The United States’s regional federation will be launching a new competition in 2018, according to a report from Reuters:
The competition will begin in the international dates in September, 2018 and will feature all 41 member countries of the confederation which includes Mexico and the United States.
Those nations will be split into three divisions, based on their “sporting level” with promotion and relegation. The tournament will also serve as a qualifying route to the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament.
This is certainly a boost to the non “big boy” CONCACAF teams (primarily those in a Caribbean), which don’t get the opportunity to play many friendly matches. It probably doesn’t mean much for USA, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the other nations that are going to replace friendlies against teams from around the world with… more friendlies against each other.
Familiarity breeds contempt, and upping the rivalry level between the US and the non-Mexico teams likely to make up the top tier of the competition should raise all ships, to a certain extent, and certainly these will be a little more meaningful than a run-of-the-mill friendly.
With 41 CONCACAF nations and three tiers, my guess – the full format won’t be released until February – is that the top group will include 13 teams while the second and third have 14 teams apiece. Those two lower groups will have opportunities to get more competition, and against teams that are at or near their competitive level. They’re also playing for stakes, which would be the opportunity to move into the top tier.
It makes more sense for me that the top tier is smaller (though it has to be bigger than the Hex, at least, otherwise it’s just the same six teams we’re used to seeing, with a couple of them swapped out every cycle of the league). Ten in the top tier, the nine non-FIFA sides plus the bottom six in the FIFA rankings – currently Bahamas, Anguila, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos and Montserrat – in the bottom tier, and you have a nice 10/16/15 split. Promote three, relegate three between the three levels, and you have a nice amount of competition – without preventing USA, Mexico, Costa Rica, et al from playing inter-federation friendlies with teams from around the world.
The top tier – as of FIFA rankings today the top ten are: Mexico, Costa Rica, USA, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Curacao, Canada – would be able to either finish its competition within the six international dates to close 2018 and the first three of 2019 (wrapping up their competition in June), leaving plenty of dates later open for friendlies, or space things out a bit more with one Nations League game and one standard friendly in each two-game international window.
Club and Country 