Concacaf restructures women’s calendar
Published:Friday | December 11, 2020 | 12:16 AM
Concacaf announced a revamped women’s international football calendar for the next four years yesterday, which includes an increase of international games and competitions for all member associations.
The modified calendar, which is expected to be in place from 2021 to 2024, will increase the number of matches and competitions for home nations compared to previous years, with the goal of ‘transforming women’s national team football across the entire confederation. The changes were approved by the Concacaf Council and are part of Concacaf W, an initiative that was launched in June 2019 to grow the women’s game in the region.
QUALIFICATION STRUCTURE
Regional qualification for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023 will now begin in November 2021, where teams ranked third and below in Concacaf will participate in the semi-final stage, where they will be drawn into six groups of five. The group winners will qualify for a centralised final event. The United States of American and Canada, the two top-ranked team, according to the August 2020 FIFA/Coca Cola World rankings, will proceed straight to that final round of qualifying, which is scheduled for April 2022.
The 2023 Women’s World Cup will see the tournament feature 32 teams after FIFA unanimously approved the competition’s expansion in July 2019. Details regarding qualification allocations for the region are still to be determined.
The Women’s Nations League was also added to the calendar and is set to start in 2023 with a ‘centralised final event’ to take place in 2024. Concacaf says qualification for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris will be organised using the new calendar.
Concacaf President Victor Montagliani says that the new calendar will be beneficial to improving the quality of women’s football in the region.
“These new competitions will help us further harness the growth in women’s football that we have seen in this region as a result of the last two FIFA Women’s World Cups,” he said. “I am confident they will have a very positive impact on the women’s game at all levels in Concacaf.”