Canada men will have to play all the rounds of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying

TORONTO -- Canada will have to start from the beginning of CONCACAF's revamped World Cup qualifying format to get to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

That means the Canadian men, starting in October, will have to play a total of 20 matches to reach their destination.

Under the new blueprint, only the five highest-ranked teams in the region, based on the July 16 FIFA rankings, will go straight to the final round. Those are Mexico, the U.S., Costa Rica, Jamaica and Honduras.

Canada and 29 other countries in North and Central America and the Caribbean will have to go through two rounds to join them.

Under the former plan, the top six in the region would have advanced to the final round, the so-called Hex. Canada, as No. 7, had been chasing No. 6 El Salvador in a bid to overtake it and skip the opening rounds.

CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani said the top five are being given the bye to the final because they could not be caught by other countries.

As for the other countries, Montagliani said their rankings could have been affected by matches scheduled for FIFA windows called off by the pandemic.

"When we looked at it, we had to pick an objective criteria obviously and the only criteria was within the original top six, who was mathematically not able to be caught? And there were five of them," he told reporters.

The rest of CONCACAF will be drawn into six groups of five with the six highest-ranked teams -- El Salvador, Canada, Curacao, Panama, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago -- to serve as seeds in groups A through F.

Each team will play every other team in their group once, playing a total of four matches -- two home and two away. These games will be played in the October and November FIFA match windows.

The six group winners will advance to the second-round whose schedule will be Group A winner versus Group F winner, Group B winner versus Group E winner and Group C winner versus Group D winner.

The teams will play a home-and-away series in the FIFA match window of March 2021. The three winners progress to the final round, joining the top five countries.

The final eight teams will play each other home and away, with each side playing 14 matches. The final round will start in the June 2021 FIFA window and continue in match windows of September, October, November 2021 and January and March 2022.

The top three teams will qualify directly to the 2022 World Cup. The fourth-placed country will qualify for the FIFA intercontinental playoff scheduled for June 2022.

"There were a lot of formats that we looked at," Montagliani said. "But when you start balancing what's important -- which is the sporting aspect of it, the commercial aspect of it as it relates to our members, this one seemed to tick all the boxes.

"I mean none of them are perfect, even the original format that we had -- I'm sure there were people that were criticizing that as well."

The CONCACAF statement did not address the COVID-19 situation from border issues and travel restrictions to the issue of spectators. Montagliani said if the October or November FIFA windows have to be postponed, they will be rescheduled for 2021 or early 2022.

"Which months or how is still not decided ... If '21 starts mimicking 2020 well then I think it's not just CONCACAF that's back to the drawing table, it's the entire football world."

Canada Soccer said it will "continue to closely monitor all COVID-19 developments in consultation with the Public Health Agency of Canada and relevant governing bodies through the Canada Soccer Sport Medicine Committee to ensure the safety of all players and staff. "

The draw for all rounds of the CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers will take place in mid-August.

The original CONCACAF plan was to have the top six teams in the region advance to the so-called Hex round of qualifying, with the three top teams after group play booking their tickets to the 2022 World Cup.

Teams ranked seventh through No. 35 would compete in their own qualifying round with the last team standing facing the fourth-placed Hex team to see who advances to an intercontinental playoff, with the winner advancing to the World Cup.

Canada coach John Herdman was not immediately available for comment on the new format.

It's the third CONCACAF qualifying format. The first involved CONCACAF rankings rather than FIFA rankings to determine which teams got a shorter qualifying path.

Under the new format, both Canada and El Salvador drop down with the rest of CONCACAF to see who joins the top five in the final round.

CONCACAF also announced that the first CONCACAF Nations League finals, originally scheduled for June 2020 but suspended due to the global pandemic, will now take place in the June 2021 FIFA match window in a U.S. venue yet to be determined.

The semifinal matchups are Costa Rica versus Mexico and the U.S. versus Honduras. They will be followed by the championship match and a third-placed match.

The 2022-23 CONCACAF Nations League will begin in June 2022 and run through March 2023.

CONCACAF confirmed that the 2021 Gold Cup will start July 10 and finish Aug. 1. The confederation plans a preliminary round in the U.S. the week before the Gold Cup group stages.

The 12 participating teams in the preliminary round will be Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Montserrat, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Canada has already qualified for the Gold Cup.

Montagliani said the regional men's Olympic qualifying, postponed from earlier this year, will now take place next March.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 27, 2020.