World Cup qualification: never a birthright for the United States
by Steve Davis on Nov 9, 2010 10:45 AM EST
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Are there lessons to be learned from the United States’ surprising struggles to gain a place in the Women’s World Cup?
You bet there are.
The take-away is this: nobody has a birthright to participate in these tournaments.
George Vecsey writes this morning in the New York Times about the shrinking talent gap in women’s soccer around the globe. If you’re a little behind in all this, his piece is a good place to catch up.
Long story short, the United States slipped, big time, by losing to Mexico in the semifinals of regional qualifying going on down in Mexico. Now, Pia Sundhage and her U.S. women must now slog through a nerve-testing home-and-away series with Italy. Failure there means the United States, the two-time Women’s World Cup winners since the event started in 1991, won’t appear at the 16-team field next year in Germany.
Can you imagine that?
Whether you can or can’t, you had better remember it when qualifying for Bob Bradley and his U.S. men's team begins for Brazil 2014. (And it could begin as early as this coming September.)
Bruce Arena told us long, long ago that it will happen someday, that the United States will stumble and fail to qualify for a World Cup. I have always hoped that it would be later rather than sooner, the better to keep the soccer haters from having their day. But, in all honesty, it’s quickly getting to the point where failure to qualify will not dent soccer’s ongoing development here. So, I suppose I got my wish.
Odds are that the United States will, indeed, qualify for the 2014 World Cup. But these things aren’t decided by royal decree. Countries must earn it, and that includes the United States. And the passion over a potential World Cup berth in places like Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, etc., provides an intangible that the United States simply can’t match – although the U.S. can usually overcome it through sheer talent.
And there’s this: I’ve always thought that Canada’s ability to get its crap together is a huge X factor in it all. If Canada rises, as it well could, the private little room reserved for CONCACAF elites will suddenly get very crowded.
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One game?
I dont know anything about womens WCQ but how did one loss make so much of impact on our chances? Were we already in a bad spot or is WWCQ just that cut and dry?
Since the WWCQ doubles as the Gold Cup
the semifinals serve as a single knockout match for qualifying.
It’d be roughly equivalent to the US men having been eliminated from World Cup qualifying for 2010 had they lost to Panama in the 2007 Gold Cup quarterfinals.
You see the same thing in the youth tournament qualification in CONCACAF. In 2004, the US Olympic team missed out on Athens via a loss to Mexico in the CONCACAF Pre-Olympic Tournament semifinals. Had Mexico won their group, the US would have faced Costa Rica in a one-match playoff instead.
Not a fan. Prefer qualifying via a leagueish structure (hex) than a fluky tournament setup.
by Howard the Drake on Nov 9, 2010 3:25 PM EST up reply actions
I really hope that this experience (and the past) means that they...
… will never wear those awful gold kits again.
That was embarrassing and showed no class. Even the slight bit of gold-trim they had was in bad taste.
Here's the problem:
Want the good teams to qualify? Play lots of games.
Want to save money? Play fewer games.
The two are contradictory. And CONCACAF women’s soccer is in pretty sad shape. Teams don’t have much money to waste.
To be fair, the kind of “qualifying seasons” that the men’s World Cup has, where teams actually get to play home-and-homes and a large number of games, are a luxury in most international sports. Even Olympic basketball does its qualification through single-elimination knockout tournaments (though usually teams get two shots at qualification rather than one, or technically three if you count the auto bid for the winner of FIBA worlds).
In an ideal world, it’d be nice for there to be lots of money to fund team travel and play. In the real world, it’s a recession and belts are tight.
So the possibility of a shock upset is there. And this time, it happened. Well, that is, as the cliche goes, why they play the game.
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
A Function of the Women's Qualifying Structure...
…is the most accurate explanation for why the USW are in the situation they’re in. But that point (while accurate) misses the larger issue…at some point the USA (men) aren’t going to qualify for the WC.
The single biggest thing holding Canada back isn’t talent. They’re not at the level of the US or Mexico but they have guys playing roles on solid teams in big leagues. They single biggest factor is the incompetence of their FA—their poor organization. Correct that issue and they’d be consistently going to WCs and sometimes winning the Gold Cup. Adding Vancouver and then Montreal will dramatically increase their talent base (by providing a way to grow talent, give meaningful competition and then showcase players for European clubs). But ultimately, it’s always been about Canada’s FA.
And frankly, that’s pretty much the story for countries like Honduras and Jamaica as well. Those countries have good skill, good talent and in some year’s they’ve even had world-class (or near world-class in Jamaica’s case) talent. But their FA’s (especially with Honduras) hold them back.
This is good news...
…because watching our USWNT team beat up on all the other countries, some of whom probably struggled to fill a roster, and then be declared World Cup champions is a joke and boring as heck. Ranks right up there with the joke of NCAA women’s basketball and the UConn team.
Maybe I will even start watching Women’s soccer…but I doubt it.
Well, I don't know, I mean,
England beat up on World Cup qualifying matches, but they didn’t win the World Cup or even come close to it. Don’t judge the final by the qualifying campaign.
The US last won the Women’s World Cup 12 years ago. There are almost as many teams that could win the women’s event as the men’s.
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
