(11-17-2017 10:42 AM)aTxTIGER Wrote:  

(11-17-2017 10:39 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(11-17-2017 09:04 AM)aTxTIGER Wrote:  

(11-17-2017 02:23 AM)chiefsfan Wrote:  CONCACAF announces it will start its own "League of Nations" in September 2018. It will eliminate the friendlies teams normally play in the downtime between the conclusion of the World Cup, and the start of the next cycle's qualifying. (In the US's case, about a year and a half)

Upside is that it will provide more games between the US and Mexico. Downside is that it will provide more games between the US and El Salvador than the US and Portugal.

I was hoping COMEBOL and CONCACAF would get together on that.

Yeah...that'll be a garbage venture if it includes any Caribbean nations not named Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, which of course it will.

Not looking forward to having only one marquee friendly for the next 5 years now.

But we'll get 4 games against Haiti and Belize.



Honestly, this might be the start of Mexico and the US starting to think about joining COMEBOL

I still think they should just add them all together at this point. With a 48 team WC, every one of the major squads would still qualify with a change at an upset or two, and you'd have better/actually watchable games. I would be against US/Mexico jumping into CONMEBOL without some additional spots being added into their qualification quota, because lord knows we would have to squeak in anyways.

There would be 12 spots between them, meaning you could go to a split group format like they have in Europe (which is something I always wished we could do). Essentially there would be two rounds of qualification based on FIFA Ranking, first round would be a playoff for the final pool for table draws, with 5 6-team groups being established with first and second place teams qualifying with a playoff between the top 4 3rd place teams for the last spot. Groups would be configured with 2 from CONMEBOL, 2 from NA/CA, and 2 from Caribbean Zone.

You could have groups like this:

Group A:
Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Canada, Belize, Cuba
Group B:
Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, El Salvador, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname
Group C:
Argentina, Bolivia, USA, Jamaica, Guatemala, Haiti
Group D:
Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, Curacao
Group E:
Chile, Peru, Honduras, Panama, Dominican Republic, Barbados

Gives an even distribution, pits one premier CONCACAF and CONMEBOL team together, with the second from each of those two regions likely being highly competitive sets for the 3rd spot.