Following the awarding of the rights of the FIFA Women’s U20 World Cup to Costa Rica and Panama, the Lady Jaguars and Saint Kitts and Nevis have been selected to compete in the second round of the CONCACAF women’s tournament in the Dominican Republic from February 22nd-March 8th.
This is, according to a press release from the Guyana Football Federation (GFF).
As hosts of the FIFA Women’s U20 World Cup, Panama and Costa Rica will not compete in the CONCACAF women’s tournament thus paving the way for Guyana and Saint Kitts and Nevis, who were the group-A and group-B qualifying tournament winners respectively to play in the second round.
“The historic and welcome news was communicated to the General Secretary (ag.) of the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) Rev. Ian Alves by Concacaf Director of Football Competitions, Carlos Fernandez,” stated the release from the GFF.
As respective group winners of the qualifying round, Guyana and St. Kitts and Nevis had initially sealed their berths to the round of 16 section of the final tournament. However, they will now compete in the group stage of the CONCACAF second round.
Guyana has been drawn in Group-D alongside Mexico, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. They will open their campaign against Nicaragua on February 23rd, before battling Puerto Rico two days later. In their final group match, Guyana will oppose Mexico on the 27th.
Saint Kitts and Nevis will feature in Group-F with Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago and Cayman Islands. The other groups are Group-C: United States, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Cuba and Group-E: Canada, Jamaica, Guatemala and El Salvador.
“The third placed teams from Group A (Bermuda) and Group B (Barbados) from the qualifying round will replace the slot 1A (Guyana) and slot 1B (Saint Kitts & Nevis) in the round of 16 section.
“Concacaf also informed that the confederation would have been awarded an additional slot as hosts of the FIFA Women’s Under-20 World Cup, 2020 in addition to the three slots originally assigned. The two slots available would be determined by champion and runner-up teams at the 2020 Concacaf Women’s Under-20 Championship and therefore, no third place match would be played,” stated the release.
