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CONCACAF Nations League


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3 hours ago, CanadianSoccerFan said:

The bottom division champion of the UEFA Nations League qualifying for Euro 2020 is certainly the most controversial element of it.  The format is such a confusing dog's breakfast that the media hasn't figured this out yet.  It will take a few years to dawn on them.  I certainly hope CONCACAF will not replicate that.  

They want another Iceland

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  • 2 weeks later...

UEFA reveals league of nation format:

http://www.uefa.com/uefanationsleague/news/newsid=2501767.html#/

2018/19 UEFA Nations League: how it works

 

The UEFA Nations League is a new competition that aims to ensure the continued success of national team football by replacing most friendlies with competitive matches and by allowing all nations to play against equally ranked teams.

  • All 55 UEFA associations enter.
  • The teams are split into four leagues, A–B–C–D, according to their position in the UEFA National Team Coefficient Rankings following the end of the European Qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup (as per 11 October 2017; play-off results will not be included).
  • League A will consist of the 12 top-ranked teams. The next 12 teams will be in League B, the next 15in League C and the remaining 16 in League D.
  • Leagues A and B will each comprise four groups of three teams.
  • League C will contain one group of three teams and three groups of four sides; League D will be formed by four groups of four teams.
  • All draw procedures to be confirmed. Matches to be played home and away between September and November 2018 (teams will play four or six games depending on the size of their group).
  • The four group winners of League A will qualify for the UEFA Nations League Finals, to be held inJune 2019, with two semi-finals, a third-place match and the final. One host country will be appointed by the UEFA Executive Committee in December 2018 from among the finalist teams.
  • The group winners in Leagues B, C and D will gain promotion and those who finish bottom of the groups in Leagues A, B and C will be relegated.

National teams will thus either be competing to become UEFA Nations League winners, or be fighting for promotion and to avoid relegation.

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13 minutes ago, Ansem said:

Not a big fan but the format is probably the best possible of the outcomes I had imagined when they first floated the idea. I wonder what CONCACAF will do?

 

13 minutes ago, Ansem said:

The UEFA Nations League is a new competition

So it cap-ties? Do we have confirmation of this?

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So CONCACAF could look like this:

41 members

Ranking : http://en.fifaranking.net/concacaf/ranking.php

League A

Mexico, Costa Rica, United States, Haiti, Panama, Jamaica, Honduras, Curacao, Canada, Trinidad & Tobago

League B

El Salvador, Nicaragua, Suriname, St.Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Guatemala, Guyana, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico

League C

Belize, Barbados, Dominica, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, St.Lucia, Aruba, Cuba, Bermuda, U.S Virgin Islands, Montserrat 

League D

Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Anguilla, Martinique, French Guyana, Guadeloupe, St.Martin, Sint.Maarten

Edited by Ansem
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Kinda an aside, but instead of trying to get friendlies in Central America or with other CONCACAF countries in general, just for March 2018 we should actually try to play friendlies against mid-level European sides before that chance is gone by September 2018. After that we may only get "Camp Poutine" friendlies in January against Nordic countries for the years to come. http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/02/70/96/62/final_v2_imc2018-2024fifa_15-02163_101_en_en_neutral.pdf

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1 hour ago, Ansem said:

So CONCACAF could look like this:

41 members

Ranking : http://en.fifaranking.net/concacaf/ranking.php

League A

Mexico, Costa Rica, United States, Haiti, Panama, Jamaica, Honduras, Curacao, Canada, Trinida & Tobago

League B

El Salvador, Nicaragua, Suriname, St.Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Guatemala, Guyana, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico

League C

Belize, Barbados, Dominica, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, St.Lucia, Aruba, Cuba, Bermuda, U.S Virgin Islands, Montserrat 

League D

Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Anguilla, Martinique, French Guyana, Guadeloupe, St.Martin, Sint.Maarten

You forgot little Bonaire, although surely some small nations won't compete every year :) I also imagine that they'd start French Guyana, Guadeloupe and Martinique in a slightly higher tier based on their consistently good results in Gold Cup qualifying over the years.

Hard to know what CONCACAF might be planning to do differently, although if they wanted to mirror UEFA exactly they could use just three tiers to keep the numbers similar. That way the top tier play 4 group games plus the playoff while the second tier play extra group matches in lieu of the playoff and most of the third tier play fewer games to account for financial limitations:

Division A

  1. Mexico
  2. Costa Rica
  3. United States
  4. Haiti
  5. Panama
  6. Jamaica
  7. Honduras
  8. Curaçao
  9. Canada
  10. Trinidad & Tobago
  11. El Salvador
  12. Nicaragua

Division B

  1. Suriname
  2. St. Kitts and Nevis
  3. Antigua and Barbuda
  4. Guatemala
  5. Guyana
  6. Grenada
  7. Dominican Republic
  8. Puerto Rico
  9. Belize
  10. Barbados
  11. Dominica
  12. St. Vincent and the Grenadines
  13. St. Lucia
  14. Guadeloupe
  15. Martinique
  16. French Guiana

Division C

  1. Aruba
  2. Cuba
  3. Bermuda
  4. U.S. Virgin Islands
  5. Montserrat
  6. Turks and Caicos Islands
  7. Cayman Islands
  8. British Virgin Islands
  9. Bahamas
  10. Anguilla
  11. Saint-Martin
  12. Sint Maarten
  13. Bonaire

What I actually kinda like about this setup is that it could easily be turned into a new qualifying process for a 16-team Gold Cup; all the teams in Division A would qualify automatically along with the winners of each group in Division B (i.e. the promoted teams). That said there's a lot of considerations in CONCACAF that might demand a different format, particularly the dominance of the top three and the prevalence of very small nations, both of which make the confederation very different from UEFA.

Edited by Zem
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Like your idea!

I'll add to your idea. Feel free to play with this

Division A
  • 4 groups of 3 (random draw)
  • Winner of each group advance to playoffs semi-finals for the nation league
  • Bottom team is relegated to Division B
  • All 12 teams qualifies for Gold Cup
  1. Mexico
  2. Costa Rica
  3. United States
  4. Haiti
  5. Panama
  6. Jamaica
  7. Honduras
  8. Curaçao
  9. Canada
  10. Trinidad & Tobago
  11. El Salvador
  12. Nicaragua
Division B
  • 4 groups of 4
  • Winner of each group qualifies for Gold Cup
  • Winner of each group advance in promotion playoffs
  • Bottom team is relegated to Division C
  • Winner of Division B promotes to Division A
  1. Suriname
  2. St. Kitts and Nevis
  3. Antigua and Barbuda
  4. Guatemala
  5. Guyana
  6. Grenada
  7. Dominican Republic
  8. Puerto Rico
  9. Belize
  10. Barbados
  11. Dominica
  12. St. Vincent and the Grenadines
  13. St. Lucia
  14. Guadeloupe
  15. Martinique
  16. French Guiana
Division C
  • 4 group of 3/3+1 or single table
  • Winner or each group or top 4 advance to promotion playoffs
  • Winner of Division C promotes to Division B
  1. Aruba
  2. Cuba
  3. Bermuda
  4. U.S. Virgin Islands
  5. Montserrat
  6. Turks and Caicos Islands
  7. Cayman Islands
  8. British Virgin Islands
  9. Bahamas
  10. Anguilla
  11. Saint-Martin
  12. Sint Maarten
  13. Bonaire
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1 hour ago, Zem said:

What I actually kinda like about this setup is that it could easily be turned into a new qualifying process for a 16-team Gold Cup; all the teams in Division A would qualify automatically along with the winners of each group in Division B (i.e. the promoted teams). That said there's a lot of considerations in CONCACAF that might demand a different format, particularly the dominance of the top three and the prevalence of very small nations, both of which make the confederation very different from UEFA.

 

Problem with this is teams in Division C have absolutely no way of qualifying for Gold Cup

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22 minutes ago, canta15 said:

Problem with this is teams in Division C have absolutely no way of qualifying for Gold Cup

Definitely true, but I feel like the bottom 13 teams wouldn't mind not having the opportunity to qualify every cycle since they have virtually no chance of making it anyway. Regardless, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to re-jig GC qualifying so that it could work the same way that UEFA is doing it, where some teams qualify through the league and then the rest go through a dedicated qualifying process.

15 minutes ago, matty said:

You guys have too many teams in each tier

It's extremely similar to the number in the UEFA Nations League, the teams in each tier are drawn into four groups who play a double round-robin (UEFA's tiers go 12-12-15-16 from top to bottom). The whole point of our posts was to give an example of what the CONCACAF league might look like if it tried to closely emulate the format of the UEFA league, which I'm not necessarily advocating for and I don't expect to happen, as my last paragraph was meant to indicate.

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2 minutes ago, Zem said:

 

It's extremely similar to the number in the UEFA Nations League, the teams in each tier are drawn into four groups who play a double round-robin (UEFA's tiers go 12-12-15-16 from top to bottom). The whole point of our posts was to give an example of what the CONCACAF league might look like if it tried to closely emulate the format of the UEFA league, which I'm not necessarily advocating for and I don't expect to happen, as my last paragraph was meant to indicate.

That's all well and good but the aim is 6-8 games per team. That's an easy thing to factor in and you might get closer to what this will be

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11 minutes ago, matty said:

That's all well and good but the aim is 6-8 games per team. That's an easy thing to factor in and you might get closer to what this will be

I know. Like I said, the point of my post was not to predict what the league will actually look like, it was a pure hypothetical in light of the UEFA Nations League format being revealed today. I do not think the CONCACAF league will look exactly like the UEFA version, but asking what it would look like if it tried to directly emulate the UEFA league gives us a much clearer answer than "it's inspired by UEFA Nations League and will try to have each team playing 6-8 games" which has innumerable possibilities because we don't actually know very much about the CONCACAF league's format yet.

Instead of continuing to speculate on the same limited info we've had for a long time, we were speculating with reference to new information about the league this league is inspired by. UEFA designed their league format with certain things in mind, perhaps if we examine the pros and cons of that format in a CONCACAF context, we could get a better idea of what kind of systems we might want in a CONCACAF-tailored format.

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28 minutes ago, Zem said:

I know. Like I said, the point of my post was not to predict what the league will actually look like, it was a pure hypothetical in light of the UEFA Nations League format being revealed today. I do not think the CONCACAF league will look exactly like the UEFA version, but asking what it would look like if it tried to directly emulate the UEFA league gives us a much clearer answer than "it's inspired by UEFA Nations League and will try to have each team playing 6-8 games" which has innumerable possibilities because we don't actually know very much about the CONCACAF league's format yet.

Instead of continuing to speculate on the same limited info we've had for a long time, we were speculating with reference to new information about the league this league is inspired by. UEFA designed their league format with certain things in mind, perhaps if we examine the pros and cons of that format in a CONCACAF context, we could get a better idea of what kind of systems we might want in a CONCACAF-tailored format.

I only told you guys about the 6-8 games last week. If you want a clear basic idea of the league DM

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  • 3 weeks later...

Funny how the Americans are whining about how Mexicans didn't do them any favours and "repay" them for 2014. The Mexicans didn't just sit on their butts first of all, they were actually winning and scored two goals. They also kept bitching about Klinsmann. Really they screwed themselves. Haha USA. With the rate of the Cdn dollar they can come up and spend their summer watching the WC w us. ;) Love to see that pompous Bruce Arena eat crow. 

Edited by Moldy9
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1 hour ago, CanadianSoccerFan said:

After the events of tonight I don't want to hear another f###ing word from any American about how this competition is beneath them.  It's NOT!

They sure need to learn how to win in Latin America....just like us!

3 minutes ago, Moldy9 said:

Funny how they Americans are whining about how Mexicans didn't do them any favours and "repay" them for 2014. The Mexicans didn't just say on their butts first of all, they were actually winning and scored two goals. They also kept bitching about Klinsmann. Really they screwed themselves. Haha USA. With the rate of the Cdn dollar they can come up and spend their summer watching the WC w us. ;)

We should invite them to watch a Panama game with us at somewhere not called Scally Wags

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