The pandemic has put a major problem with rescheduling games. National team games are one of the biggest problems. With the scheduling mess, there are reports of a new CONCACAF qualifying format.
According to RPCTV Panama, CONCACAF will have a new format to qualify for the World Cup. The normal six teams will increase to 12 teams that compete.
The number of games for each team will change from ten to up to six games. There will be three groups of four teams. The groups will be created based on the current FIFA standings. The winner of each group will automatically qualify for the World Cup.
Then the best second-place team out of all of the groups will move into a playoff. The playoff will be against the winner of a separate tournament. That tournament will have all of the teams that were outside of the 12-team tournament play against each other. The winner of that small tournament will go against the second-place team from the qualifiers tournament.
This will ensure that there is a total of four teams qualifying for the World Cup in 2022. This will make the teams more dependent on doing well each game.
There has been concern about how the United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) will compete in this new format. Hopefully, they are taking the time to rebuild so there is no repeat with the Trinidad game. The team is young so they need to make sure they can play together well.
The potential group that the USMNT could have is Jamaica, Canada and Trinidad & Tobago. The only real competition is Canada. However, if USMNT faces the same problems as last time, they may not qualify out of this particular group. Honestly, if the USMNT can’t win against teams like Jamaica and Trinidad they may not deserve to go to the World Cup.
With the new CONCACAF qualifying format, the national teams will have more pressure to do well in each game. But this will make the competition very interesting.
