Regional teams to begin 2014 World Cup qualification
TDN Newsdesk
Wednesday April 27, 2011 @ 12:15 a.m.
Roseau (TDN)-Dominica is expected to be in a group involving Antigua, Guyana, Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Guatemala as it prepares for the 2014 World Cup campaign carded for Brazil.
The Dominica football team in the 2010 Caribbean Cup. |
In a new qualifying format proposed by the CONCACAF Executive Committee and still awaiting full approval from FIFA, the 10 lowest CONCACAF teams in the FIFA rankings will face off in two-leg series June 3 and June 7, 2011.
If authorized by FIFA , in the first leg, the winners between Montserrat v Belize, Anguilla v Dominican Republic, U.S. Virgin Islands v British Virgin Islands, Aruba v St. Lucia and Bahamas v Turks and Caicos Islands would advance to the first group phase.
They would join the next highest 19 teams from the FIFA rankings in one of six, four-team groups with games played from September to November later this year.
The group winners would then qualify for a three-group semifinal round - tentatively set for June-October 2012 -- along with the top six CONCACAF teams from the March FIFA rankings: the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica, Costa Rica and Cuba.
The top two teams from each of the semifinal round groups would advance to a six-team final round group - referred to by some in previous years as the "Hexagonal" -- to be played from February to October 2013. The final round would determine CONCACAF's three guaranteed berths and a fourth team that will enter a playoff with a side from another confederation for a final place.
Although not yet approved, the preliminary round winners would be included in a pot at the World Cup Preliminary Draw along with Bermuda.
Three other pots would include teams based on the March rankings. Puerto Rico, Barbados, Curacao, St. Vincent, the Cayman Islands and Nicaragua in one; Antigua, Guyana, Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis, Guatemala and Dominica in another; and Panama Canada, El Salvador, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago and Haiti in the last.
Dominica is currently ranked at 131 in the world out of 202 countries, and is positioned at number 7 in the Eastern Caribbean behind Jamaica (64), Trinidad and Tobago (94), Grenada (99), Antigua (100), Guyana (110) and St. Kitts Nevis (119).
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