Tonight, CONCACAF teams will discover what the future holds for their 2022 World Cup qualifiers campaign, as the first round will be drawn in Zurich.
The coronavirus and the cancelled international breaks of March and June forced CONCACAF to make a few adjustments in order to keep their World Cup dream alive.
CONCACAF decided to use a new format that will replace the old system that was in use since the 1998 World Cup qualifiers. The first proposed format was confirmed in July 2019 and was utterly absurd. The top six teams based on the FIFA Ranking were supposed to qualify directly to the hexagonal, while the other teams had to be drawn in the lower-seeded group stage. No team could qualify to the World Cup directly from the lower-seeded groups, as all the three spots were dedicated to the hexagonal. Their only chance to qualify was via a CONCACAF playoff against the fourth place in the hexagonal, followed by another inter-continental playoff. Did we say absurd?
This structure reversed the recent development of CONCACAF football, which allowed weaker teams a possible opportunity. The CONCACAF Nations League gave teams a chance to play against rivals at the same level. The qualifying round to the 2019 Gold Cup, as well as the tournament expansion to 16 teams, brought on a new record of 8 Caribbean teams, compared to only four in the 2017 Gold Cup.
National teams that tried to write a new chapter in their legacy could find themselves far from making the right progress. Based on the first proposal, Bayern Munich’s left flank rocket Alphonso Davies will not be able to play with Canada for a World Cup berth. Trinidad and Tobago that surprised the USA in the last matchday of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, were left behind as well. It was also the same situation for Panama, one of the CONCACAF representatives in the 2018 World Cup, and Haiti, who reached the 2019 Gold Cup semi-final.
In the newly created situation, CONCACAF had to shorten the qualifiers. The first matches will be played in October. The format was changed again and will see six groups of five teams, who will meet each other once. The group winners will progress to the playoffs on March 2021. The winners will join the top 5 teams in the new final stage, which will replace the traditional hexagonal.
Now, when every team has a chance to play in the World Cup, there’s ample room for drama. We already saw that even strongholds like Mexico and the USA fail in the qualifiers, the USA missed the 2018 World Cup and Mexico barely reaching the playoffs in the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
As the teams in the continent made significant progress, we have to wait and follow who will be the three teams to secure their tickets to Qatar in 2022.
