🤔💭 Final Four set, the DR takes Gold & more from Concacaf's November window

My thoughts on the final FIFA dates of 2024

Thus ends another year of men’s soccer in the Concacaf region. The final window of 2024 had many echoes from 2023. There was Panama beating Costa Rica, Mexico winning at home to avoid embarrassment after losing in Honduras and the U.S. getting past a giant of the Caribbean with an impressive performance.

There were some differences, though. Canada didn’t fall apart, for one, and the teams that ‘repeated history’ did it in a different way - Panama was much more nervous, while Mexico ended up being less so.

Let’s work through five things I’m thinking after the November window, starting in League A but including some of the smaller teams as well

🧐 The usual suspects in the Final Four

After their quarterfinals series victories, Canada, Mexico, the United States and Panama will contest the Concacaf Nations League title in Southern California.

I saw a bit of chatter with frustration about how similar this looks to previous editions (three of the four semifinalists were in last year’s edition in Texas), so I pulled up UEFA’s last few Nations League Finals Fours to compare.

There’s a bit more diversity there - Switzerland made the inaugural edition. But Spain and Italy each were in the last two and are both in the quarterfinals once again. All four teams that made the 2023-24 Final Four are in the quarterfinals ahead of 2024-25.

This is how soccer works. The good teams often stay good, and even more in the Concacaf region where the number of teams that are able to devote resources to player development, coaching and scouting is smaller than it is in UEFA.

If the Nations League works, we should see some of the teams that currently can only dream of getting into the Final Four. It’s a big if, but neutral fans - and even fans who care about their national team getting the best competition in the region - should hope it happens.

🇩🇴 A baseball country goes Gold Cup

The Dominican Republic has steadily been improving as a ‘soccer nation’. There are missteps, sure, but the men’s national team, the women’s national team and the youth national teams all are showing signs of organization and attention paying off.

The biggest sign things are working came last night. A draw would’ve locked up their first-ever berth to the Gold Cup. They weren’t interested in a draw.

Instead, they smashed a decent Bermuda team 6-1, scoring the game’s last five goals. Dorny Romero had a ‘poker’ with four. It capped a perfect Nations League from Los Quisqueyanos who won all six matches.

They also won the game before that stretch, a World Cup qualification match against the British Virgin Islands. The 1-0 loss to Jamaica in World Cup qualification just before that was a hint that this team is close to being able to hang with some of the top teams.

Imports like Junior Firpo, who had two assists in the romp over Bermuda, are going to steal a lot of the attention, but the vast majority of the squad was born and raised in the DR. That speaks to a real commitment to development that has happened over time. We knew that was the case with the DR’s shock qualification for the Paris Olympics, but they’ve been able to sustain it and produce more players not just for one tournament but for repeat visits.

Still, the team will get much stronger if it’s able to keep convincing eligible players to come in. The Gold Cup will be a tool for that, just like the Olympics were. Netherlands-based Juan Familia-Castillo reportedly is already set to climb aboard the wagon. We’ll see who else comes with.

For more on the DR, here’s a piece I wrote back in May after speaking with manager Marcelo Neveleff and a few others involved:

🇩🇴 Is a soccer revolution underway in the Dominican Republic?

🏆 Gold Cup prelims a blessing and a curse for top teams

With their defeats, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Honduras and Suriname go into the Gold Cup prelims. They’re joined by teams that finished in League A purgatory - neither qualifying for the quarterfinals nor falling into the play-in that took place this month - plus the winners of this month’s play-in series.

Belize is the only team from League C that won its play-in against a better-seeded team, taking advantage of the turmoil in the French Guiana federation to win the first leg, draw the second and continue its quest for a return to the Gold Cup for the first time since 2013.

These games feel like both a gift and stiff penalty for the top-ranked teams in them.

On the one hand, Costa Rica should dance their way to the Gold Cup. As the highest ranked team, they get a date with Belize, a team they should be able to see off over two legs and get into the continental championship. It’s the same with many of the other top seeds.

On the other, they have to make those trips, host those games and try to get into the Gold Cup under this new format when previously they would’ve already been in.

Costa Rica attackers Alonso Martinez and Randall Leal react to having a goal disallowed after a VAR review in Panama. (Photo by Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images)

Plus, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Honduras are among teams with real hopes of making the World Cup and perhaps would rather choose to find high-level friendly matches (although, as we’ve covered often in this newsletter, there may not be any to be found during that window … some of the eliminated Asian teams are available in theory).

One goal was the difference between a trip to Belmopan and a trip to Inglewood where the Final Four will be played.

That’s soccer, and the margins are often so slim at this level.

Also, it is extremely funny that Honduras is going to Bermuda. Last month, Gerardo Ramos, the director of national teams for the Honduran federation, alleged some sort of conspiracy after Honduras had to play a match in a different stadium than originally planned during a trip to French Guiana.

“Nothing surprises us any more. Between FIFA and Concacaf they send the players to the farthest places,” he said last month. “They sent us to play in Bermuda, the most expensive place, and after that to the other extreme - the farthest South team. This makes the logistics really expensive for us.”

This is what popped up when I googled “Bermuda hotel” … Judging from the photos, you get what you pay for, though. Lovely!

Things are expensive in Bermuda, but FIFA does not have it out for Honduras when conducting a World Cup qualification draw. Concacaf is not trying to screw La H by using seeding to get them to pay for a Hamilton hotel again.

AND, they won’t even be able to make their money back at the home game because it will be played behind closed doors thanks to the sanction administered after the incident in which a can hit Mexico manager Javier Aguirre.

🇨🇷 Viva Vivas! Ah, no. Costa Rica goes back to the drawing board

After another disappointment against Panama - this time getting closer than ever to advancing but still falling short against their Central American rival - Costa Rica’s executive committee met Wednesday to discuss the leadership of the men’s national team.

Claudio Vivas, an Argentine who arrived in Costa Rica to be sporting director in 2022, has been coaching the team since Gustavo Alfaro’s abrupt departure to take over the Paraguay national team. While he oversaw victories over Guadeloupe and Guatemala, failing to get past Panama will mean the end of his tenure with the Ticos.

Osael Maroto, the president of the Costa Rican federation, told reporters this afternoon that Vivas will leave in December, with the executive committee opting not to have him continue as either manager or sporting director.

This is best for the Ticos. Vivas clearly wanted to be the national team manager, and asking him to once again take over the sporting director role was never going to be a pill he wanted to swallow. Yet, he didn’t get the results he needed during two stints as the interim manager.

The 56-year-old now can seek a club job in Central America or his native Argentina and see if he can convince another federation to take a chance on him.

Still, it leaves Costa Rica in an unenviable position. Maroto said it will be tough to find a manager of Alfaro’s caliber, especially since a huge factor in Alfaro’s departure for South America was that Paraguay could pay him more money.

“We’ll try to hire the best manager we can pay,” Maroto told reporters.

There has long been flirtation with current Tijuana manager Juan Carlos Osorio. Hugo Perez is a coach who has to be in the conversation when there’s a vacancy in Central America. Alajuelense boss Alexandre Guimarães also led the national team in the past and is someone who always is mentioned as a potential candidate to return.

But a different old reliable could be in the mix, too. Former national team star and later manager Paulo Wanchope was hired as part of Vivas’ staff and is staying on with the federation. He could coach the team in an interim capacity if there are friendly matches outside the FIFA dates.

What about that other Gold Cup slot?

So, we have the four winners of the Nations League quarterfinals (Canada, U.S., Mexico and Panama) in the Gold Cup plus the four winners of the League B groups (El Salvador, Curacao, Haiti, Dominican Republic). That gives us eight teams plus seven winners from the prelims makes 15.

So, who is going to fill that last slot?

We know Concacaf is going to invite a guest. For a long time, we had assumed it would be Saudi Arabia.

The previous guest team was Qatar, something facilitated in no small part thanks to the sponsorship deal that saw Qatar Airways become an official Concacaf Nations League partner. Now, Riyadh Air is the confederation’s “official airline partner” and Concacaf announced a partnership with the Saudi Public Investment Fund at the same time it announced the airline switch.

🇸🇦🌎 PIF? Concacaf? WTF?

Yet, it’s not a great time for Saudi Arabia to go touring.

After disappointing World Cup qualification results, the Green Falcons sent Roberto Mancini packing and turned back to French manager Hervé Renard. But the switch didn’t produce results, with Saudi Arabia drawing Australia, then falling to Indonesia in the November window.

Direct qualification to the 2026 World Cup by clinching a top spot is still within Renard and Co’s grasp, but there will be big pressure on in the last two windows to avoid slipping into the bottom two of the group and ending the World Cup dream there.

No matter what happens, Saudi Arabia will have a June 10 match against Australia. The Gold Cup kicks off four days later.

Even if they play the final day of group play, it’d be just a week after either clinching a World Cup berth, learning they’ll need to play another four matches to try to get in, or after tasting the bitter sting of third-round elimination.

That doesn’t seem like a team that needs a Gold Cup. Then again, sporting reasons aren’t the primary motivations for the presence of guest teams.

Wikipedia has unsourced wild speculation that it could be Spain, which would certainly be a different level of guest than the ones who have been invited in the last several tournaments. I suppose it could be crafted as a dry run for 2026 since both tournaments will be in the United States, but I’m not sure the Euro champion wants to tour the Western U.S. for a month this summer.

Other teams could be available that would both encourage ticket sales and provide a decent competitive test, but does a South American team want to come right back to the U.S. after the 2024 Copa América experience?

Concacaf wouldn’t comment about any invites being sent when I reached out earlier this month.

Overall, my position is the same. A first-ever Gold Cup place for a team like Puerto Rico or Saint Lucia would do far more for developing soccer in the region than an invite to any team - be it Saudi Arabia, Spain or Senegal.

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Be back tomorrow morning talking a little Liga MX play-in. The country’s two biggest teams are fighting for their postseason lives!

Until then, tell a friend you love Getting CONCACAFed. Word of mouth is still my strongest marketing tool