GUYANA will begin their journey to the FIFA U-17 World Cup today when they face Barbados at the Leonora Track and Field Centre, in the opening match of Group D the CONCACAF U-17 Women’s Qualifiers. Kick-off time is 17:00hrs.

Both Guyana and Barbados are entering the match claiming a victory, but, more importantly, the two countries, similarly, are eager to see the fruits of their labour.
With women football in the Caribbean on the decline, several federations across the region, over the last two years, have been investing heavily in grassroots programme, and as such, Guyana and Barbados head coaches spoke of their tireless efforts to ensure that their countries are properly represented.

For Barbados, coach Thomas Jordan said his team has been together for close to a year and is made up of players who participated in last year’s U-15 tournament in the USA.
Thomas said the women are well prepared, given the fact that the Barbados Football Federation has been actively pursuing and helping to sustain a systematic youth development programme, starting from the U-13 level.
Akilah Castello, Guyana head coach said her squad is diverse since it’s made up of players representing the various Guyana Football Federation (GFF) Academy Training Centres (ATC) across Guyana.

According to Castello, over the last couple of months, the team worked hard and showed continued improvement.
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 are 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.