Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
Have we forgotten the US didn't qualify last time, losing to T&T on a 'wet field'?
Rant: CONCACAF qualifying is stupid. It's all to ensure USA and Mexico to play each other and screw the rest. The final round being 6 teams was always dumb and was only expanded to 8 because of COVID. This means that most teams, like Canada, never getto the HEX and their journey ends after 2, 4 or 6 games. How's that for development? Remember that they were initially going to have a little teams bracket with the winner to play the 4th placed HEX qualifier? Asinine.
Take Asia for example. 12 teams make it to the final round in two groups of 6, double CONCACAF. So it's all fair. You play 8 games in the prelim round to make it to the final 12 to play 10 more games. That's much more balanced and little teams really develop. Vietnam is in the final 12 this year for the first time ever.
And Japan and Korea? They have not played each other in qualifying since 1998. Because that's not what's important. This year they are in different pots for next week's draw so 50/50 chance they'll draw each other finally.
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The problem is that a lot of these countries in CONCACAF simply don't have the money to travel. Bonaire, for example, has a population of 20,000. You can't expect them to be able to foot the bill for flights and hotels more than once every four years. I think Saint Martin has a population of about 75,000. Bizarrely, CONCACAF has 41 full members, 31 of whom are in the Caribbean Zone. Canada has been so poor for so long that they just don't have enough points in the FIFA rankings to qualify for the later stages when the big footballing nations start to play.
Qualifying for the final stage is a massive step in the right direction, and it'll be interesting to see how Canada sets up. It will almost certainly have to be extremely defensive minded to avoid getting torn apart on the counter. It will just be such a difference from how they've been playing in the qualifiers so far.
If you offered Herdman one single point out of a possible twelve in the four matches with Mexico and the USA, I think he'd snap your hand off for it right now. If Canada can't get four points out of the first three matches in September, they'll be out before things even get going.