How World Cup qualification venues are shifting in an uncertain landscape
Panama is hardly the only team trying to balance spinning plates.
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It is 37 days until March 24, the day Concacaf World Cup qualification opens. That means we’re just over a month away from the region’s most important and most exciting matches returning after a tumultous period of trying to figure out a format that made sense for competition and for public health.
World Cup qualification is beautiful. No matter how unlikely it is for, say, a country of 15,000 people to qualify for the World Cup or even win a single qualification match, everyone can dream of making it to the most important tournament in the world. More realistically, the path is there for some teams without recent success to get into the next round and secure games against the big boys in the region like Mexico, Costa Rica and the United States. Regardless of quality, at this stage in the competition, every nation can come together to cheer their team on.
Except that won’t be possible this year. Many countries will not even be able to play a home game in March.
A number countries in the Caribbean are COVID-free or have very few cases. In an effort to continue to keep the coronavirus out of their countries, they have put in strict regulations about who can come into the country and how long they need to quarantine when they do.
That’s good politics but makes it tough for anything resembling traditional World Cup qualification. Usually we watch players who do their jobs in countries all over the world all come together and meet up in one country to play a match, then go to another country to play another match less than a week later and then go back to the countries where they do their jobs, look impossible.
FIFA’s regulations set out a 30-day deadline for the visiting team to confirm the kickoff time. There seems to be a little confusion on when the venue itself has to be set, but what’s clear is plenty of matches will be taking place at neutral sites. In an interview earlier this month with OneSoccer Concacaf President Victor Montagliani said it’s on individual federations to figure out if they can play at home and, if not, where they’re going to contest their qualification matches.
“First of all, you have to understand that World Cup qualification is not a Concacaf event, it is a FIFA event and a federation, so the onus is on the federations to organize themselves,” he said. “However, having said that, we’re there lock, stock and barrel with them helping them along the way in any which way to facilitate whatever issues there are, whether it’s player releases and the quarantine now, COVID protocols, neutral venues that have to be found by some of the countries.
“We’re constantly - in fact there were meetings already this week with each group, my team was there facilitating it. We’re going to help them every which way we can to ensure the March qualifiers come off like the ones in September, October, November did in the rest of the world. We’re in the same situation as everybody, it’s not like all of a sudden we’re special. We just have to find the solutions and every country has a different situation of the issue.”
CONMEBOL kicked off its qualifiers in the fall of 2020 with varying success. On the one hand, all the matches got played. On the other, teams either missed key players because they tested positive for the virus or the players themselves contracted the virus and missed time with their club teams - something that affected Uruguayan and Peruvian players based in MLS, who mostly missed the playoffs, among others.
It’s on FIFA to delay or not, and it certainly looks like this is going full-speed ahead in March. “That, to be honest, is not really even a thought right now,” Montagliani said of another postponement. “The thought is getting through these protocols and all the issues upcoming and dealing with them and I can tell you even in the early meetings, there seems to be already solutions for pretty much every situation.”
What are those solutions? Well, teams are going to have to get creative.
Group D, headlined by Panama with the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Dominica and Anguilla, may almost end up in a bubble-esque situation in the Dominican Republic next month. Panama is to host Barbados and travel to face Dominica, but with the Dominican Republic already hosting Dominica, the calculus is that it’ll be easier to just have everyone meet up in the Caribbean.
Panama, which qualified for the 2018 World Cup and is desperately looking to solidify its claim to the ‘Fourth Best Team in Concacaf” label as the best team that isn’t the U.S., Mexico or Costa Rica, isn’t unable to host because of COVID regulations but rather a complicated and ongoing dispute with the government about the playing surface at the Estadio Rommel Fernandez. An alternate site in Penonomé was proposed but it falls just outside FIFA’s requirement of being within a 150km radius of an international airport.
So, now, Panama, a team that made the World Cup in 2018 will sacrifice the home-field advantage and hit the road to meet Barbados and Dominica on neutral ground. The mini-bubble is a solution that works well for neutrals and governing officials but has to be difficult to stomach for fans in Panama.
Not ever group will work out in such a tidy manner. Group A, where El Salvador is the seeded team with Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is set to have some teams host but others move their matches to neutral sites. That also looks to be the case in Group B, where Canada almost certainly will not be able to host Bermuda.
“I don’t think Canada will be playing in March here,” said Canada-based Montagliani. “There’s no chance that’s going to happen - or very, very little chance. But that’s a decision by the Canadian Soccer federation and the government. I think there has to be confirmation 30 days before the first game by World Cup regulations. That’s, what, February 20, so it’s not far away in terms of where you’re going to play.
“I think those discussions have been had over the last week or so in terms of every country per group saying, well, here are my options. Some countries can actually play, some can’t, some countries it’s not even a COVID situation they have a facility situation because their stadium is not up to regulation - for instance one was damaged during the hurricane two years ago and still hasn’t been rebuilt.
“There’s situations at all levels. It’s not just COVID. We just gotta find the solution and move forward - like pretty much every other confederation has.”
Sources consulted over the past few days say the U.S., Curacao, which requires only that visitors show a negative PCR test from within the last three days for entry, and the Dominican Republic are among potential locations that might host multiple matches.
There’s also the issue of players getting back to the countries where they live. A 10-day mandatory quarantine upon arriving in the UK from more than two dozen countries is now in place, and while elite athletes are awarded exceptions, many Concacaf internationals are playing in lower leagues and may not be granted the pass required to come back into the country without spending nearly two weeks in a hotel.
Despite all these challenges, managers, sporting directors and other FA officials are working to get their teams as prepared as possible for the start of qualification.
Trinidad and Tobago is set to host Guyana on March 25 in what looks to be one of the most critical matches of the March window. Both teams are trying to schedule March friendly matches before the moment of truth (Guyana attempting to play on March 5 and March 7 and the Soca Warriors looking for games against Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines).
Yet, Trinidad and Tobago’s players who returned from January’s loss to the United States in Orlando are bristling against the restrictions the government has put on them, requiring a week of home quarantine after a week of quarantine at a federation facility despite six rounds of negative tests, according to Wired868. They’re also not sure if they’ll be able to host what may be the defining match of Group F.
“The normalisation committee has been pleaded with (Roshan Parasram, the country’s Chief Medical Officer) to get a letter from the minister of health that they can send to Concacaf, granting approval to play World Cup games in Trinidad,” a source told Wired868. “And the CMO has not responded. If that continues, we will get no practice games before the Guyana match and we may lose our home game—because of a simple approval we need from the Ministry of Health.”
Some clarity should come in the next week as the deadlines start hitting and venues get announced. Hopefully decisions are made with the safety of everyone - players, fans and officials - in mind, but FIFA’s desire to keep WCQ on track despite a continuing global pandemic is creating plenty of headaches on the local level.