The FA and U.S. Soccer are in talks to stage an international friendly between England and the USMNT before the men’s World Cup in 2026.More from @AdamCrafton_ and @mjshrimper ⤵️https://t.co/Ggkur0yJGh— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) September 20, 2024
Could that even be done before March 2026? @alslammerz does your calendar from October 2023 need to be redone, or is it still accurate?
It would be June depending on England’s schedule with Nations League and qualifiers according to the article.
The calendar accounts for most teams in a confederation but not all of them. UEFA has Nations League in June, but that is just the League A semifinals and finals, so that would not impact England as a League B team. UEFA World Cup Qualifiers take place in June as well, but only for teams that are a) in a Group of 5 and b) that are in either the League A quarterfinals, or the League A/B or B/C promotion playoffs. So for England, even if they are drawn into a 5 team group, they should be free as long as they win their Nations League group (or if they bottle it and come in last in the group.) There should be other UEFA teams available too during that window.
St. Louis will be hosting our Nations League match on November 18th. Worth noting we're electing to play the 2nd leg at home this year instead of the first like last year See you soon, STL!🇺🇸 USA vs. TBD 🌎🏆 Nations League Quarterfinals📆 Nov. 18📍 St. Louis, Mo.— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) September 23, 2024
Thanks.. yep bummer for me as I wanted them switched for travel/work reasons. Looks like 1st game of the leg will be Nov 14/15th away at one of the usual countries (Jam/Hon/CR/etc). Currently we are 2nd ranked pre-seeded team and will play the best runner up. We'll know who that is on Oct 15th. I'm begging for it to be Nov 15th instead of the 14th. Please soccer gods, please!
Not as close to U.S. Thanksgiving this year. Unlikely. Last time, two of the quarter-finals followed the Thursday-Monday schedule and two of them followed the Friday-Tuesday schedule. That would mean Thursday, November 14th away
Yep. Assuming that's the plan given the Monday night game. Fifas Oct rankings are released Oct 23rd. Since we are 1 place behind Mexico, and we play Mex on Oct 15, that'll have an impact on the draw I'd assume.
It won't be the FIFA rankings. They will use the CONCACAF rankings. https://www.concacaf.com/rankings/men-s-national-team/ It was mentioned here: https://www.concacaf.com/nations-le...-concacaf-nations-league-group-stage-matches/
well shit.. I didn't know there was a difference. Why CON not just use FIFA rankings? Either way.. do we know when CONCACAF rankings for October will be released? FIFA's will be Oct 23.
I have no idea how different this is from how FIFA rankings are calculated, but I would guess one reason they use their own is that Concacaf has non-FIFA members in it. In future scheduling thread news, Concacaf released the host cities of the 2025 Gold Cup. As expected, there are no games on the east coast which is the expected home of the FIFA Club World Cup. 14 venues, one champion 🏆 pic.twitter.com/O7Nxx49Lo0— Gold Cup (@GoldCup) September 25, 2024
Last year, CONCACAF announced the pairings as soon as the group stage ended. For this year, its website had an article that ranked the seeded teams in this order: Mexico, USA, Canada, Panama, and listed the QF match ups accordingly. I can't find it again. The author almost definitely posted the pairings by mistake, and someone later corrected it.
That’s right - last year they announced sometime around now that the *September* Concacaf rankings would be used to seed 1-4 for the quarterfinals. So we knew the exact position the US was in before the Oct group games were played. This year, they say it’ll be the *October* Concacaf rankings, which means we won’t officially know the parings until those rankings are released. Which is typically at the end of each month. This is stupid, as it’ll delay planning for everyone involved. However, someone on the US Soccer Reddit worked out that the Sept and Oct friendlies for teams 1-4 won’t have enough points weighting for the teams to change positions in the rankings, no matter the results. Not sure if that’s true or not.
I recall that CONCACAF also updated the rankings immediately following the completion of the group stage last year. I think we'll get the pairings on October 15 or 16. Last year, I was looking at flights for possible opponents after the third group stage match. There is more uncertainty this year. It is a good bet that the US will play the better ranked 2nd place team. I just hope that its not Guadeloupe, super expensive to fly there. I guess I looked last year. I think the cheapest way was via Paris.
Hopefully they update the rankings immediately. It just makes sense. Looking at the current standings and remaining matches (in this extremely unbalanced, unfair competition), the mostly likely opponents for the US (as QF seed number 2) in my estimation are Honduras, Guatemala, Suriname, and Guadeloupe. Some interesting locations there.
It was this post done in May: https://www.concacaf.com/nations-le...schedule-for-2024-25-concacaf-nations-league/ It has since been edited. At the time Canada was ranked 4th in CONCACAF. Now they are 3rd. Link please? I thought they used the October rankings last time too; I remember they released those CONCACAF rankings in mid-October, the day after all the matches were done. Between the September rankings and the October rankings of 2023, I don't think it was mathematically possible for one team to surpass another so it was the same thing. I may be misremembering though.
They have updated the rankings from August 31st to September 30th and this does NOT seem to be true. Canada has leapfroged the USA!
Pretty wild swing from a friendly window IMO. Panama's not far behind us at 4th, if they upset us in Austin we could in theory fall further
I don't know how much games are weighted (friendlies vs competitive) but it does seem like a lot. More than pride is on the line in those October friendlies.
It is interesting you guys are only playing once too. If we both handle Panama, I do wonder if there's enough points to be had from beating Mexico away
Based on the Concacaf formula of P = K * (R – E) where K for a Friendly is 17.5, R is the match result and E is the expected result (which is a number between +1, guaranteed win, and -1, guaranteed loss, where 0 represents a total coin flip) Figure IF the E of Mexico at home vs the US was considered a guaranteed loss, you'd be looking at the formula being P = 17.5(1 - -1) = 35. And the US is down by 20 right now to Canada. So it would at least be possible depending on other results, I would think.
Not relevant to this year, but The Next 2 Nations League Finals will be at SoFi https://www.concacaf.com/nations-le...2025-and-2027-concacaf-nations-league-finals/