NOAH DAVIS – The new CONCACAF qualifying plan calls for two four-team groups in the final stage instead of a single six-squad one. The top team from each group qualifies, while the second-place finishers battle each other for the third automatic slot.
The new format gives more teams an opportunity to reach the World Cup, but it punishes the United States and Mexico, region’s two best sides. But how much more difficult does it make their road? To answer that question, I asked 10 Kit stat guru Steve Davis (my father, not SI.com’s excellent scribe) for some help.
First, the 2010 qualification plan. With six teams fighting for three spots, the US only had to finish in the top half of the Hexagonal. For our purposes, assume the group consists of the Americans, and Teams A through E. From what we know about CONCACAF – two dominant teams, three good sides, and a bunch of clubs happy to make the Hexagaonal – figure the US has a 50 percent chance to finish higher than Team A (Mexico), a 65 percent chance to finish higher than Teams B and C (some combination of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala), a 75 percent chance to outpoint Team D (hedging for years when one of the three good teams didn’t qualify) and a 85 percent chance to finish higher than Team E (El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, etc).
Given these numbers, the chance that the US would finish first in the group (ie. with more points than Teams A, B, C, D, and E) is 13.5 percent. The chance to finish second is 34.8 percent and third is 33.5 percent. This means that the Stars and Stripes would reach the World Cup 81.8 percent (13.5+34.8+33.5) of the time.
Now, for the four-team group (the Americans and Teams A through C). Assume the US – seeded first in CONCACAF – faces teams ranked 3, 5, and 7 in the region. That means they have 65 percent chance of finishing higher than Team A, a 75 percent shot at besting Team B, and a 90 percent of getting more points than Team C. (Consistent with the six-team example.) The US would win this group – and earn the automatic qualification – just 43 percent of the time. They would finish second 43 percent of the time and have to play home-and-home for the right to reach the World Cup. Assuming they had a 65 percent shot at coming out on top of this battle – because they would play fourth-ranked team in CONCACAF – they would earn the third automatic qualifying bid an additional 28 percent of the time (.43*.65). The result: In a four-team group, the Americans have a 72 percent (43+28) shot to make the sport’s biggest tournament.
In the end, the proposed format decreases the US’s chances to qualify by about 10 percent. Not a huge amount but certainly significant. Most of this variation comes because playing 10 matches during the Hexagonal gives the US more time to overcome upsets. Of course, if the Red, White, and Blue can’t earn one of the three qualifying spots, they don’t deserve to go to the World Cup regardless.
But wait–I’m not sure your last sentence makes sense. You assume in both scenarios that team quality is constant; therefore, how can the reduction of ten percent of the team’s qualifying chances be chalked up to deservingness? Clearly that’s on the (poor) qualifying structure.
dth is right, man..if the same team’s chances of suceeding casn be reduced by a significant amount it means the qualifying structure has a significant effect in this case.
It’s easy to say “if we can’t beat so and so in a one-off” or whatever we don’t deserve to go. Does that mean the other team does instead? What every federation should be looking for is the fairest possible elimination that gives every team the best chance to prove superiority, not get lucky.
In the world, on South America really does that.
Right, but the point of the exercise was to figure out how the proposed changes would alter a team’s chances.
I do think there’s a medium-term perspective here (say in the next 8-12 years). If the minnows we’re playing are getting slightly higher FIFA rankings (not the same as getting better), then our FIFA ranking for having beaten said minnows will increase (there’s a good post by Jason Kuenle on MatchFit about this). An increased FIFA ranking increases our chances of being a seeded team when it comes time for grouping World Cup squads, which would definitely increase our chances of moving on to the round of 16, perhaps as group champion.
If you couple that with what I expect will be an improved US side over the next couple decades (both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of CONCACAF), I think this is a net win for the US.