WCQ: Third Round - Window 5 (March 24 - 30, 2022)

[An Observer]

I think the US has a good shot at catching us on goal difference if we lose in Panama as they are only 4 back and a loss would be a minimum of 1 goal we give them back and with Costa Rica trying to make up goal difference (probably on Mexico which they will hope will lose as they would need to put 5 by the states I think), they will expose themselves at the back.

[xcalibre]

They need to beat the US 6-0 to pass them IIRC. To displace Mex they just need a 5-goal swing (i.e. 3-0 and 2-0 results), still pretty farfetched but at least semi-conceivable

[rydermike]

Watch them lose 6-0 to Costa Rica and not qualify. 

[sstackho]

Good night, sweet Monte Carlo simulation model.  You may now rest.  Thanks el_noido of Reddit!

Edited March 28, 2022 by sstackho

[sstackho]

22 minutes ago, rydermike said:

Watch them lose 6-0 to Costa Rica and not qualify. 

Is this a real picture and not a mock-up?  Did they really show off a QUALIFIED banner without actually having qualified?   EDIT:  Yup 

Edited March 28, 2022 by sstackho

[CanadaFan123]

21 minutes ago, rydermike said:

Watch them lose 6-0 to Costa Rica and not qualify. 

They really can't help themselves from being cringe, can they? 

[Shway]

I mean they pretty much have qualified, and probably wanted to celebrate it at home.

No way they lose 6-0.

 

[TGAA_Star]

USA back at the World Cup for the first time since 2014...can't wait

[Gian-Luca]

Apparently the players didn't know what the banner said at first until it was unfurled and then when they did they quickly chucked it away

[footballfreak]

On 3/27/2022 at 12:52 PM, Allez les Rouges said:

I don't think you read my proposal correctly: there are 2 Hex's with 12 teams total, so unless there are big upsets, only 4 teams in the Top 16 are eliminated. The 12 teams that make it all play at least 16 matches, the same as your Option 2.

There are 20 teams eliminated in Phase 1. If you can't win a group where only 1 of the 4 teams is in the Top 15 of CONCACAF, I don't see why you should play more than 6 games in WCQ.

As for top teams meeting in Gold Cup or Nations League, it's just not the same. Maybe in 5 years people will care more about those tournaments, but I doubt it. CONCACAF is not like UEFA, which has a highly significant continental championship *and* whose top teams often meet at the World Cup anyway. It is also not like CAF, which doesn't have a clear Top 2-3 countries. Arguably, we're most like AFC, and personally I don't think the AFC's format with 2 parallel final groups produces a compelling process.

I misspoke by saying the 5th best team could be eliminated early (subtraction error), but the point still stands with the cutoff a little lower.

• It is entirely possible for some or all of the teams ranked 9th to 15th (the pot A teams in the preliminary round) to be eliminated after 6 games. For reference, based on the December 2020 rankings that would put the likes of Panama, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Guatemala, and Suriname at risk of premature elimination right away. 
• Any system that goes 4 —> 1 is invariably going to create situations where (comparatively) good teams get eliminated early because of a bad draw, fluke result, or rash of injuries. Look no further than Ivory Coast this cycle. One of the best teams in Africa eliminated early because of the competition structure. 
• It’s all well and good to say “if they can’t make it out, they don’t deserve to go to a World Cup”, but by that logic why don’t we just do 6 groups of 6/5 with the group winners qualifying straight up? If you can’t win your group, you don’t deserve to go. 

I don’t see why any of the bottom 27 nations would ever agree to such a heavily unfair system. Think how hard done by we felt with the pre-covid qualifying structure, or even some of the old semi final round groups of death in previous cycles. This format only provides a safety net for the top teams while forcing 75% of the federation to fight for scraps. Seems like pretty blatant case of pulling up the ladder behind us after decades of having to put up with unfair structures ourselves.

[narduch]

Buchanan and Larin make team of Matchday 13.

 

[Allez les Rouges]

1 hour ago, footballfreak said:

I misspoke by saying the 5th best team could be eliminated early (subtraction error), but the point still stands with the cutoff a little lower.

• It is entirely possible for some or all of the teams ranked 9th to 15th (the pot A teams in the preliminary round) to be eliminated after 6 games. For reference, based on the December 2020 rankings that would put the likes of Panama, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Guatemala, and Suriname at risk of premature elimination right away. 
• Any system that goes 4 —> 1 is invariably going to create situations where (comparatively) good teams get eliminated early because of a bad draw, fluke result, or rash of injuries. Look no further than Ivory Coast this cycle. One of the best teams in Africa eliminated early because of the competition structure. 
• It’s all well and good to say “if they can’t make it out, they don’t deserve to go to a World Cup”, but by that logic why don’t we just do 6 groups of 6/5 with the group winners qualifying straight up? If you can’t win your group, you don’t deserve to go. 

I don’t see why any of the bottom 27 nations would ever agree to such a heavily unfair system. Think how hard done by we felt with the pre-covid qualifying structure, or even some of the old semi final round groups of death in previous cycles. This format only provides a safety net for the top teams while forcing 75% of the federation to fight for scraps. Seems like pretty blatant case of pulling up the ladder behind us after decades of having to put up with unfair structures ourselves.

Responding to your 3 points:

1. In your own Option 2, teams 1-16 enter in Round 3 and are all at risk of being eliminated after 6 games. Similarly in your own Option 1: teams that enter in Round 1 could be out after 2 games, and the remaining teams could be out after 6 teams. So both options you propose (not counting Option 3, which is not allowed) have the exact same feature that if you're not in the Top 12 after 6 games, you could be out.

2. You gotta look at the actual situation in each confederation. Ivory Coast got stuck in the same group as Cameroon, so you had 2 potentially WC worthy teams (both Top 60) in a group with only 1 survivor. By contrast, team #16 in CONCACAF has a world ranking of #144. That's why CONCACAF has always had a format that rapidly eliminates the low ranked teams.

3. Because, again, that means that the Top 6 countries never meet each other, which sucks unless you have a continental championship people actually care about and/or your top teams are so good they often meet in WC playoffs.

Let's face it: the bottom half of CONCACAF knows they're not going to the WC. The important thing for those teams is to get some semi-competitive matches in. As for teams 9-15, in my system, to qualify, they have to:
- avoid upset in a group of 4
- win a playoff round (or be the top group winner)
- be in the top 1/2 of a Hex
- win another playoff round.
That's much better than the original 2022 CONCACAF system, where teams 7-14 had to:
- avoid upset in a group of 4
- win a playoff round
- win another playoff round
- win another playoff round
- win another playoff round
- win another playoff round.

[Metro]

42 minutes ago, narduch said:

Buchanan and Larin make team of Matchday 13.

 

4 Costa Ricans. Sure.

[Addona]

9 hours ago, Shway said:

I mean they pretty much have qualified, and probably wanted to celebrate it at home.

No way they lose 6-0.

 

I heard someone suggest that they take the 3-0 forfeit in order to guarantee it!

[footballfreak]

13 minutes ago, Allez les Rouges said:

Responding to your 3 points:

1. In your own Option 2, teams 1-16 enter in Round 3 and are all at risk of being eliminated after 6 games. Similarly in your own Option 1: teams that enter in Round 1 could be out after 2 games, and the remaining teams could be out after 6 teams. So both options you propose (not counting Option 3, which is not allowed) have the exact same feature that if you're not in the Top 12 after 6 games, you could be out.

2. You gotta look at the actual situation in each confederation. Ivory Coast got stuck in the same group as Cameroon, so you had 2 potentially WC worthy teams (both Top 60) in a group with only 1 survivor. By contrast, team #16 in CONCACAF has a world ranking of #144. That's why CONCACAF has always had a format that rapidly eliminates the low ranked teams.

3. Because, again, that means that the Top 6 countries never meet each other, which sucks unless you have a continental championship people actually care about and/or your top teams are so good they often meet in WC playoffs.

Let's face it: the bottom half of CONCACAF knows they're not going to the WC. The important thing for those teams is to get some semi-competitive matches in. As for teams 9-15, in my system, to qualify, they have to:
- avoid upset in a group of 4
- win a playoff round (or be the top group winner)
- be in the top 1/2 of a Hex
- win another playoff round.
That's much better than the original 2022 CONCACAF system, where teams 7-14 had to:
- avoid upset in a group of 4
- win a playoff round
- win another playoff round
- win another playoff round
- win another playoff round
- win another playoff round.

I fully acknowledge my options have their downsides, but you conveniently ignored the fact that the teams 1-16 in option 2 are at much lower jeopardy because 50% teams advance instead of 25%. That’s the whole point. I also toyed with other double elimination methods, but didn’t post them because I got lost in the weeds and the post got too long. Would definitely like to revisit the idea.

2022 should not be used as a benchmark for how to design the competition moving forward. The preliminary rounds were compressed due to Covid, and the top 5 getting a bye right to the final round was horse shit. The only positive thing I can say about 2022 from a competitive standpoint is that it managed to at least be better than what was planned - faint praise.

Panama was almost eliminated in both preliminary stages. El Salvador were pushed to the brink. Guatemala were eliminated without conceding a goal. And despite how pedestrian our path to the Ocho seems with the benefit of hindsight, it was not a foregone conclusion. Suriname went bar down in the first 20 minutes are so. A goal there could have completely changed our destiny. We were a goal up on Haiti before an unbelievable stroke of luck gave us some breathing room. 

We got lucky that everything went chalk this year and more or less the best 8 made it - some debate about whether Haiti, Curaçao, Guatemala or Suriname would have accounted themselves better than Honduras/ES. But if the same system were to be used in 2030, we would almost be guaranteed to lose one or more legitimate contenders for that 6th spot.

[Allez les Rouges]

38 minutes ago, footballfreak said:

I fully acknowledge my options have their downsides, but you conveniently ignored the fact that the teams 1-16 in option 2 are at much lower jeopardy because 50% teams advance instead of 25%. That’s the whole point. I also toyed with other double elimination methods, but didn’t post them because I got lost in the weeds and the post got too long. Would definitely like to revisit the idea.

2022 should not be used as a benchmark for how to design the competition moving forward. The preliminary rounds were compressed due to Covid, and the top 5 getting a bye right to the final round was horse shit. The only positive thing I can say about 2022 from a competitive standpoint is that it managed to at least be better than what was planned - faint praise.

Panama was almost eliminated in both preliminary stages. El Salvador were pushed to the brink. Guatemala were eliminated without conceding a goal. And despite how pedestrian our path to the Ocho seems with the benefit of hindsight, it was not a foregone conclusion. Suriname went bar down in the first 20 minutes are so. A goal there could have completely changed our destiny. We were a goal up on Haiti before an unbelievable stroke of luck gave us some breathing room. 

We got lucky that everything went chalk this year and more or less the best 8 made it - some debate about whether Haiti, Curaçao, Guatemala or Suriname would have accounted themselves better than Honduras/ES. But if the same system were to be used in 2030, we would almost be guaranteed to lose one or more legitimate contenders for that 6th spot.

I don't agree that having 2 teams out of 4 advance from a group with, say, the #3, #10, #15 and #22 teams in the region puts the #10 team in that much less jeopardy than having 1 team out of 4 advance from a group with, say, teams #12, #19, #26, #33 puts the #12 team in jeopardy. I mean, sure, if #10 has an accident vs. #15, it could make up for it by upsetting #3. But it would take quite an upset. That 50% vs. 25% comparison is less meaningful when groups contain very heterogeneous teams, as in your Option 2 and in my prelim group phase for teams #9-35.

Of course, 2022 shouldn't be used as benchmark. I was just responding to your mentioning it in order to illustrate that a system like the one I proposed is a lot less unfair to low-ranked teams than what CONCACAF originally planned for 2022. Now, if you look at past CONCACAF formats in the 32-team World Cup era, they *always* quickly cut the field down to 12: head-to-head playoffs most years, 4 —> 1 groups in 2014. This makes sense for CONCACAF given how much of the region consists of tiny nations. There's no real point in having groups span teams 1-24 in the region.

Now maybe with 6 slots, it'd be better to quickly cut down to 14-18 teams rather than 12 (just like 12 is arguably more suitable than 8 for 3.5 slots). But I think 18 is definitely the max before you guarantee yourself a bunch of teams that have no business in the main stages of WCQ, creating a bunch of blowouts and screwing up goal differentials: the bottom half of CONCACAF will always be crap due to country size. This is where we disagree: you really want to avoid a eliminating a legitimate contender early, whereas I think it's not worth letting a much of mediocre teams in just to make sure you don't miss anyone.

The other point of disagreement is that I think it's desirable to have a tiered system among those 12-18 teams to get marquee matchups among the top teams. I don't want that based on FIFA rankings alone, which I agree was terrible in the original 2022 format. But as long as you give teams a nonzero chance (commensurate with their ranking) to make it into the top tier, I don't see the problem of treating them asymmetrically.

[archer21]

11 hours ago, footballfreak said:

I misspoke by saying the 5th best team could be eliminated early (subtraction error), but the point still stands with the cutoff a little lower.

• It is entirely possible for some or all of the teams ranked 9th to 15th (the pot A teams in the preliminary round) to be eliminated after 6 games. For reference, based on the December 2020 rankings that would put the likes of Panama, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Guatemala, and Suriname at risk of premature elimination right away. 
• Any system that goes 4 —> 1 is invariably going to create situations where (comparatively) good teams get eliminated early because of a bad draw, fluke result, or rash of injuries. Look no further than Ivory Coast this cycle. One of the best teams in Africa eliminated early because of the competition structure. 
• It’s all well and good to say “if they can’t make it out, they don’t deserve to go to a World Cup”, but by that logic why don’t we just do 6 groups of 6/5 with the group winners qualifying straight up? If you can’t win your group, you don’t deserve to go. 

I don’t see why any of the bottom 27 nations would ever agree to such a heavily unfair system. Think how hard done by we felt with the pre-covid qualifying structure, or even some of the old semi final round groups of death in previous cycles. This format only provides a safety net for the top teams while forcing 75% of the federation to fight for scraps. Seems like pretty blatant case of pulling up the ladder behind us after decades of having to put up with unfair structures ourselves.

I agree with the bolded part, which is why I proposed what I did a few pages back. Everyone enters at the same time, everyone has the same chance to advance.
 

Other than for seeding, I don’t think anyone should get some big advantage to Qualifying based on their ranking. Especially when we all know FIFA rankings have their flaws.

Somebody else could be the “Canada” of 2026 or 2030, where they have a rapid rise, but their ranking doesn’t show it yet. It’s unfair to punish them for that and give them a different path than the teams that have been good historically.

[rkomar]

I haven't gone through the scheduling details above, so I don't know much about what the debate is about, but that last sentence in the comment above caught my eye.  We absolutely benefited from having to qualify against the minnows before getting to the gold cup and then the ocho.  That's where the players started to learn the systems and the belief in themselves as a team.  If we had been thrust into the final eight without the games that came before, I suspect we would have got our usual result there.  So, for teams that haven't been good historically, the longer path may be more of an opportunity than a punishment.

[CanadianSoccerFan]

On twitter it is remarkable how bitter the El Salvador fans are.  They're all convinced we only qualified due to corruption from Montagliani.  The change in format and the Buchanan penalty decision etc.  Few seem to look at why their team has only 10 points in 13 games

[narduch]

14 minutes ago, rkomar said:

I haven't gone through the scheduling details above, so I don't know much about what the debate is about, but that last sentence in the comment above caught my eye.  We absolutely benefited from having to qualify against the minnows before getting to the gold cup and then the ocho.  That's where the players started to learn the systems and the belief in themselves as a team.  If we had been thrust into the final eight without the games that came before, I suspect we would have got our usual result there.  So, for teams that haven't been good historically, the longer path may be more of an opportunity than a punishment.

This is why I think we will play a fairly strong squad in Nations League. 

We may only have 6 or 7 games at most to prepare for the World Cup

Edited March 29, 2022 by narduch

[mrstepp817]

7 minutes ago, CanadianSoccerFan said:

On twitter it is remarkable how bitter the El Salvador fans are.  They're all convinced we only qualified due to corruption from Montagliani.  The change in format and the Buchanan penalty decision etc.  Few seem to look at why their team has only 10 points in 13 games

Twitter is rarely the place for reasoned or nuanced discussion...lol

I really like El Salvador's coach and how they play...they'll be in the mix for a couple of cycles if they keep moving in this direction

[Alex]

10 minutes ago, CanadianSoccerFan said:

On twitter it is remarkable how bitter the El Salvador fans are.  They're all convinced we only qualified due to corruption from Montagliani.  The change in format and the Buchanan penalty decision etc.  Few seem to look at why their team has only 10 points in 13 games

I went back and forth with one of them too haha. I said if you want to talk about a team that got really screwed look at Guatemala. They went undefeated, conceded no goals and still got eliminated. 

[CanadianSoccerFan]

6 minutes ago, Alex said:

I went back and forth with one of them too haha. I said if you want to talk about a team that got really screwed look at Guatemala. They went undefeated, conceded no goals and still got eliminated. 

I don't think anyone has sympathy for them.  Panama would have been screwed worse than us by the previous format.  ES had no business being in the top 6 on a fluke of math. They lost to Dominican Republic and Bermuda.  They've struggled repeatedly against Montserrat.

I reckon Haiti, Curacao, Suriname, and Guatemala all would have done better in this round.

Edited March 29, 2022 by CanadianSoccerFan

[Alex]

18 minutes ago, CanadianSoccerFan said:

I don't think anyone has sympathy for them.  Panama would have been screwed worse than us by the previous format.  ES had no business being in the top 6 on a fluke of math. They lost to Dominican Republic and Bermuda.  They've struggled repeatedly against Montserrat.

I reckon Haiti, Curacao, Suriname, and Guatemala all would have done better in this round.

Also. The fact that Alex Larin tried to end Buchanan’s career at Bmo and didn’t get sent off proves they are just sore losers. 

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

21 hours ago, Shway said:

I mean they pretty much have qualified, and probably wanted to celebrate it at home.

No way they lose 6-0.

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Olympique_de_Marseille