It’s been a theme throughout U.S.-centric coverage of the CONCACAF U-20 Championship, just as it was a theme during last year’s Olympic qualifying tournament: It’s important for the U.S. to do well in these tournaments. Winning games gives players a chance to gain valuable experience, whether it’s the London games (which the U-23s missed out on) or the U-20 World Cup (where the U.S. will compete this summer).
I’m not so sure. I don’t agree, and I don’t disagree. It just seems like the margins for error are so small in these tournaments. They represent such a tiny amount of their actual development time, I can see the argument that we make way too much out of U-level results.
Take the Olympic qualifying tournament, for example. Also consider the lead up to it. The U.S. beat Mexico 2-0 before the tournament and only lost one match under Caleb Porter. And while that match looks like an outlier in the nine-or-so matches the U-23 played, the timing of the loss meant they didn’t go to London. Instead, players spent July and August with their clubs.
I’m going to dig into this a little. As I write, I don’t know what I’ll find, but I’m going to go back through CONCACAF’s U-20 history and see if teams that finished in the top two of qualifying went on to make subsequent World Cups. The idea here it to try to look at whether U-level success matches senior level accomplishments.
Why the top two? Because there’s a large swatch of CONCACAF U-20 history where the region didn’t have a real tournament. Instead, there were two sub-tournaments that determined which teams qualified for the U-20 World Cup.
Obviously, this isn’t scientific or exhaustive. It’s just a thing - a step, if you will. For some teams, like Mexico, perpetual qualification for World Cups means we’ll learn little from their underage successes, but for other nations, we might see them suddenly start qualifying for World Cups after U-success. We may also see U-success mean absolutely nothing.
Here’s a huge chart showing what I found. Feel free to skip to the conclusions (italics - hosted World Cup, bold - qualified for a World Cup):
| U-20 Championship Year | Top Two Finishers | Next World Cup | World Cup after that |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | 1: Mexico 2: Guatemala | 1966 MEX: Group stage GUA: DNQ | 1970 MEX: Quarters GUA: DNQ |
| 1964 | 1: El Salvador 2: Honduras | 1966 ESA: DNQ HON: DNQ | 1970 ESA: Group stage HON: DNQ |
| 1970 | 1: Mexico 2: Cuba | 1974 MEX: DNQ CUB: DNQ | 1978 MEX: Group stage CUB: DNQ |
| 1973 | 1: Mexico 2: Guatemala | 1974 MEX: DNQ GUA: DNQ | 1978 MEX: Group stage GUA: DNQ |
| 1974 | 1: Mexico 2: Cuba | 1978 MEX: Group stage CUB: DNQ | 1982 MEX: DNQ CUB: DNQ |
| 1976 | 1: Mexico 2: Honduras | 1978 MEX: Group stage HON: DNQ | 1982 MEX: DNQ GUA: DNQ |
| 1978 | 1: Mexico 2: Canada | 1982 MEX: DNQ CAN: DNQ | 1986 MEX: Quarters CAN: Group stage |
| 1980 | 1: Mexico 2: United States | 1982 MEX: DNQ USA: DNQ | 1986 MEX: Quarters USA: DNQ |
| 1982 | 1: Honduras 2: United States | 1986 HON: DNQ USA: DNQ | 1990 HON: DNQ USA: Group stage |
| 1984 | 1: Mexico 2: Canada | 1986 MEX: Quarters CAN: Group stage | 1990 MEX: DQ CAN: DNQ |
| 1986 | 1: Canada 2: United States | 1990 CAN: DNQ USA: Group stage | 1994 CAN: DNQ USA: Second round |
| 1988 | 1: Costa Rica 2: Mexico | 1990 CRC: Second round MEX: DQ | 1994 CRC: DNQ MEX: Second round |
| 1990 | 1: Mexico 2: Trinidad and Tobago | 1994 MEX: Second round TT: DNQ | 1998 MEX: Second round TT: DNQ |
| 1992 | 1: Mexico 2: United States | 1994 MEX: Second round USA: Second round | 1998 MEX: Second round USA: Group stage |
| 1994 | 1: Honduras 2: Costa Rica | 1998 HON: DNQ CRC: DNQ | 2002 HON: DNQ CRC: Group stage |
| 1996 | 1: Canada 2: Mexico | 1998 CAN: DNQ MEX: Second round | 2002 CAN: DNQ MEX: Second round |
| 1998 | A: United States B: Mexico | 2002 USA: Quarters MEX: Second round | 2006 USA: Group stage MEX: Second round |
| 2001 | A: Costa Rica B: Canada | 2002 CRC: Group stage CAN: DNQ | 2006 CRC: Group stage CAN: DNQ |
| 2003 | A: Panama B: Canada | 2006 PAN: DNQ CAN: DNQ | 2010 PAN: DNQ CAN: DNQ |
| 2005 | A: United States B: Canada | 2006 USA: Group stage CAN: DNQ | 2010 USA: Second round CAN: DNQ |
| 2007 | A: United States B: Mexico | 2010 USA: Second round MEX: Second round | |
| 2009 | 1: Costa Rica 2: United States | 2010 CRC: DNQ USA: Second round | |
| 2011 | 1: Mexico 2: Costa Rica | ||
| 2013 | Mexico, United States |
And exhale.
Let me aggregate all that for you:
- When a team wins CONCACAF’s U-20 tournament, they’ve appeared in the next World Cup 50 percent of the time. They appear in the World Cup after that 55 percent of the time. Exclude hosts that automatically qualified for World Cups (and Mexico’s 1990 disqualification), and those percentages go down to 48 and 50.
- CONCACAF U-20 runner-ups have only qualified for the next World Cup 36 percent of the time. Forty percent of the time, however, they’ve made the World Cup that followed. Accounting for hosting duties (and Mexico in 1990), those percentages become 35 and 33.
It’s really difficult to see why winning these tournaments is so important. Of course, you want to win these competitions, but in so far as it’s a harbinger of your World Cup fate, there isn’t a conclusive trend.
Take Canada. The Canadians have not qualified for a World Cup since 1986, and given their finish at the 1984 championships, there was reason to think they had talent coming through that could get them there. But Canada has finished in the top two four times since, yet they haven’t been back to the show. Even if 1984 was a harbinger, it’s unclear their more general U-20 results tell us much.
We know that Mexico and the United States have been perpetual World Cup qualifiers in recent years, yet there are three instances since 1994 where they failed to finish in the top two. It hasn’t influenced their qualifying record.
In a way, this all makes sense. These players spend a dominant amount of their development time with their clubs, and while that doesn’t mean their quality won’t come through in their tournaments, it’s also possible that these small samples of games accumulated every one or two years just aren’t that important.
If you were picking CONCACAF’s World Cup qualifiers four-to-six years ahead of time, you’d probably be better served picking Mexico, the U.S., and Costa Rica every cycle rather than consider any U-20 results.
