Mt Pleasant Academy plays host to young Reggae Boyz

MOUNT PLEASANT Academy began hosting the Jamaica Under-15 boys football squad on Friday and will continue to do so until Wednesday.

The group is preparing for the 2023 Concacaf Boys’ U-15 Championship. The tournament is scheduled to take place in Curacao and the Dominican Republic from August 6-13.

Mount Pleasant Academy, a private state-of-the-art facility situated in Runaway Bay, St Ann, is a football academy for young developing students as well as a Premier League football club.

The fourth edition of the competition will include the participation of 42 boys’ U-15 teams, 40 from Concacaf, and two guest nations from the Asian Football Confederation.

The competition will continue to be played in a three-League format (A, B, and C), starting with group stage play and followed by a knockout stage.

The 42 participating teams have been distributed into the leagues based on the Concacaf Men’s Under-17 Ranking as of February 2023.

League A: 16 teams (14 highest ranked and two guest nations): Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, and United States.

LEAGUE B AND C TEAMS

League B: 16 teams (next highest ranked teams): Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Suriname.

League C 10 teams (lowest ranked teams): Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, French Guiana, Montserrat, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Turks & Caicos Islands, and US Virgin Islands.

All League A matches will take place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, while Willemstad, Curaçao, will play host to Leagues B and C.

The last edition of the competition took place in 2019 at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. The 2021 edition of the competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.