Can someone explain the CONCACAF Nations League?
What’s the point of it? Is this something that exists in other regional federations? I’m sort of baffled by it. Apologies if these are stupid questions.
Posted Nov 13, 2019, 8:01 AM UTC
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The purpose of Nations League is to give smaller countries more competitive matches.
The teams that would normally be eliminated in early rounds of WCQs in some confederations now have additional competitive matches to play.
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Only thing it's good for its ability to cap-tie dual nationals. Looking forward to seeing Dest take the pitch and seal the deal.
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I was going to ask this exact question. So this has nothigng to do with qualification for WC?
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It does a lttle bit.
the top 6 fifa ranked teams in the confed will play in a group for wcq with the top three getting a spot in world cup and the 4th place team playing a home and away playoff against the team that wins a second tourny of the teams ranked 7-35 for the last spot from our fed for world cup.
The nations games mostly matter in that a win in a nations league carries a bit more weight for the fifa rankings than a freindly does.. it matters to those teams sitting at 6-7 and 8 in the fed to decide if they are in the hex or the other bracket of teams ranked 7-35 in june 2020 when the top 6 in the fed are picked to go on to the hex.
current fifa rankings for our fed. https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/#CONCACAF
Dig in a bit and yoou notice canada and el salvador are really close in points for that 6th spot. El salvador has two more nations games scheduled for this round and canada only one. If canada looses to the us and el savador wins thier two matches odds are they move up to sixth forcing canada to take a differrent longer path to maybe qualifly for world cup.
Short answer it matters only in getting points for fifa rankings which matter a little bit for wcq and seeding much later.
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It has a little bit to do with WC qualification, but so does every other game played between now and June 2020. This cycle, qualification to the hex is determined by FIFA rankings, the top six going to the hex, the rest going into a new lower ranked round to be played simultaneously. Every game between now and June matter because they can raise or lower your FIFA ranking. The US is already safe in the top six, but Canada, among others are still battling it out the last spot.
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I like to think of it as a replacement for the old World Cup Qualifying semifinal round. People don’t like the concept of the Hex being determined by ranking, but I feel like the net effect on qualifying is the same and it ends up meaning there are more games between comparable competition and will ultimately give the soft midsection of CONCACAF something to play for outside of Gold Cup upsets.
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It *should be pointless for the US, Mexico, and Costa Rica, but given how bad we've played and the lack of chemistry we see on the field, playing something with some meaning might actually help us in the long run.
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It is pretty pointless though for the top teams. Glorified friendlies where you practice new things and experiment with line ups and players.
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Yes; It is a pointless tournament.
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Having had a brief look at it, it looks very similar to the UEFA Nations League (I'm from the UK so can confirm it exists here!). I can't speak for the CONCACAF reasoning but the equivalent here was pushed as a way of reducing meaningless internationals friendlies whilst introducing a new competition that all nations would have some sort of chance in (except San Marino, who are astonishingly bad). Previously, outside of friendlies, the only competitive games were the qualifiers for the big tournaments (Euros, WC) which the big boys would inevitably cruise through whilst the minnows would be stomped all over. With the Nations League you have teams split into leagues with similarly ranked nations, actually giving them a chance to improve and win the odd game, competing to be promoted (or avoid relegation) at the end of each 'season'. So far it's resulted in fairly decent games and in the normal qualifying campaigns the smaller nations appear to have improved noticeably.
This is correct. The stated goal was to increase the number of competitive matches for all teams in the region. Like UEFA, this will probably be every 4 years or so.