Cuba going for the ‘W’ against Guyana in final Group ‘D’ match today
Guyana’s women U-17 team
Guyana’s women U-17 team

– Lady Jags playing for pride

“WE are Cubans, we will fight to the end and we will beat Guyana because we’re Cubans” Cuba’s Head Coach Lazra Ruiz Alfonso told reporters following his team’s scoreless draw against Barbados on Friday at the Leonora Track and Field Facility.
The result meant that today’s clash between Cuba and Guyana in the final Group D match of the CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Caribbean Qualifiers will be more than intriguing considering the narrative.

Barbados defeated Guyana 5 – 1 in their opening game and the draw against the Cubans meant that the ‘Bajans’ are on four points and holding a superior goal difference (+4) over the competition.
For Cuba to advance to the final stage of the Caribbean Qualifiers in Haiti, they will have to defeat Guyana by more than five goals. Simply put, the Cubans will have to finish the match with a superior goal difference than Barbados to advance.

“We have to be careful going into this final game because no game is equal to the other. I’m going to work on a structure going into the game because we didn’t score against Barbados and in football, especially a match like this, you win it with goals” Alphonso said.
According to the Cuban Coach, “I normally speak with the players, let them be organised and just look forward to scoring and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Meanwhile, Akilha Castello, head coach for the Lady Jags, believes that they’ve done their part and irrespective of today’s outcome, she’s happy with the progress made by the girls over the past couple of months.

Guyana, by virtue of their defeat against Barbados, is out of the tournament, but Castello said the ladies will be playing for more than pride, since a win will boost their morale going ahead in the GFF’s Women’s programme.
The 2018 CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Championship qualification is a women’s Under-17 football competition which decides the participating teams of the 2018 CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Championship. A total of eight teams will play in the final tournament.
The 2018 CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Championship will be the 6th edition of the CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Championship, the biennial international youth football championship, organised by CONCACAF for the women’s Under-17 national teams of the North, Central American and Caribbean region.

The top three teams of the tournament will qualify for the 2018 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup in Uruguay as the CONCACAF representatives.
In the Caribbean Zone, 19 Caribbean Football Union (CFU) member national teams have entered the qualifying competition, consisting of two stages.Apart from Haiti, who received a bye as hosts of the final round, the remaining 18 teams entered the first round and were divided into three groups of four teams and two groups of three teams.

The winners of each group advance to the final round to join Haiti, where they will be divided into two groups of three teams, with the top three teams qualifying for the final tournament as the CFU representatives.
Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, Guyana, and St Vincent and the Grenadines were automatically seeded in Groups A–E respectively as hosts of each first round group, while the remaining 14 teams were seeded based on the results of the previous two editions of the qualifying competition.

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