The best way to change CONCACAF World Cup qualifying and make everyone (kind of) happy
What if CONCACAF changed their World Cup qualifying format? What would it look like?
That's something fans, players, coaches, federations and the entire confederation will have to consider as they look ahead to the 2022 World Cup. CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani wants to change the qualification format and is ready to bring the idea to the rest of the confederation, so everyone will have to think about alternative formats and then decide whether there is one they like better than the current format.
There's one major reason that Montagliani wants a new format, and it will drive all of these discussions: The CONCACAF president believes that the current format doesn't help the confederation's smaller teams enough. Teams can be eliminated from the World Cup more than three years before the tournament actually starts. That's a long time for teams to go without competitive matches. Those teams also don't play nearly enough competitive matches, Montagliani argues. After all, they can be out of World Cup qualifying after just two matches.
There are two real issues to clear if CONCACAF is going to change formats, though:
1. Increasing the number of matches that the smaller teams play means increasing their travel costs. A lot of those federations are strapped for cash to begin with so getting them more matches might help, but there's a limit to how many more they can play, especially against fellow smaller teams that don't draw audiences.
2. The big teams don't want to play more World Cup qualifiers against small teams that don't challenge them and their fans aren't interested in. They like having their rivalries against the other power teams in the region and knowing that they will get those matches every World Cup qualifying cycle, both testing their team in important matches and helping fill stadiums.
Finding a format that makes both the smaller teams happy and appeases the bigger teams won't be easy, but here is one way that it could all work for the 35-team competition:
First round
The bottom 23 teams in CONCACAF (per the FIFA ranking) start here and are placed into five groups of four, with one group of three. Each team plays the others in their group home-and-home with the top two advancing to the semifinal round of qualifying. The matches will be played in the September, October and November 2019 international dates and will see 12 of the 23 teams advance.
This means that every team in CONCACAF will get to play at least six World Cup qualifiers (except the team that doesn't advance from the three-team group, which will only get two). That's a big step up from the two that teams are guaranteed now, but not too many that travel costs are astronomical. The round will also run through the end of 2019, whereas if the current format was used again, teams would be out as early as March of 2019.
Semifinal round
The 12 teams that advance from the first round would join the top 12 teams in CONCACAF (again, per the FIFA ranking) to make for a 24-team semifinal round. The teams would be separated into six groups of four through a seeded draw, so the best teams in the region wouldn't end up in the same group here. Again, every team would play a home-and-home with the other three teams in their group for a total of six matches, with the first place team in each group advancing to the final round of qualifying. The matches would be played in the March, June and September 2020 international dates as the field is cut from 24 to six.
A 24-team semifinal round would be double the current 12-team second round, meaning another 12 teams would go further in qualifying and get to play more matches later in the competition.
Final round
This round is identical to the current format, and the same format that CONCACAF has used in the final round of World Cup qualifying since 1998. Six teams, all of them play home-and-home with the top three teams qualifying for the World Cup and fourth place going to an interconfederation playoff. The calendar would be the same as it is for 2018 World Cup qualifying, with the Hex matches being played in November 2020, March 2021, June 2021, September 2021 and October 2021.
This format is hardly perfect, but it just about appeases everyone involved. The smaller teams get more matches and get to play later into the cycle without having absurd travel. The big teams still get to have their final round of qualifying that challenges them over a year and preserves the rivalries like the United States against Mexico.
The calendar is even pretty manageable, with a year of friendlies after the 2018 World Cup so teams can transition and then kick off World Cup qualifying after the Gold Cup. The big teams don't have to play any more matches than they already do either, with it still taking 14 matches for the top ranked teams to qualify.
The downsides are obvious -- 11 smaller teams will still go out of World Cup qualifying two-and-a-half years before the actual World Cup, but that's still nine months better than it is now, and it is with four more matches played. Having only the first place teams advance from the semifinal round leaves less margin for error than some teams would like, but with six groups and a seeded draw, most every big team should still have no problem advancing should they play well. Finally, leaning on the FIFA rankings for seeding and where teams start is obviously not ideal, but that's how CONCACAF currently decides which round teams start in and seeding, as does every other confederation.
If this format were to be used for 2022 World Cup qualifying, using the current FIFA rankings*, this is how it would look (with the assumption that the higher ranked team advances in each round, just to illustrate the format):
There is no such thing as a perfect format for World Cup qualifying. That's just the nature of CONCACAF, which has such some big, powerful, monied teams like the United States and Mexico, a handful of middling teams that are good with average resources like Costa Rica, Panama and more, then small countries with few resources and interest, but who make up the majority of the confederation and votes. As far as finding something that does enough to make everyone happy, this format just might do it.
*The FIFA rankings are especially wonky right now because some smaller teams have played more World Cup qualifiers than the big teams, which boost their rankings, but by the time an actual draw for 2022 would be held in 2019, they will have normalized. Sorry, St. Kitts and Nevis.
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