Boyz get favourable World Cup draw

ZURICH, Switzerland (CMC):

Caribbean Football Union (CFU) No. 1 team Jamaica will headline Group E in the second round of Concacaf qualifiers for the 2026 Fifa World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

Concacaf announced that the draw for the qualifiers took place yesterday at the home of the sport’s world governing body, FIFA, in the Swiss city of Zurich, revealing the groups for the second round of qualification for the global showpiece.

The Jamaicans will face Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, and the winners of the first-round match-up between the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), which will take place in March 2024.

The Reggae Boyz, under the guidance of Brazilian coach René Simões, were the first English-speaking Caribbean team to play in the World Cup when they qualified for the 1998 tournament in France, where they finished third in their first-round group between three-time champions Argentina and European regular Croatia.

The Jamaicans have failed to qualify for the tournament since then, but the availability of several players who are regular starters in the English Premier League, as well as Major League Soccer and the United Soccer League in the United States, gives them the talent base to end that drought in the next two years.

Concacaf No. 4 Trinidad & Tobago, the only other English-speaking CFU team to play in the World Cup, will feature in Group B of the second round of Concacaf qualification, which is headlined by Costa Rica and includes Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, and minnows Bahamas.

Group A will comprise Honduras, Antigua & Barbuda, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, and Cuba, while Group C includes CFU No. 2 Haiti, Aruba, Barbados, Curaçao and St Lucia.

Guyana, who earned promotion to the top-flight of the Concacaf Nations League last year, will be part of Group D, which is headlined by Concacaf No. 3 Panama, as well as Belize, Montserrat, and Nicaragua, while Group F will bring together El Salvador, Puerto Rico, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and the winners of the first-round match-up between Turks & Caicos Islands and Anguilla.

Because Canada, Mexico, and the United States are joint hosts of the World Cup, they are exempt from the Concacaf qualifiers and have direct qualification for the tournament – and the other 30 teams in the confederation will contest the second round.

The first round of World Cup qualification for Concacaf teams will take place in March this year among the four lowest-ranked teams – BVI, USVI, TCI and Anguilla – based on the FIFA men’s rankings as of December last year.

In the second round, the teams will play single round-robin matches (two home and two away), with the six group winners and six group runners-up advancing to the 12-team third round of qualification.

The second round of qualifiers will be played over the course of two match days in June this year and then another two match days in June next year.