Chasing Down the Ghosts of the Hex: Why I Needed That 2018 Table
I swear, sometimes I spend my time on the stupidest stuff. This whole thing kicked off last week when I was chatting with an old college buddy about the current World Cup qualifying mess. He brought up 2018, and specifically, that wild final night where the US went down. He was dead set that Trinidad and Tobago had nothing to play for when they faced the US. I knew that was rubbish. They were playing for pride, sure, but the result still mattered big time to the whole dynamic of the Hex. The argument got heated, the kind where you know you’re right, but you realize finding the definitive proof is going to be a massive pain in the butt.
So, I hung up, grabbed my coffee, and decided I was going to build the final table myself if I couldn’t find a clean, official screenshot. I needed the concrete numbers, the points, the goal difference—the whole shebang. This wasn’t just about winning the argument; it was about nailing down the history.
The Initial Scramble: Digging Through Old News
My first move was obvious: I just typed the basic stuff into the search bar. ‘2018 Concacaf Hex final standings.’ Man, what a mess. Most of what popped up were breathless live blogs from the day it happened, showing partial tables or ‘as it stands’ results. That stuff is useless for a clean, archived record. One site had Mexico listed with 21 points, another had 20. Total chaos. I kept digging, trying to find an official FIFA or CONCACAF archival page. You know those official sites? They are always the absolute worst to navigate once the tournament is over. They bury the old stuff so deep you need a shovel and a map, and half the time the link is broken anyway.
I realized quick that I couldn’t trust any single source that just showed an image. I had to go back round by round, game by game, and tally the results myself. That’s when the real work started. I needed to isolate the six teams: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, USA, and Trinidad & Tobago.
- First thing, I pulled up the schedule for all 10 rounds of the Hex. I needed to make sure I wasn’t missing any rescheduled games, though thankfully, the Hex schedule is usually pretty straightforward.
- I started a basic spreadsheet—nothing fancy, just six columns wide to track the main stats.
- For every single match, I recorded the final score and then manually updated the points tally for both teams involved. Three points for a win, one for a draw.
Compiling the Raw Data: The Points Check and the Goal Difference Grind
It took me maybe two hours just to verify all forty-five match results against reliable, independent sources. I had to be absolutely paranoid about the scores because I knew Goal Difference (GD) was going to be the tie-breaker that decided who went to Russia directly and who went to the playoff. Panama and Honduras were so tight on that final day; I had to be precise.
After I hammered through the Wins (W), Draws (D), and Losses (L), I had the skeleton of the final standings. I could see the overall hierarchy immediately:
- Mexico: Clearly top, cruising through.
- Costa Rica: Solid second place, never really worried.
- Panama and Honduras: The absolute nail-biters, battling for that final automatic spot and the playoff slot. This is where the GD was critical.
- USA: The massive fall.
- T&T: Anchoring the bottom, but boy, did they play spoiler.
The crucial part was the goal math. I had to painstakingly subtract Goals Against (GA) from Goals For (GF) for every single team across all ten matches. That’s where the picture really cleared up for third and fourth place. I had to verify that legendary Panama late goal against Costa Rica—the one that sealed their spot. Was it a clear goal? Yes. Was it correctly logged and updated? Yes, my numbers matched the official records. It’s funny how verifying one single, contentious goal can shift the entire history of a qualification campaign.
The Final Table: Putting the Standings to Rest
Once I finished the arithmetic, the data was locked in. I finally had the definitive, verified table, ready to shove in my buddy’s face. The whole exercise wasn’t just about winning an argument; it was about confirming how ridiculously close the entire qualification round was at the bottom end of the standings.
Here is how the final table shook out. I’m listing the column headers so you can track the stats just like I did:
The 2018 CONCACAF Hexagonal Final Standings (October 2017)
- Team (T)
- Games Played (GP)
- Wins (W)
- Draws (D)
- Losses (L)
- Goals For (GF)
- Goals Against (GA)
- Goal Difference (GD)
- Points (P)
The numbers confirmed it all. Mexico sitting comfortably at the top with a massive 21 points. Costa Rica safe in second with 16. Then you look at Panama and Honduras. They both finished on 13 points. But that goal difference! Panama snuck in with a +0 GD, while Honduras sat at a rough -6. That difference in scoring was everything. It sent Panama straight to Russia for the first time ever and pushed Honduras into the intercontinental playoff round (which they eventually lost to Australia).
And the US? Ten games played, a paltry 12 points, sitting fifth with a GD of -5. That humiliating loss to T&T, even if T&T was already eliminated, was the final nail. It wasn’t about T&T playing for nothing; it was about the US failing to earn a single point when they needed it most. That result was crucial because a draw for the US, combined with the other results, still would have sent them to the playoff spot instead of Honduras.
It was a long process just to confirm a five-year-old sports fact, navigating confusing old news articles and broken federation pages, but man, digging into the historical data and making sure the math checks out is always satisfying. Now I have this clean record, and next time that buddy calls, I don’t have to scramble. I just open the file. Practice makes perfect, even when the practice is just counting goals from 2017.