International soccer matches, including Concacaf World Cup qualifiers, could be pushed back to 2021, Concacaf president Victor Montagliani has told the Associated Press.
Fixtures during the March and June FIFA windows have already been called off amid the coronavirus pandemic and it's possible the same will be true of matches in September, October and November.
Montaglian, who is also a FIFA vice president and has been heading a working group proposing solutions to the impact of COVID-19, said the priority when soccer is given the green light to resume should be given to the leagues.
“I personally think that might be a bit of a challenge, not so much because of just the health issues around the world and the various degrees of preparedness, but also committing to international travel as soon as we come back,” Montagliani said. “I think that domestic football is a priority. September is still in the books, but I would garner to say that I’m not sure it’s there on solid ground the way things are trending right now.”
The impacted matches would include Concacaf’s hexagonal, which determines the three automatic qualifiers for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. That was scheduled to start in the fall with the top six teams in the FIFA rankings — currently the US men’s national team, Mexico, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Honduras and El Salvador.
But with the disruption to the calendar preventing the likes of Canada from accumulating ranking points and trying to force their way into the Hex, Montagliani said changes to the format could also be forthcoming.
“We’re committed to our final four [in the Nations League],” Montagliani said. “But we have other events that we have to probably look at reformatting, whether it’s some of our youth competitions, even our World Cup qualifying, where we’re going to have to, in the balance of probabilities, look at how that would work in a situation where the calendar there is now less than what we expected it to be.”
In a separate conversation with the media Monday, Montagliani added: “That, to be honest, brings in a snippet of an integrity issue when teams haven’t been able to play,” he said, according to Sports Illustrated. “What we’re committed to is ensuring the format, whatever the format will be, has to fit into what the new calendar is going to look like and also be done from a sporting standpoint.”
