one of those games, now we’re in the lead heading into the final window. If they win, THEN we go all out in the final window and play some really big teams.

The only way I’d be comfortable playing Ukraine is if we knew that Ukraine would be sending a B team. Against their A team, I think our chances would be too low to be worth it. To be fair to your argument, the fact that we’d be fighting for our lives while they don’t really care about the result could level the odds a bit. Hopefully if we do get risky, this will help us, but I still don’t think it’s necessary if we win these next 2 matches To my understanding, we can only play 2 matches in March, so we can’t just beat up on 3 minnows. If we’re only down 9 points I wouldn’t mind playing 2 “minnows” depending on your classification of a minnow. For example, beating Suriname and Solomon Islands would get us about 6 points, putting us down by only 3 with 2 games to go. This would force ES to play 2 matches, where they’d likely trip up on at least 1. What I’d really like to do is play someone like Suriname and someone like Curaçao, both games that I like our chances in. That would put us 1 point back of ES and force them to play the same caliber of team that we do in the final window, where both teams would have to earn their way into the hex.

I really don’t think it matters that much that we’d lose more points against a team around our ranking than a team like Ukraine. Even if we lose only 3 points, we’re cooked either way. We can’t lose any games in March or it’s essentially game over. If the goal is to force ES to play competitive matches, we need to finish March within at least 5 points of them. That can’t really happen if we lose 3 points in 1 of the matches, unless you want to play 2 teams of that caliber, which would be suicide IMO.

Sure we can beat Ukraine 1 out of 10 but why is that worth the risk? You’re saying there’s a 60% chance playing that game would eliminate us. And even a draw gets us 2 points which is less than we’d get for beating a minnow so what’s the point. I’d prefer to play a team around our ranking to get 5 points. It really all depends on what happens against Iceland though because we’ll only need 9 points with a win, 12 with a draw and 14 or 15 with a loss I believe (approximately, I’m too lazy to look back at the exact totals).

Couldn’t hurt to have the minnows totals for reference. To be clear, I’m not advocating playing minnows in March but I’d rather that than play a team that’s not realistic for us to beat. I tend to agree with you that we should be playing teams more like Trinidad than Denmark. At least in March. If we have to get risky in the final window, so be it.