CONCACAF and FIFA provided an update on the 2022 World Cup qualifying process with an announcement that the First Round is being pushed back to March 2021 due to COVID-19 concerns.
Update on the Concacaf Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 https://t.co/5OK6XtibM6
The preliminary draw for Concacaf 2022 World Cup Qualifying first round was revealed along with the schedules for teams in the Final Round on Wednesday. The usual Hex format has been scrapped with the new Octagonal.
Eight nations will compete in the final Octagonal with five (USMNT, Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras and Jamaica) automatically qualified. The three nations joining these five will come from this pot of nations.
CONCACAF has unveiled a new qualification format for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar after COVID-19 forced a rejig of the usual system, the governing body for soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean said on Monday.
The new format, which will feature all 35 of the region's members, has been split into three rounds with the first being played in October and November with teams ranked from No. 6 to No. 35 in CONCACAF as of July 16 drawn into six groups of five.
World Cup fans will be able to watch an unprecedented four games a day on television, spread out over 11 hours, during the group stage of the Qatar 2022 tournament after the 2022 World Cup schedule was confirmed on Wednesday.
With the relatively short travel distances for the venues in and around Doha, it could be possible for fans who travel to the 32-team tournament to attend multiple games each day.
The early games will kickoff at 1300 local (6 a.m. ET) with the fourth match starting at 2200 local (3 p.m. ET) and finishing just before midnight.
Exactly 10 years after one of the greatest events in American soccer history, Landon Donovans's 91st-minute winner against Algeria, it's time to finally determine where Donovan's goal ranks among the Top 10 best USMNT moments of all time.
World Cup 2022 is scheduled to begin Nov. 21 in Qatar, less than 18 months from now, but it will not be without controversy.
CAPE TOWN — Thursday marks 10 years since South Africa hosted a World Cup highly charged with symbolism but dogged by questions about the wisdom of spending billions on a sports event that might have been better used elsewhere.
Hosting the first soccer World Cup in Africa was seen as a coming of age for the embattled continent.
But the month-long tournament, which had a $3-billion (USD) price tag, also came at a time when the country faced an enormous backlog of social needs such as housing, hospitals, water and electricity.
MILAN — Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini admires Uruguay forward Luis Suarez for biting him during a heated match at the 2014 World Cup, he said in his autobiography.
Suarez, who escaped punishment during the game, was later banned for four months plus nine internationals — but Chiellini said he bore no grudge towards him.
"Malice is part of football, I wouldn't call it illegitimate. To get past a rival you have to be smart," the Juventus captain said in the book "Io, Giorgio".
"I admire his cunning," he added. "If he lost it, he'd become an ordinary forward."