2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup Intro

2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup Leave a comment

[This is the first article in a four-part tournament preview. The next articles will go into more detail about the competitors, who I think the favorites are to win, and how I think the tourney will play out.]

The 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup will be the 16th edition of the biennial tournament (youngest tourney of the three this summer), taking place from July 10th to August 1st and will be hosted by the United States. Previous to the now known Gold Cup, the regional tournament was referred to as the CONCACAF Championship from 1963-1989. Since 1991, the Gold Cup has been played 15 times with Mexico (the current champs) having won 8 times, followed by the United States with 6 and Canada taking third with 1. The single biggest Gold Cup rivalry has been the Mexico vs. USA matchup. Most regard that hoped for match the highlight of the tournament.

This tournament is special in that there are two changes being made. The first is that normally, the tournament would consist of 16 teams, 12 qualifying via the CONCACAF Nations League and four teams via the Gold Cup qualifiers. However, on September 2nd, CONCACAF announced that Qatar (2022 FIFA World Cup hosts and Asian Cup champs) would be participating, which means only three teams would qualify via the Gold Cup qualifiers. The second change is that this will be the first time that VAR (Video Assistant Replay) is used during the tournament.

The tournament will consist of a total of 31 matches played in 10 venues (6 of which are in Texas)

Venues:

  1. Cotton Bowl (Dallas, Texas) capacity: 92,100
  2. AT&T Stadium (Arlington, Texas) cap: 80,000
  3. NRG Stadium (Houston, Texas) cap: 71,795
  4. BBVA Stadium (Houston, Texas) cap: 22,039
  5. State Farm Stadium (Glendale, Arizona) cap: 63,400
  6. Allegiant Stadium (Las Vegas, Nevada) cap: 61,000
  7. Exploria Stadium (Orlando, Florida) cap: 25,500
  8. Q2 Stadium (Austin, Texas) cap: 20,500
  9. Toyota Stadium (Frisco, Texas) cap: 20,500
  10. Children’s Mercy Park (Kansas City, Kansas) cap: 18,467

There will be a total of 16 teams divided into four groups. Although only 13 teams have qualified so far, once the remaining three teams qualify, they will be placed into the remining slots in groups A, B, and C.

Stay tuned for my next article where I will be breaking down Groups A and B.

Photo: Gold Cup logo, Wikipedia, Creative Commons

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