Well tomorrow is our first road match of the season against Violette in Santiago in the Dominican Republic. Due to CONCACAF’s lack of organization, they didn’t even confirm they would sell tickets to us until a week before the match, so there sadly won’t be a large verde contingent on the island.
So today, I am going to choose to write about an amazing new CONCACAF project before we do a False Nine match preview tomorrow. Last week, Jon Arnold, who left our friends over at the Striker since he didn’t want to be miserable in writing about Frisco for another season, broke news that CONCACAF is planning a new football complex in the Dominican Republic to serve as a neutral site for hosting regional competitions. This complex is supposed to include multiple fields for competition and all of the amenities of a modern soccer complex. In the future, matches like tomorrow’s match will be hosted there.
However, here at the compound, we did not think it was quite realistic enough for CONCACAF. Sure, the project will have bribes and run over budget, but we felt like it needs more CONCACAF in it. Here are our suggested modifications to enhance this project:
1) The Pitches: To ensure parity in the competition, we need a wide variety of pitches. While there will be a few fields that are maintained to global standards (since those occasionally exist in CONCACAF), there will also be realistic CONCACAF pitches. With variation from Canadian tundra turf to water logged Trinidadian pitch to incredibly uneven Salvadoran fields, every player will be able to get the true CONCACAF experience. Maybe we’ll put a running track around all of the fields, so it can be used for those international competitions as well.
2) The Ref Academy: As CONCACAF needs to continue train up officials from across the region, this new complex should host the ref training academy. Normally, you want to pass a vision test, but here you are more likely to be accepted if you fail it. Refs will need to pass with lasers being shown at them and learn how to respond to players cursing at them in multiple languages. Now that CONCACAF is using VAR in more of its competitions, Lee Mason has been hired to train all officials in the latest in VAR technologies. It’s great to see CONCACAF reaching the lofty and ambitious standards of PGMOL.
3) The Bootleggers Room: CONCACAF wouldn’t be CONCACAF without bribes, contraband, and backroom deals. The front of the bootleggers room is a perfectly fine bar/restaurant highlighting the various cuisines of the region. However, the real treat is the speakeasy through the freezer in the back. Once you pass through the freezer (and let’s face it, you need a few codes in addition to knowing where the false freezer is), you enter the real CONCACAF paradise of bribes, backroom deals, hookers from every member, and more. This region has a tradition of rough seas both inside and outside the federation, and this back room in the bootleggers room is way more impressive and realistic than the CONCACAFE, which opens up its second location in another part of the complex after its Doha pop-up last year.
4) The Cat Condos. IYKYK
We know that we are missing some more amenities from this dream CONCACAF complex. We would love to hear your ideas in the comments and on social media.