A long road ahead, but Canada’s path to 2022 World Cup just got smoother
The Canadian men’s soccer team can put away their calculators and pull out their cleats.
They finally have an answer as to what the new CONCACAF qualifying format will look like.
The regional confederation announced the new-look road to the 2020 World Cup in Qatar, and while the path is just as long as the previous one, Canada’s chances have improved.
The former version involved the famed Hex tournament – comprised of the top-six ranked teams in CONCACAF – with the top-three finishers going to Qatar.
Canada is currently ranked seventh, with November’s 4-1 loss to the U.S. leaving them well short of qualifying and forced to play in a battle royale tournament of 28 other teams just for the right to play the fourth-placed Hex finisher for the right to play another confederation’s fourth-place finisher for a spot in Qatar. Still with us? Good.
The new version eliminates the Hex, replacing it with the Octo, an eight-team tournament, with the top three teams qualifying for the 2022 World Cup, with the fourthplace team playing an interconfederation two-leg playoff in June of 2022.
The top-five ranked teams in CONCACAF – Mexico, the U.S., Costa Rica, Jamaica and Honduras – automatically qualify for the Octo.
Canada and the next five top teams will be seeded first in six groups of five teams – the draw to be held in midAugust – playing two home and two away games. The winners, Canada expected to be among them, move on to a two-legged series, likely against Haiti, with the three winners joining the top five in the Octo.
Those second-round matchups have been set. Canada is in Group B, slated to face the winner of Group E, in which Haiti is seeded No. 1.
It will be a gruelling schedule, with the potential of 22 games between October and June of 2022.
“Once we get the green light from our medical authorities
. . . it’s going to be a sprint to the end of 2022, with World Cup qualifying, Gold Cup, Nations League, and obviously the World Cup itself,” CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani told OneSoccer on Monday.
“Then, as soon as the calendar turns to 2023, then it’s another sprint to us hosting the World Cup. It’s going to be a Formula One race for this region between now and 2026 in terms of football.”
The Canadians, ranked 73rd globally, are 12-4 since John Herdman took over as head coach in January 2018, with three of those losses coming to Mexico (11th), USA (22nd) and Iceland (39th). But it’s that fourth loss was the most painful, and, possibly, educating.
The favoured Reds led Haiti 2-0 in the semifinals of the 2019 Gold Cup on the strength of goals by Jonathan David and Lucas Cavallini. But an epic collapse played out over the final 45, with right back Marcus Godinho making two mistakes that led to two goals for Les Grenadiers.
And on the game-winning goal, it was Alphonso Davies, the face of Canadian soccer and Bayern Munich, who lost sight of his mark, WildeDonald Guerrier, who delivered the biggest gut-punch the team had faced in decades.
It was the first time Herdman was under intense heat for playing Davies as a left back, but a decision he still stands by.
“If you look at the games he’s played, of those 14-odd games, eight or nine have been against lower-tier competition . . . where you just know you’re going to dominate a team,” he said earlier this month.
“Alphonso, his qualities, he’s really effective when he’s able to travel into space with the ball, coming from deep positions. But what I love about him is his flexibility. I keep saying this; he can play anywhere you put him. If you wanted him to play centreback, he’d probably be worldclass there.
“It always comes down to the game,” he added. “If I was to pick my best 11 against a team that you have to win against, where would you want to see Alphonso? Ninety per cent of the time, you’d want to see him closer to the goal, having that impact. And then there are games where he’ll have to play in those more defensive roles.”