Canada faces bumpy road to Qatar

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This article was published 07/09/2019 (2535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have a calculator handy? You’ll need it to figure out Canada’s chances of making the main group of 2022 World Cup qualifying.

CONCACAF, the body that governs soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, has introduced a new format that essentially begins now. It’s complicated, somewhat arbitrary and — as it was unveiled and implemented during a World Cup cycle rather than in advance of the next one — disingenuous to the process. But that’s CONCACAF: scrambled, random and less organized than Britain’s exit from the EU.

Basically (though none of this is basic), the region’s top six teams, as ranked by FIFA next June, will go straight into the qualification section known as the Hexagonal, or Hex. After playing home and away, the best three will book passage to Qatar.

The fourth will contest a playoff against the winner of a large, separate tournament already being styled “the Repechage,” and the winner of that will play home and away against an opponent from Asia, Oceania or South America.

The most straightforward route is the Hex and a top-three finish at the end of it, but Canada is currently CONCACAF’s eighth-ranked team, meaning they’ll have to leapfrog Panama and El Salvador in nine months just to squeak in.

That’s where the FIFA equation comes in — a ranking system that mimics the Elo method designed for chess. But as convoluted as it sounds, and is, what it really boils down to is Canada winning as often as it can during this international season.

Come to think of it, you can put the calculator away. There simply isn’t a scheme to make the numbers work. And, really, why should they?

If Canada can’t beat Haiti at the Gold Cup (and fair play to Haiti, which did ever so well back in June), what right does it have to a place in the Hex?

In fact, not participating in that group of six might be a mercy for this country’s men’s national team, which wouldn’t stand a chance against Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica and Jamaica, and which would be hard-pressed to eke points from the likes of Honduras, El Salvador or Panama.

Canada’s best bet for World Cup qualification is to come out of the Repechage and take its chances in a playoff. And don’t say it’s a defeatist mindset.

Without an appearance in the Hex since the 1998 cycle, it’s not as if it has some sort of legacy claim to a spot in CONCACAF’s signature mini-tournament. It’s rarely been in meaningful contention for the Hex.

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But this group of players, which is Canada’s best since the late 1990s and early 2000s, can prove something by winning the supplemental round, by showing it’s the best of the rest.

From there, Canada will have earned the right to test itself in a playoff. But it has to start on the outside of the region’s elite — in the Repechage — because that’s simply where results have put it. CONCACAF has certainly bungled the new World Cup qualification process, but in spite of itself, it might just have hit on a format that’s fair.

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Twitter: @JerradPeters