theaub

Starting to see guys in European national teams dropping out due to COVID. I see no way they play qualifying matches in North America this year, at least with European players. Its nothing short of idiotic to let them cross the ocean.

Its a "draw" But we could play one of the lower seeds (ie Guatemala). But no chance of T&T/Panama etc

Even by CONCACAF standards that **** is rigged

I also think this is a relatively fair format considering the circumstances. People are talking about how Honduras/Jamaica etc are getting special treatment and I think its time for a friendly reminder that we haven't made the hex in five cycles and haven't won a knockout stage Gold Cup match since 2007. This team is talented, but its been over 10 years since we've done anything of relevance in the region. We are a lot closer to Guatemala than those teams. Re: quarantine, I am pretty sure Canada has some of the strictest self-quarantine laws in the world. The majority of countries in CONCACAF do not require a mandatory self-quarantine, just that you do not exhibit symptoms of COVID when arriving. Whether we want to send players into those places is a different story altogether. A bubble will not work since the international windows are too short anyways. If there's matches being played later this year it is going to be a hope and pray situation, and as much as I know its mandatory for teams to release players I would be very surprised if Bayern etc don't throw up some roadblocks to keep players like Davies from flying across the ocean twice.

I don't see how we play home qualifiers this year. Not sure what the alternative though as the usual fallback of Florida is a definite no-go and you don't want to play four road matches.

The one thing with the repechage, is that if you assume that US/Mexico/Costa Rica take the top three spots, we're going to have the two best players in every single CONCACAF playoff we're in. The downside being that one (or two) ill-timed injuries will cause a lot of problems.

I have no idea what's going on here. This is now me.

Mexico announced that they will play Greece (54) and the Czech Republic (45) in the US in March. I think Greece could be an interesting opponent, as long we play them in Vancouver (or just not Toronto).

Yup 15 So if we win out and El Salvador loses we'll be 7 down.

I mean its not like Iceland's roster is full of worldbeaters either... https://www.ksi.is/um-ksi/frettir/frettasafn/frett/2019/12/30/23-leikmenn-til-Bandarikjanna/

bruh

I agree that finishing top 3 in the hex was always unrealistic. And we know that the intercontinental is a draw and out of our control. So it comes down which is the easier of - beating two of US/Costa Rica/Honduras/Jamaica in a full group stage, and then beating the playoff winner, or; - beating three teams (let's say Guatemala, Haiti and Panama) in knockouts, then beating the 4th place hex team (likely Costa Rica or Honduras) in a playoff. Frankly, both of those seem very hard, but I still think the one-offs are better for us based on the fact that we would struggle to get any results away from home which hurts us more over a longer group stage.

Eh this one's pretty bad. Even though he's not offside by a lot, at no point in the entire buildup is he ever onside, so this should be an extremely routine call for a linesman who is standing in line with the last defender.

Once you get out of the group its pretty simple to sell. Five two-legged playoffs and you need to win all five.