As most readers are likely aware the CONCACAF Olympic qualifiers start tonight in Vancouver. If you also read my work at theScore, you’ll know just how excited I am by this.
Do click the link, but I’ll sum it up for you now – I’m not. Wake me up in the semi-final round. The tournament is World-Junior-Hockey-Championship-group-stage pointless until then.
Canada’s opponent tonight, Haiti, would struggle against the top high school girls teams in the United States. Against a top 10 world ranked Canada, it will be a bloodbath. That’s unfortunate, but pretending it isn’t the case is a bit silly.
It’s possibly counterproductive if your goal is to convince reluctant fans of the value of the women’s game. When it’s played between two top 10 teams it is as compelling as any elite sporting contest. When it’s a match-up like we will see tonight it’s dreadful. Any new fan that stops by tonight is going to run screaming from their television.
It’s a necessary evil though – playing games like this. The nature of the World Cup or Olympics is such that you need to provide every country with a chance, however remote, of qualifying. Haiti deserves as much and without the carrot of big event qualification there would be little chance smaller countries will ever improve.
So what do you do? If you acknowledge that the smaller countries need a chance and that by giving them a chance you’re setting them up to be killed then you’re kind of stuck. Unless you think outside the box. You want to be fair to every country in the confederation, but sometimes fair is not equal.
The harsh truth is that you could play this tournament 1,000 times and Haiti would never advance to the Olympics.
Never. Not even once. Additionally, the USA and Canada would be the two teams that did advance 975 times. Mexico and, to a much lesser extent, Costa Rica are in with a slight prayer, but beyond that the teams are in Vancouver for the experience.
So why not make the experience better for them. Instead of setting the minnows up for two blow-outs why not give them as many competitive games as possible? There is a way to do that while still technically giving them a chance to win the tournament.
Using the current tournament, let’s look at an alternative format.
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The current groups are as follows:
Group A
Canada
Costa Rica
Cuba
Haiti
Group B
USA
Mexico
Guatemala
Dominica Republic
They are traditional two seeds, two non-seed groups. In a more competitive tournament there might be some speculation as to whether a non-seed could raise up and upset a seed. A stated, that’s not in the cards here.
Why not go with these groups then:
Group A
Canada
USA
Costa Rica
Mexico
Group B
Cuba
Haiti
Guatemala
Dominica Republic.
Clearly the groups are unbalanced. To make it reasonable a tweak to the knock out stage is needed. Instead of a traditional top two from each group advancement, the top three teams from group A would join the winner of group B in the semi-final – 1A v 1B; 2A v 2B – winners to the Olympics.
There could be other ways to do it, but the point is that at this stage of development in the women’s game you should be looking for ways to maximize competitive games. Playing a round-robin with Guatemala, Dominica Republic and Cuba would do Haiti much better than getting smoked by Canada would.
It would work the other way too. Canada would get two games that would force them to at least break a sweat and a true challenge against the U.S.
Fans would win too. The allure of watching a blow-out is lost pretty quickly. If organizers knew there would be a USA v Canada match-up in Vancouver they could have marketed it in a whole different way.
It does the women’s game a disservice to ignore the problem it has with competitive balance. Until it’s addressed the game will continue to struggle to gain the public’s attention.