The final round of the 2022 CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying format is unprecedented in that it features eight teams playing 14 games in five international windows. It will be brilliant! To look for patterns in predicting what it might take for teams to progress, the best examples of how this will play out are the South American World Cup qualification model (CONMEBOL) and the previous model used by CONCACAF, when both regions from 1998 to 2018 had a lengthy home-and-away league table format. During this time, CONCACAF had six teams playing 10 matches each in all six qualifying periods, while CONMEBOL used their successful format of 10 teams playing each other home and away for a total of 18 matches played each four times, and nine teams playing home and away twice for a total of 16 matches in the years where Brazil automatically qualified (as holders in 2006, hosts in 2014). This gives us a lot of data using 12 competitions and 684 international matches to look at where the completion of each round comes after either 10, 16 or 18 matches. To have an idea of what it will take to qualify after 14 matches in the upcoming World Cup qualifying campaign the numbers, both in isolation and combined, from both regions give us a good idea of what it might take. To qualify automatically for Qatar 2022 teams must finish in the top three. The team that finishes fourth will face an intercontinental playoff. We will look at what it takes for all 4 spots using the total amounts of teams that finished in those spots during the last six World Cup cycles.
CONCACAF (60 games) | CONMEBOL (104 games) | Total Avg |
1st 126pts (2.1PPG) | 214pts (2.05PPG) | 2.07PPG |
2nd 109pts (1.82PPG) | 188pts (1.81PPG) | 1.81PPG |
3rd 91pts (1.52PPG) | 175pts (1.68PPG) | 1.62PPG |
4th 79pts (1.32PPG) | 163pts (1.57PPG) | 1.48PPG |
Continue reading...