CONCACAF

• 1. Introduction

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  CONCACAF, the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, binds together 41 member associations across a region that stretches from the frozen north of Canada to the tropical shores of the Caribbean and, for reasons rooted in geopolitics rather than geography, three nations from the Guianas subregion of South America. Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana sit on the South American continent but fall under this confederation's umbrella. The organization was founded on the 18th of September 1961 in Mexico City, born from a merger of two older bodies: the North American Football Confederation and the Confederación Centroamericana y del Caribe de Fútbol. Thirteen nations signed on as founding members, from Canada and Cuba to Haiti and Honduras.

  What drives a confederation that must hold together three wildly different power zones, from the commercial giants of North America to the tiny island associations of the Caribbean? How did a single Trinidadian official come to dominate its politics for more than two decades? And how did a sweeping corruption scandal expose financial schemes that reached from a football stadium in Port-of-Spain to courtrooms in Zurich? Those are the threads this documentary follows.

• 2. Power on the Pitch

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  Mexico dominated CONCACAF men's competitions from the start. The Mexico national team holds the record for most Gold Cup victories, and it remains the only CONCACAF side to win an official FIFA tournament, taking the 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup. Mexico and the United States have won all but one edition of the CONCACAF Gold Cup between them, a statistic that underlines just how stark the gap was between the region's two largest football markets and everyone else.

  The United States national women's team tells an even more emphatic story. It is the only CONCACAF member to have won all three of the major worldwide competitions in women's football: the World Cup four times, the Olympic Games five times, and the Algarve Cup ten times. Canada is the only other CONCACAF member to have taken at least two of those prizes, winning the 2016 Algarve Cup and the 2020 Olympic gold medal.

  Smaller nations have carved out their own landmark moments. Costa Rica became the fourth CONCACAF country to reach a World Cup quarterfinal when it did so in 2014, following the United States, Cuba, and Mexico. Panama became the eleventh CONCACAF nation to appear at a World Cup at all when it qualified in 2018. Jamaica, for its part, claimed a piece of history in 1998 by defeating Japan 2-1, making it the smallest country ever to win a World Cup match. The CONCACAF Nations League, established in 2018, added a new tier of regular competition; the United States has won the most editions of that tournament, with three.

• 3. The Caribbean Bloc

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  Trinidad's Jack Warner served as CONCACAF president from 1990 to 2011, a tenure of 21 years. His grip on the confederation was inseparable from the voting arithmetic at the CONCACAF Congress, where elections follow a strict one-member, one-vote rule. The Caribbean Football Union holds 31 of CONCACAF's 41 member associations. That is enough, by itself, to outvote the North American Football Union and the Central American Football Union combined, even with fewer than half of Caribbean members participating.

  Warner understood this leverage precisely. Under his presidency, Caribbean members voted together as a disciplined unit, with Warner acting as what sports political commentators called a party whip. He rejected a proposal in 1993 to merge several smaller Caribbean nations into a single Pan-Caribbean team. His reasoning was direct: he stated that small nations were more powerful politically when separate than when united, and that "being small is never a liability in this sport."

  This concentration of voting power created lasting friction between the three zones. Former Acting-President Alfredo Hawit lobbied in 2011 for the CONCACAF presidency to rotate between the three unions, a proposal that reflected how trapped non-Caribbean members felt. The North American Football Union is the smallest association union by member count, with only three nations, yet those three nations provide the strongest commercial and marketing revenue in the region. Power in the stands and power at the ballot box pointed in opposite directions.

• 4. Scandal and Reckoning

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  At the CONCACAF Congress in Budapest in May 2012, legal counsel John P. Collins disclosed a set of financial irregularities that laid bare what had been hidden during Warner's two-decade tenure. Collins revealed that Warner had registered the $22 million "Dr. João Havelange Centre of Excellence" development in Port-of-Spain under the names of two companies he personally owned. He had also secured a mortgage against that asset in 2007 without the knowledge of the confederation's members. The mortgage was co-signed by Lisle Austin, a former CONCACAF vice-president. The loan defaulted.

  Collins further revealed that CONCACAF, despite generating most of its income from the United States, had not paid any tax to the Internal Revenue Service since at least 2007 and had never filed a return in the country. BDO, a New York-based consultancy, was brought in to conduct a full audit, but the firm's work was delayed by Warner and his personal accountant. Chuck Blazer, who served as general secretary during the same period as Warner, stated that the accounts could not be signed off as a consequence.

  The sequence of events that brought Warner down began with a the 10th of May 2011 meeting of the Caribbean Football Union. Warner was suspended as president by FIFA on the 30th of May 2011 following corruption allegations. On the 20th of June 2011, he resigned from all posts in football entirely. The vice-president, Alfredo Hawit, stepped into the acting role. Cayman Islands banker Jeffrey Webb was installed as president in May 2012, only to be arrested in Zurich on the 27th of May 2015 on corruption charges filed in the United States. When Blazer reported Warner's conduct to the FIFA Ethics Committee, the acting president Austin sent him a letter declaring him terminated as general secretary "with immediate effect," calling his actions "inexcusable and a gross misconduct of duty and judgement." The CONCACAF executive committee later ruled that Austin lacked the authority to make that dismissal.

• 5. The Club Game

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  Since 1962, the CONCACAF Champions Cup has served as the region's premier club competition, organizing the top clubs from across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean into an annual continental tournament. The winner earns a place in the FIFA Club World Cup. Mexican clubs have been the dominant force, accumulating 36 titles in the competition's history. No other country comes close; Costa Rica's Primera División ranks second with six titles.

  Club América and Cruz Azul, both from Mexico, share the record for the most individual club victories with seven titles each. The competition expanded significantly from 2024, with 27 teams now participating: 18 from North America, 6 from Central America, and 3 from the Caribbean. Across all CONCACAF club competitions combined, Mexican clubs hold a total of 47 titles, North American clubs as a region have accumulated 51, while Central American clubs sit at 20 and Caribbean clubs at 6.

  CONCACAF launched a club ranking index on the 16th of May 2023, used to seed teams in future competitions. Liga MX sits atop the league rankings, followed by Major League Soccer and Costa Rica's Liga FPD, reflecting the widening commercial gap between the North American leagues and the rest of the region. The Women's Club Ranking was released in June 2025 ahead of the draw for the 2025-26 CONCACAF W Champions Cup, marking a formal step toward structured competition on the women's club side.

• 6. Hosting the World

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  Mexico hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970, the first World Cup staged in North America and the first held outside Europe and South America. FIFA's congress chose Mexico in 1964 over the only other submitted bid, from Argentina. The 1970 tournament produced an average goals-per-game record that no subsequent World Cup has bettered, set against the challenges of altitude and high temperatures. It also attracted a record television audience and, for the first time, broadcast in color.

  Mexico stepped in again in 1986, becoming the first country to host the World Cup twice. Colombia had been chosen as host in June 1974 but declared in November 1982 that it could not afford to stage the tournament. Mexico was selected as replacement host on the 20th of May 1983, beating bids from Canada and the United States, with the second Mexican tournament arriving 16 years after the first.

  The United States won the right to host the 1994 World Cup in a vote held in Zurich on the 4th of July 1988, defeating bids from Brazil and Morocco. One condition FIFA imposed was the creation of a professional football league; Major League Soccer launched in 1996 as a direct result. The 1994 tournament drew an average attendance of nearly 69,000 per match, surpassing the 1966 World Cup's average of 51,000. Total attendance for that tournament of nearly 3.6 million remains the highest in World Cup history, even after the field expanded to 32 teams at the 1998 edition. Canada, Mexico, and the United States are now set to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a first for a three-nation hosting arrangement.

• 7. Membership and Future

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  CONCACAF is incorporated as a non-profit company registered in Nassau, The Bahamas. Its headquarters sit in Miami, though the organization's address has shifted with its politics: it was previously based at the Admiral Financial Center in George Town, Cayman Islands, the home city of former president Jeffrey Webb, and before that in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago during Warner's tenure. The general secretary's administration office once occupied space in Trump Tower, New York.

  The confederation has been adding satellite offices. A location in Kingston, Jamaica opened in February 2017, followed by a second in Guatemala City in July 2017, shared with the Central American Football Union. A FIFA Caribbean Development Office satellite opened in the Barbados suburb of Welches in Bridgetown shortly after.

  Greenland spent years pursuing membership. The Football Association of Greenland announced in May 2022 that it had begun the formal process. Its president Kenneth Kleist, elected in October 2023, stated that Greenland had been told it was "quite close to admission." The association submitted a full membership application on the 28th of May 2024. The answer came in June 2025, when CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani announced at the confederation's 28th Extraordinary Congress that Greenland's application had been unanimously rejected.