Soon the world will be a changed place. As United States soccer fans, one of our greatest missions in life will have slipped through our grasp potentially forever. CONCACAF has already decided that the qualifying process for teams in their region for World Cup 2014 should be changed, and it's only a matter of time until FIFA agrees (since writing this article FIFA has agreed), not only ruining the best rivalry the United States has, but also doing a much worse job of preparing both the United States and Mexico for quality matches when they matter. In order to preface the changes that are coming to this qualifying for 2014, we must first look at how the region went through qualification for the World Cup in 2010.

First Round: Teams ranked 14th - 24th were matched up against teams ranked 25th - 35th and they played home and away matches, with the winner going to the Second Round. Second Round: Teams ranked 1-12th were matched up with the 12 winners of the first round, playing home and away, winners going to the Third Round Third Round: 3 Groups of 4, seeded based on rankings, where they each play a round robin of home and away matches. The top two teams moving to the Fourth Round Fourth Round: Known as the Hexaganol, or Hex, 6 teams from the third round play a round robin of home and away matches and the top 3 teams go to the World Cup, with the 4th place team playing the 5th place team from South America for a chance to go to the World Cup.

Sound Simple enough? This format would not allow the United States and Mexico to face each other until the Fourth Round, but those two matches were the most important to the fans of both countries and the players as well. These were hard fought and often times violent matches, with Mexican fans routinely throwing bottle of urine at players taking corners for the USA, and the United States scheduling their match in the worst possible environment for their Southern Rivals. Just last year the game at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City was scheduled at noon to further amplify the heat, smog and altitude advantages that the Mexicans held over the United States players. Not to be outdone, the last three matches between the teams in the United States were held in Columbus, Ohio. This doesn't sound bad until you realize that two of those matches had conditions so cold and blustery (verging on snow on one occasion) that Mexicans call the matches "The Cold War". These conditions and hostile environments have caused an almost unprecedented home field advantage in qualifying for the two teams. For myself and many other Americans, outside of seeing the United States win a Confederations Cup or World Cup, the next biggest thing would be to see the stunned silence of over 100,000 Mexicans as the United States takes three points from the Azteca, a place in which we have never won. However seeing the new format for CONCACAF qualifying you will see that there is almost no potential way for the United States (ranked 18) and Mexico (ranked 28) to play each other, due to the fact that it would seed them at the top of their groups, seperating them for the entirety of the qualification. Not only does this stop great games from occurring but it limits both nations prepartions for the World Cups that they would be qualifying for. Being as though Mexico and the United States are by far the highest ranked teams in the region (Honduras is 3rd in CONCACAF at 52) They will quickly lose any ability to play against bigger teams that prepare us for the World Cup. There is something to be said for the fact that teams like Germany, Italy, Brazil and Argentina do well in high levels of competition, and it's because they play difficult teams in Qualifying. (even the 3rd ranked team in Spain's group for EURO2012 qualifying is Scotland at 47) Without having to face each other, the United States and Mexico's most difficult challengers to them winning their groups would be Costa Rica and Honduras, minnows when compared to the USA and Mexico in CONCACAF.

Not only is this the death of great competitions between the two largest teams of the area, but we lose the ability for either team to put one over on their most hated rival, ruining a great way to bring in new fans of both teams. I for one am severely dissappointed and saddened by these developments and am quite upset by the fact that I will likely never see the United States go into that hell hole that is the Azteca Stadium and get 3 points in qualification.