when CONCAF Gold Cup It was launched, and the Confederation version of the European Championships in the European Union or COPA América of Conmebol was supposed to be.
For more than enough generation.
But with the improvement of Mexico and the United States, playing the group playing against the likes of Saint Kitts, Nevis or Martinique is no longer every year. So twice in the past decade, the Federation brought the South American Championship to North America just to make things interesting.
However, the gold Cup this summer, which starts on Saturday with Mexico, the hero of the referee, who faces the Dominican Republic at a Sufi stadium, has returned to the return of a groove. (The United States opens to play on Sunday in San Jose against Trinidad and Tobago.
It is not that the tournament has become more competitive; If anything, it may be worse. In addition to the Dominican Republic, 139 in FIFA classifications, the 16 teams of seven teams include the 80 best teams in the world.
But the fact that the Gold Cup comes less than a year before the World Cup returned to North America made it worthy of observation.
Since the World Cup will play in the United States, Mexico and Canada, these countries have succeeded in arduously qualified competition – tense games that would lead them to the next championship. With no qualifications, the match evaluation of all three teams is wide open between the Gold Cup and the World Cup.
This is not a good thing.
The United States has a friendly mibs with South Korea and Japan to be held in September, but with qualified competitions in South America passes at the end of the summer and championships in the rest of the world leaks to 2026, it will be difficult to determine more games with the World Cup discount until early next year.
In fact, after this summer, there will be only four FIFA match windows – short that leaves time for three or four days training and two games – before calling the World Cup menus.
This makes the gold cup, and a three -week championship with team play and the one -knockout stage, which is an important preparatory test for the three hosts even if the field is less than my star. But only Mexico will have the first selection team this summer.
Canada will be without the Alphonso Davies, which tore the cruciate ligament in the semi -finals of the March League in March, and the defender Moise Bombito. The United States misses eight potential beginners in the captain Christian PolisicWeston McKini midfielders and Geo ReinaDefender Anthony Robinson and striker Tim Wah, Yunus Moussa, Foline Palogon and Josh Sargent, who are abroad due to injury, personal causes, or FIFA World Cup obligations.
Since the gold Cup is held outside the window of an international match, the clubs are not obligated to release the championship players. He did not do much. As a result, 15 players in the Training Camp List of the Americans play 26 men in MLS. It is not the perfect way for a team that lost against Canada and Panama in March – with The best players – to prepare for the World Cup.
The American coach is still Mauricio PochettinoWhose team prepared for the World Cup with a 2-1 loss to Turkey At the end of last week, it seemed not interested.
“Many people can say it is really important to be all together for the last time before the World Cup,” said Pochettino, the first American coach to have a series of three games in his first 10 games since Manfred Shilsheid in 1975.
“Sometimes we give great importance to be[ing] together.”
In the Gold Cup, the United States will follow Trinidad with games against Saudi Arabia and Haiti, giving it a low strip to clarify the exit from team play. Mexico will play the role of Surinam and Costa Rica after the opening match with the Dominican Republic. As two teams advance to the quarter -finals of each of the four four groups, Mexico is actually guaranteed to move as well.
Whether any of this helps the teams to prepare for the World Cup will not be known for a year. But there may be an omen there because there were links between the World Cup and the Gold Cup since it played the first Concacaf championship in 1991.
This came only one year after the United States returned to the World Cup, ending the absence for four decades, and three years ago before the country hosted the tournament for the first time. It was then important because, without that, the United States would have played only 11 games that year, barely enough to prepare for the World Cup.
The opening gold Cup was also the first championship for the new coach, Bora Milotinovic, and was distinguished by the first time that the United States will play in Rose Paul, where they drew 18,435 fans in a game with Trinidad. The stadium and coach will meet after three years when Milotinovic trained the United States in the World Cup match with Romania, which brought a crowd of 93869, and is still the largest in the national team match for men at home.
The tournament also included a 2-0 victory over Mexico, only the second victory over El Tri in 54 years, and the repetition of the score line has been nine times since.
Then in 2002, when the United States won the championship on its way to the quarter -finals of the World Cup for the only time in the modern era.
But if the gold cup provides a challenge, this is no longer. The United States and Mexico gathered to win all this century championship – and they met in the last seven times.
All of this raises an idea: if the United States, Mexico and Canada – the only country to win the Gold Cup title – cannot find anyone playing it while the rest of the world is busy with qualification, then they should play each other.
The gold cup is likely to end anyway.
⚽ I have read the latest batch of football with Kevin Pacter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and sheds light on the unique stories. Listen to Baxter in this week’s episode of TheA corner of the podcast.
