Glory to the Heroes

Less than 10 months ago, prior to Euro 2020, I was commenting about a spat between Ukraine and Russia on UKR's jersey for Euro 2020 (ne 2021). Glory to Ukraine on the jersey was okay but the additional phrase Glory to the Heroes was interpreted as a rallying cry when you put both together so the latter had to be removed.  UKR still was able to keep the complete outline of their country on the jersey despite RUS claiming the Crimea peninsula was no longer part of UKR after annexing it in early 2014.

Well, on Feb 21st, RUS was at it again recognizing two eastern UKR states then three days later attacking UKR from Belarus and western Russia, determined to change the map of UKR again.  Over 400 Ukrainian civilians have been killed with the count unfortunately going up every day.

As it relates to soccer, FIFA did a slow burn penalizing RUS,

New Concacaf 2022 Qualifying

Interesting.  Concacaf announced the new 2022 World Cup qualifying format.  So instead of qualifying to be in the Hex (top 6 teams), the top 6 teams will automatically be selected based on the FIFA ranking in June 2020.  So there's less stress there for USA and Mexico.  Also, there will be two groups qualifying simultaneously, with the Hex in one and the other 29 (divided into 8 subgroups) in another.  The first group (Hex) will see the top 3 teams qualify for the World Cup.  In the other group, each of the 8 subgroup winners will play in a knockout stage with the winner playing the 4th place team in the Hex.  Then the winner of this will play in the Inter-Confederation playoff, which would either be the 5th place AFC, the 5th place CONMEBOL, or the 1st place OFC team.

So if you are the 7th ranked Concacaf team, you have to win your subgroup (4-6 matches), then win three knockout matches, then win a two-leg playoff against the 4th place Concacaf team, and then win a two-leg playoff against another confederation.  Whew.  So who's currently #7 (June 14 - before Gold Cup so Curacao (#9) and Haiti (#11) could move up)?  Panama, who actually qualified for the 2018 World Cup (while the USA didn't).  Canada is #8.  Both would need to somehow leapfrog Honduras or El Salvador, who are #5 and #6.  So in 11 months, we'll see if these four teams mix up.