Quote:
Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden
Pardon me for my ignorance, but what does Canada have to do to qualify. As in what rank do they need to be, what teams will they need to beat and when will they play them?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
Everyone plays a bunch of games, then at the end of qualifying the USA and Mexico go to the World Cup.
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CroFlames is pretty much right. Concacaf being Concacaf, as per usual.
In a nutshell: In the Concacaf Nations League, finish 1 or 2 in our group with USA and Cuba, and qualify for the 2021 Gold Cup. That's straightforward.
But... Concacaf recently changed the 2022 World Cup Qualifying format, and it is now based on the FIFA ranking of the Concacaf teams. Be in the top 6: a very favourable path to the World Cup (6 teams fight for 3 automatic berths in "the Hex").
If a country is ranked outside of the top 6, there is a long and convoluted path where, eventually, the remaining Concacaf teams ranked 7 to whatever will all fight for 1 berth in the "inter-confederation playoff" where they would then play against runners up from 3 other regions for 2 berths in the World Cup.
So basically, be ranked 7 or lower, you get a chance to play for a 50% chance to qualify. Or in other words: hilariously improbable. It has to be top 6 or just forget about it.
And that's why we suddenly need teams that are above Canada (8th) but catch-able to lose (Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, ranked 5, 6, 7) and also hope that the closest behind don't do well (Curacao and Haiti, ranked 9 and 10). And beating Cuba (26 in Concacaf) doesn't help as much as we'd like, but losing to them would be a big blow.
Here are some helpful links:
Concacaf Nations League on Wikipedia
Concacaf 2022 World Cup Qualifying on Wikipedia
FIFA Rankings filtered by Concacaf