YES!
This is amazing!
Why?
Similar to what I said about the change in the men’s qualifiers, the best way to improve is to play games against more teams. This new system does that!
What was the old system?
Horrid.
The final round remains the same in the new system. Which is excellent, a centralised tournament to end qualification is fine. But everything before it was flawed.
Flaw 1- Mexico automatically qualified.
This is not an issue on the men’s side where there is a gap between Mexico & USA and the rest of the region, the North American sub-region has three teams (JOIN CONCACAF GREENLAND!!) and because of that they all automatically qualify. This robs Mexico of some valuable game time (USA and Canada are fine, they are top 10 teams, they get games)
Flaw 2- Caribbean & Central American teams may never have a home game.
The qualifiers are done in groups which play all their games in a single week at a host nation per group. This is good for logistics but bad for growth. How would national teams grow if their nations never see them play?
In 2019 WCQ cycle the following teams did not have a game on home soil:
Panama
Costa Rica
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Cuba
Puerto Rico
Aruba
Anguilla
Martinique
Guadeloupe
St Kitts and Nevis
Dominica
US Virgin Islands
Grenada
St Lucia
Curacao
St Vincent and the Grenadines
Bermuda
Barbados
Suriname
Canada
Mexico
That is 22 of the 29 teams who competed, having ZERO competitive home games in a world cup cycle.
Flaw 3- Teams from different sub-regions don’t face each other until the finals.
CONCACAF football grows with competitive games. When teams face the same subset of opponents constantly, they do not get the chance to grow.
So what is good about the new system?
Lots.
Well, first up the three flaws listed above are gone.
Canada and the USA get byes to the final round still.
Teams play home and aways in their groups of 5.
Mexico, Central American and Caribbean countries can be drawn together.
Each team plays twice as many games as they did in the previous system playing eight games in the first round as opposed to the 3-4 games for the majority of the region.
Eventually, I will do up a graphic about the time between games in past qualifying cycles and how this (and nations league) will help that. What was historic for the USWNT this year in terms of time between games is the norm for the rest of the region.
LET THERE BE MORE FOOTBALL!