THE Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) held the draw for the initial phases of the CONCACAF Preliminary Competition for the FIFA World Cup 2018 and it was revealed the Guyana’s Golden Jaguars will kick off their quest to Russia against St Vincent and Grenadines in June.
Matches will be played on a home-and-away basis between June 8 and 16. The two countries have met five times, since 2007, splitting the record at two wins each and a draw.
In the 2007 Caribbean Cup, St Vincent defeated Guyana 2-0. The next meeting which was on January 13, 2008, Guyana came away 1-0 winners.
On January 28, 2008, the two countries played to a 2-2 draw but the Jaguars on November 6, 2010 won 2-0. The last time the two sides met, February 19, 2012, St Vincent won 1-0.
The CONCACAF event was held at the W Hotel South Beach in Miami last Thursday, with the assistance of World Cup veterans from the region including Trinidad and Tobago’s Shaka Hislop, Mexico’s Pavel Pardo, Carlos Pavon from Honduras, and Tony Sanneh of the United States, as well as Brazilian all-time great Ronaldo.
The draw involved 27 of the 35 CONCACAF member associations seeking to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and determined the match-ups for the first two rounds of the five-round regional qualifying tournament in CONCACAF, which begins in March and runs through 2017.
Round One, which will be played in two legs on dates from March 23 to 31 this year, features seven home-and-away series, among the CONCACAF member associations ranked 22-35 in the region in the FIFA rankings from August 2014 – the first ranking after the completion of the 2014 World Cup and thus the first of the 2018 World Cup cycle.
The Round One series will be contestted between the following nations, with the team set to host the initial leg listed first:
Match 1: Bahamas v. Bermuda
Match 2: British Virgin Islands v Dominica
Match 3: Barbados v US Virgin Islands
Match 4: Turks and Caicos Islands v St Kitts and Nevis
Match 5: Nicaragua v Anguilla
Match 6: Belize v Cayman Islands
Match 7: Curacao v Montserrat
Round Two of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying will be played from June 8 to 16, 2015, and features the seven winners from Round One plus thirteen additional national teams, who were drawn into the following ten pairings:
Match 8: St Vincent and the Grenadines v. Guyana
Match 9: Antigua and Barbuda v St Lucia
Match 10: Puerto Rico v Grenada
Match 11: Canada v Winner Match #2
Match 12: Dominica v Winner Match #6
Match 13: Guatemala v Winner Match #1
Match 14: Aruba v Winner Match #3
Match 15: Winner Match #4 v El Salvador
Match 16: Winner Match #7 v Cuba
Match 17: Winner Match #5 v Suriname
Round Three will follow from August 31 to September 8 of this year, and consists of another series of home-and-away match-ups featuring the ten Round Two series winners, joined by the two member associations ranked 7 and 8 – Jamaica and Haiti.
The final six CONCACAF member associations (Costa Rica, Mexico, United States, Honduras, Panama, and Trinidad & Tobago – in order of rank) will join the competition for Round Four, which consists of three groups of four teams and is scheduled to be played in a round-robin format between November 2015 and September 2016.
Round Five, which will qualify three CONCACAF nations directly to the FIFA World Cup and provide a further intercontinental playoff spot for the fourth-placed team, will be played in the traditional six-team, hexagonal format among the top two teams from each Round Four group. This final round of World Cup qualifying in CONCACAF is scheduled to be contested from November 2016 to October 2017.
The match-ups for Round Three, as well as seeds for Round Four of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying will be determined at the FIFA World Cup Qualifying Draw in St Petersburg, Russia, on July 25, 2015.
