On Saturday, the U.S. national team will play Poland in Chicago. Like any host of a major international tournament (Poland co-hosts Euro 2012 with Ukraine), the Poles face the difficult task of finding meaningful competition to prepare their team for the big event on home soil. But if CONCACAF has its way, the U.S. will soon face a similar dilemma in 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying, even though it is not the hosts.
Last month, reports started circulating again that CONCACAF officials plan to change the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying format, which would keep the region's top two teams in different groups during latter stages of qualifying. Reportedly, the revised format is just a FIFA rubber stamp away from being implemented and would abandon the current final hexagonal round.
One of the most likely results of this short-sighted shake-up is that the U.S. would not play archrival Mexico on the road to Brazil. That would be a detriment to both teams.
Here are six reasons CONCACAF shouldn't nix the hex:
A diluted qualifying tournament hurts World Cup preparation for both Mexico and the U.S. The archrivals are the dominant powers in a very weak confederation. No matter what the format, it's unthinkable that Mexico and the U.S. won't qualify for every World Cup for the foreseeable future. The coaches and players on both teams only benefit from playing each other in meaningful games, as recent history has amply demonstrated. American fans are still wondering what might have been in South Africa if Charlie Davies had been playing. Those forlorn regrets linger from Davies' terrific performance in the Azteca in 2009. And it's a fair point. Big players emerge on big stages, and the Mexico-U.S. World Cup qualifying doubleheader has been marked on every ambitious player's calendar for years. To erase those two dates is a detriment to the international development of players from each nation, as there are few other places that provide such an environment for them to thrive (or shrivel).
Sport thrives on rivalries. Monday's Ryder Cup finale was just the latest example of how rivalries elevate sports. Do you think the Big Ten even remotely considered dropping the Ohio State-Michigan college football game during its recent conference schedule shuffle? Not a chance. And worldwide, there are no rivalries like soccer rivalries. They are more intense, more tribal, more glorious, more heartbreaking and more inexplicable. It's still inexplicable to El Tri fans that they lost to the Americans at the 2002 FIFA World Cup. That one game sparked a rivalry that has given huge impetus to soccer in the U.S. Across the board, the U.S. mainstream media now pays attention to U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifying games. Soccer in the United States is not mature enough to lose hard-earned media attention by diluting its only genuine rivalry by demoting it to potential Gold Cup encounters and assorted friendly internationals.
The Estadio Azteca as Holy Grail would go away. As every U.S. (and Mexican) soccer fan knows, Mexico has never lost at home to the U.S. Arguably, no team in any sport has a home field advantage to equal El Tri's at the Azteca. Yet, the Americans almost pulled off an Indiana Jones-like quest in 2009. Sure, it's fun to win in Columbus and Houston and the Rose Bowl, but every U.S. fan wants that Azteca win, and it can only come in a World Cup qualifying game because the Mexican federation only seems to take on the U.S. at home in qualifiers.
Conquering cold, cold Crew Stadium. To have a real rivalry it must work both ways, and for all the U.S. frustration at not being able to win at the Azteca, Mexican fans are sick and tired of losing World Cup qualifying games 2-0 in Columbus, Ohio. U.S. soccer really joined the world's game when the federation stopped being gracious hosts and made Mexico don snowsuits instead of track suits for World Cup qualifying games in Columbus Crew Stadium. The quadrennial pageantry of watching Mexican stars shiver in the tunnel prior to the game warms the hearts of American fans. And how it would warm the hearts south of the border if Mexico could reverse that sequence of two-goal defeats on the road to Brazil. But now it seems it won't get the chance.
Euro no-no. With more and more American and Mexican internationals plying their trade in Europe, there is the real possibility that an expanded CONCACAF World Cup qualifying campaign will cause more consternation from influential managers on the big-soccer money side of the Atlantic Ocean. African stars have been coming under increasing pressure from club managers to skip international games in recent years, and a potential increase in trips to the Caribbean or Central America for an extra round of games is not going to impress the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Mark Hughes and Arsene Wenger. Big managers understand big rivalries; they don't understand the need to use their players in games against the likes of the Faroe Islands, Burkina Faso and Cuba. If the U.S. and Mexico have to play more games against CONCACAF makeweights, then their European-based stars may find themselves embroiled in that old chestnut: the club versus country debate. The best goalkeeper in U.S. history, Brad Friedel, retired too early from the national team to concentrate on his EPL career; it would be a shame if poor CONCACAF planning pushed other players into a similar decision for no reason.
What would Landon do? No one has done more to put spice into the U.S.-Mexico rivalry than Landon Donovan. It should be written in boldface letters in Sunil Gulati's contract that he has to do everything in his power to make sure that Donovan has at least one more chance to play against Mexico in the Azteca. Let me just say, as an England fan, that depriving Donovan of the opportunity of celebrating on the sacred Mexican sod is a worse travesty than the three blind mice missing Frank Lampard's goal against Germany at the World Cup.
I understand Gulati's Holy Grail is winning the hosting rights to either the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cups -- not seeing the U.S. win in the Azteca -- but it doesn't have to be at the expense of his national team's best rivalry. Nothing has done more to boost CONCACAF during the past decade than the thriving U.S.-Mexico rivalry. And CONCACAF, along with U.S. Soccer and the Mexican Federation, should be going out of its way to maintain it, not derail it.