This competition will be played for the first time on six matchdays this Autumn, with a Final Four (2 one-off semi-finals and a final) in March next year. The composition of the leagues was determined in a qualification phase. The groups within the leagues were drawn last March.
There are 3 leagues, A - C. Each league consists of 4 groups. League A has three teams per group, league B has four teams per group. League C has 1 group of four and 3 groups of three teams. All teams in a group play against each other home and away.
There is also promotion/relegation between leagues to compose the leagues for the next CNL edition: each group-winner in leagues B and C is promoted, each group-last in leagues A and B is relegated.
CONCACAF has recently announced their qualification format for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar. The June 2020 FIFA ranking will seed the teams. The top 6 in that ranking will play a hexagonal (with the top 3 qualifying directly). All others will play a group phase with 8 groups, followed by a knock-out phase to finally determine one team that will play against the number four from the hexagonal for a place in the interconfederational play-off in March 2022.
It will be very important to be in the top 6 next June to have a shot at the direct qualification places, because the rest of the teams will likely kill each other for that last spot in the play-off (against possibly the CONMEBOL number five :D).
The CONCACAF Nations League will constitute the only high-valued matches until the June 2020 ranking, so you can imagine the importance of these matches.
Here are the probabilities (in %) of the whole CNL competition -generated over 10.000 simulations- with all match-results based on ClubElo prediction formula's for goals scored in a match depending on elo home win expectancy.
Followed by a first preview of the June 2020 ranking for CONCACAF teams.
The group results with teams ordered by average group position:
|
| group C-1 | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th |
| Barbados | 74,25 | 18,76 | 5,51 | 1,48 |
| Cayman Islands | 16,10 | 40,88 | 27,46 | 15,56 |
| St. Martin | 6,05 | 23,37 | 34,71 | 35,87 |
| US Virgin Islands | 3,60 | 16,99 | 32,32 | 47,09 |
| group C-2 | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
| Bonaire | 62,44 | 29,81 | 7,75 |
| Bahamas | 31,14 | 47,87 | 20,99 |
| British Virgin Islands | 6,42 | 22,32 | 71,26 |
| group C-3 | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
| Guatemala | 96,78 | 3,21 | 0,01 |
| Puerto Rico | 3,16 | 88,82 | 8,02 |
| Anguilla | 0,06 | 7,97 | 91,97 |
| group C-4 | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
| Guadeloupe | 88,04 | 10,27 | 1,69 |
| St. Maarten | 7,49 | 52,82 | 39,69 |
| Turks and Caicos Islands | 4,47 | 36,91 | 58,62 |
The Final Four results:
| Final Four | 1st | 2nd | semis |
| Mexico | 53,50 | 16,56 | 18,23 |
| USA | 18,22 | 17,84 | 35,28 |
| Costa Rica | 12,00 | 24,17 | 24,70 |
| Haiti | 4,62 | 11,72 | 16,18 |
| Honduras | 4,51 | 12,52 | 40,85 |
| Canada | 3,15 | 4,95 | 18,93 |
| Panama | 2,05 | 3,21 | 5,88 |
| Martinique | 1,11 | 4,74 | 20,06 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 0,49 | 2,38 | 13,34 |
| Curacao | 0,25 | 1,64 | 4,72 |
| Cuba | 0,09 | 0,16 | 1,38 |
| Bermuda | 0,01 | 0,11 | 0,45 |
The June 2020 ranking with teams ordered by average ranking position. The top 6 in the ranking plays the hexagonal. The other teams are grouped in 3 pots of 8 and 1 pot of 5 teams:
| team | hex | pot 1 | pot 2 | pot 3 | pot 4 |
| Mexico | 100,00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| USA | 100,00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Costa Rica | 100,00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jamaica | 100,00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Honduras | 92,55 | 7,45 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| El Salvador | 77,42 | 22,58 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| -------------------------------------- | |||||
| Panama | 21,13 | 78,87 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Canada | 6,12 | 93,88 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Haiti | 2,07 | 97,93 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Curacao | 0,71 | 99,29 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | 100,00 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Antigua and Barbuda | 0 | 99,99 | 0,01 | 0 | 0 |
| St. Kitts and Nevis | 0 | 88,55 | 11,45 | 0 | 0 |
| Guatemala | 0 | 85,34 | 14,66 | 0 | 0 |
| -------------------------------------- | |||||
| Nicaragua | 0 | 23,23 | 76,77 | 0 | 0 |
| Suriname | 0 | 2,85 | 97,15 | 0 | 0 |
| Dominican Republic | 0 | 0,04 | 99,96 | 0 | 0 |
| Barbados | 0 | 0 | 99,77 | 0,23 | 0 |
| Belize | 0 | 0 | 97,37 | 2,63 | 0 |
| St. Lucia | 0 | 0 | 81,43 | 18,57 | 0 |
| Grenada | 0 | 0 | 68,68 | 31,32 | 0 |
| Bermuda | 0 | 0 | 71,55 | 28,45 | 0 |
| -------------------------------------- | |||||
| Guyana | 0 | 0 | 38,42 | 61,58 | 0 |
| St. Vincent and the Grenadines | 0 | 0 | 21,54 | 78,46 | 0 |
| Cuba | 0 | 0 | 10,01 | 89,99 | 0 |
| Dominica | 0 | 0 | 11,03 | 88,97 | 0 |
| Puerto Rico | 0 | 0 | 0,20 | 99,80 | 0 |
| Aruba | 0 | 0 | 0 | 99,96 | 0,04 |
| Montserrat | 0 | 0 | 0 | 75,68 | 24,32 |
| US Virgin Islands | 0 | 0 | 0 | 65,69 | 34,31 |
| -------------------------------------- | |||||
| Cayman Islands | 0 | 0 | 0 | 43,47 | 56,53 |
| Bahamas | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7,97 | 92,03 |
| Turks and Caicos Islands | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100,00 |
| British Virgin Islands | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7,15 | 92,85 |
| Anguilla | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0,08 | 99,92 |
About me:
Software engineer, happily unmarried and non-religious. You won't find me on Twitter or other so called social media. Dutchman, joined the blog in March 2018.
Thank you for doing this.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, four places in the hex are decided, one is almost certain, and Panama has only a small chance to unseat El Salvador. Why are the 29 countries fighting for one-fourth spot at the World Cup saying nothing?
From an outsiders perspective this new system seems crazy
DeleteThis new CONCACAF system is a farce. How on earth are El Salvador on the threshold of being in the hex having achieved nothing in the region for decades, while Panama look likely to miss out?
ReplyDeleteGiving smaller teams 6 games instead of 2 or 4 is a great initiative.
DeleteHowever the "top group" system as you point out is very arbitrary. I would think 2 top groups of 6 playing for 4 spots with teams 13 onwards playing a similar schedule would be slightly better.
My preference would be to play June 2020 and have 2 * 6 match group stages. Stage 1 would reduce the 35 teams to 16 (for example via 7 groups of 4 with group winners plus best 2 group runners up joining 7 teams with a first stage bye).
The 4 stage 2 (best 16) Group Winners then play off in October and November 2021 for the 3.5 world cup spots.
Hi, I was wondering whether or not the West Asian Football Federation Championship (WAFF Championship) matches, scheduled between 30 July and 14 August, are going to be considered official or not. Thanks in advance.
ReplyDeleteAlways a guess with those regional tournaments, because some participants could turn out to be f.i. U-23 or definitely a B-team, but for now I include the matches in my September ranking calculation.
ReplyDeleteI see. When should we know whether or not the matches are official? Also, FIFA hasn't included the tournament in their calendar as they are not played in the "FIFA days".
DeleteWe can only know for sure when the September ranking is published. Since FIFA no longer maintains a fixture list with all NT-matches that count for the ranking calculation, it's guess first and verify (much) later.
DeleteIt doesn't matter if a match (or tournament for that matter) is played inside or outside the official FIFA match windows. When played outside a match window, regional tournaments like the WAFF Cup will count as friendlies with I-factor = 5.
With the announcement that the 2019-20 CNL will be linked to qualifying for the 2021 Gold Cup can you please add to the above probabilities for teams to qualify for the 2021 GC?
ReplyDeletehttps://concacafnationsleague.com/en/article/concacaf-nations-league-to-serve-as-pathway-for-2021-gold-cup
Yes Ted, I will augment the next post about CONCACAF Nations League simulations (after the current FIFA International match window) with the probabilities to qualify for the Gold Cup 2021.
DeleteA noteworthy peculiarity: all the matches in the CNL will count as continental qualifiers with an I-factor of 25 instead of the regular 15.
thanks
Delete