Once you take out the big-3 WC hosts, the only CONCACAF teams that have looked competitive have been Panama and Jamaica. And Jamaica, for all their glamour boys, plays like less than the sum of their parts (or they'd have won the USA game 3-1) and has a ticking clock to change that.
I don't know who's going to take the 6th slot for the confederation at the expanded WC (probably Costa Rica, maybe Guatemala) but it's either going to a team that miraculously put it all together in a hurry that we can't see coming today, or it's going to resemble a lifetime achievement award. No other country's football program seems to be developing elite-level talent or at least recruiting quality dual-nationals (c'mon Curacao and Suriname, get moving).
Panama reached their highest-ever Elo (1754, #29) during the 2013 Gold Cup, after the semifinal win over Mexico (2-1, for the second time that tournament!) and before the 1-0 loss to the USA in the final (Brek Shea!). For that tournament, their
squad included:
- 2x VEN: MF Rolando Escobar and striker Gabriel Torres (who got a few trials with big-name UEFA teams, and probably would play in the Big 5 if he came up today)
- 2x COL: CB Roman Torres (captain) for Millonarios and MF Gabriel Gomez at Junior
- 2x URU: backup GK L. Mejia, and Cecilio Waterman who played against the USA last night
- 1x GUA: starting GK Penedo
- 1x SVK: MF Eybir Bonaga, at a mid-table Slovakian team
- 1x USA: 32yo Blas Perez played for FC Dallas
- 1x ESP: 20yo reserve striker Jairo Jimenez, on top-flight Elche's B-team
- 13x PAN: At least half the starters, and notably including CB Anibal Godoy, who of course has anchored the team forever including last night
So even at their peak, Panama never exactly had the cachet that got Big 5 teams to call them up, never produced a Keylor Navas or created the talent-development (and marketing) engine that the North American teams now have. Instead, then they relied on their domestic league being better than advertised, a number of players having solid CONMEBOL club careers, and their team being more than the sum of its parts from playing together more often (And, we must presume, coaching - then-coach Julio Valdes had had quite a career in the Big 5).
Today, their
squad for this tournament has 6x UEFA (including GER-2 and POR-2, nothing fancy, +1 loanee), 8x CONMEBOL, 2x MLS (Godoy and Carrasquilla, +1 reserve), 1x Liga MX (MF Barcenas, who got 3 loans to the Segunda recently), 5x Central America (3 CRC + GUA + HON), and... 0 actual domestic players! Just MF Yaris on the books of a domestic club but loaned out to Spain.
So that's a dramatic shift in the domestic emphasis of the team. They've gone from a mostly-domestic squad with a few guys getting a chance in CONMEBOL, to a group getting to play in competitive leagues in both South America and Europe. And while they might not generally play anywhere super fancy or be part of transfer talk on Football Twitter, they're playing in competitive, professional leagues with good funding and support (Ecuador, Venezuela, which both
rank below Costa Rica and Honduras).