Should CONCACAF persist with the W Championship format?

MONTERREY, Mexico — It has been 16 games in 15 days. One host city, two stadiums.

The parameters of the 2022 CONCACAF W Championship look familiar. A top-heavy region known to have two global heavyweights — and then everyone else — has long held short, quadrennial qualifying tournaments each for the World Cup and Olympics. This time, there's a catch: double jeopardy.

Canada and the United States each qualified for the 2023 World Cup by advancing to the semifinals of the tournament in Monterrey, but only the winner of Monday's final will book a spot in the 2024 Paris Olympics. The loser will wait a year before competing in a playoff against the winner of Monday's third-place match, either Costa Rica or Jamaica (both of which already qualified for the World Cup.)

«I think it's a double-edged sword,» Canada head coach Bev Priestman said this week. «For players, for coaches, there's a lot on the line.»

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A Canada-USWNT final is almost inevitable when both teams are participating in the tournament. When World Cup and Olympic qualifiers are separated, the final is a formality for bragging rights since both teams are already qualified. Monday's tournament championship means something, at least, but the jury is out on whether this is a better tournament format.

Grouping qualification for the World Cup and Olympics puts CONCACAF in line with other parts of the world — and that is not necessarily a positive. In Europe, Olympic qualification is determined by order of finish in the preceding World Cup. CONMEBOL (South America) has long grouped together World Cup and Olympic qualification based on