Project created by Erik Reiss and Benjamin Gottschalk
Written by Erik Reiss
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FIFA is comprised of 211 football associations, which are organized into six continental confederations. CONCACAF, one of the six confederations, stands for the Confederation of North, South America and Caribbean Association. Within the larger administrative body of CONCACAF, there are 41 total member associations and 35 of which have been active in the last five years, one of which is the United States. The organization is responsible for managing and organizing international competitions between its member associations and offers administrative support to their respective associations (About Concacaf, n.d.).
CONCACAF Map. Image retrieved from FIFA.
The member associations and their respective FIFA rankings are as follows:
15 – Mexico
24 – United States
25 – Costa Rica
48 – Jamaica
55 – Panama
59 – Honduras
71 – Curacao
80 – Canada
85 – El Salvador: 85
92 – Trinidad and Tobago
108 – Haiti
124 – Antigua and Barbuda
126 – St. Kitts and Nevis
136 – Nicaragua
140 – Guatemala
149 – Dominican Republic
154 – Suriname
158 – Puerto Rico
160 – Barbados
162 – Guyana
167 – Belize
168 – St. Lucia
171 – Grenada
174 – St. Vincent and the Grenadines
176 – Dominica
178 – Bermuda
182 – Cuba
199 – US Virgin Islands
200 – Montserrat
202 – Turks and Caicos Islands
204 – Cayman Islands
206 – British Virgin Islands
207 – Anguilla
207 – Bahamas
(FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, 2018)
Of the six confederations, CONCACAF’s World Cup qualification structure is widely regarded as one of the easier paths – assuming that you are a highly ranked nation. This is because its two-yearlong qualification comprises five rounds of play, with each successive round featuring automatic bids to higher ranking nations. For the 2018 World Cup qualification, CONCACAF held its first match on March 25, 2015 and concluded on October 10, 2017. However, due to the nature of the CONCACAF’s qualification process, 82% of the administrative body’s associations had been eliminated 570 prior to the World Cup’s kickoff (Ross, 2015). This has created a lop-sided structure that favors the likes of well-established and highly-ranked countries, such as Mexico, United States, and Costa Rica. The fourteen lowest ranked teams must make it through five consecutive rounds in order to qualify, whereas the six highest ranked teams must only make it through the fourth and fifth rounds. Not only does this greatly advantage higher ranked teams by allowing them to avoid extra matches and unlucky circumstances, but it greatly disadvantages lower ranked teams who must prove resilient through multiple stages of play and will likely be eliminated a few years ahead of the World Cup with little opportunity to improve their seeding. This qualification structure provides additional aid to top ranked teams through its extremely high success rate, given by the automatic bids into the fourth round and forgiving nature of the fifth round. With 3.5 World Cup allocations granted and ten matches in the fifth round, teams have the liberty of making mistake after mistake before ultimately recovering and receiving a World Cup bid. In greater detail, the qualifying structure is as follows:
First round: 14 teams (teams ranked 22-35) get paired in a two-legged home-and-away matchup, with the 7 winners advancing to the second round.
Second round: 20 teams (teams ranked 9-21 and the 7 winners from the first round) get paired in a two-legged home-and-away matchup, with 10 winners advancing to the third round
Third round: 12 teams (teams ranked 7-8 and the 10 winners from the second round) get paired in a two-legged home-and-away matchup, with 6 winners advancing to the fourth round.
Fourth round: 12 teams (teams ranked 1-6 and the 6 winners from the third round) are divided into three groups of four teams who play a home-and-away round robin, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the fifth round, for a total of 6 teams.
Fifth round: 6 teams (winners from the fourth round) play a home-and-away round robin (10 matches each), known as the hexagonal, with the top three teams automatically qualifying for the World Cup and the fourth team advancing to an inter-confederation play-in for a spot in the World Cup.
In addition to the hexagonal qualification structure that disproportionately favors higher ranked teams, countries such as the United States dominate its peers in terms of population, resources, and wealth, which further contributes to an unbalanced confederation. Looking specifically at the twelve countries that advanced to the fourth round of the CONCACAF World Cup qualifications, the United States by far surpasses all of them in population and GDP (Caley, Michael, et al., 2017).
GDP vs. population for CONCACAF nations, 2017. Image retrieved from FiveThirtyEight.
How to cite this article:
“An in-depth look into CONCACAF and its qualification structure,” Written by Erik Reiss (2018). World Cup 2018 Guide, Soccer Politics Blog, Duke University, http://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/united-states-mens-national-teams-failure-to-qualify-for-the-2018-fifa-world-cup/an-in-depth-look-into-concacaf-and-its-qualification-structure/ (accessed on (date)).
References:
“About Concacaf.” Concacaf, n.d., www.concacaf.com/en/static-pages/about-concacaf.
Caley, Michael, et al. “The Worst Loss In The History Of U.S. Men’s Soccer.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 11 Oct. 2017, fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-worst-loss-in-the-history-of-u-s-mens-soccer/.
“FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.” FIFA.com, 12 Apr. 2018, www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/index.html.
Ross, Terrance F. “Concacaf World Cup Qualifying Is Broken. But What Should Replace the Hex?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 Nov. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/18/concacaf-hex-fix-solution-uefa-usa.
Wine, Donald. “What Could the Future of CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying Be?” Stars and Stripes FC, Stars and Stripes FC, 3 Apr. 2017, www.starsandstripesfc.com/2018-world-cup-qualifying/2017/4/3/15137396/concacaf-world-cup-qualifying-usmnt-usa-united-states-mexico-fifa.
