JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Soca Warriors await Concacaf Third Round draw

by

Nigel Simon
38 days ago
20250610

Fol­low­ing their suc­cess­ful nav­i­ga­tion of the Sec­ond Round of the 2026 Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers to the 2026 FI­FA World Cup to be joint­ly held in the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, the T&T So­ca War­riors will now await to­day's 12-team draw from 7 pm.

The So­ca War­riors went un­der to Cos­ta Ri­ca in their fi­nal Group B match in the five-team round-robin with sev­en points, five adrift of the Cos­ta Ri­cans, while Grena­da al­so end­ed with sev­en points, but with an in­fe­ri­or goal-dif­fer­ence to T&T.

Fol­low­ing the end of the Sec­ond-Round qual­i­fiers, T&T and Cos­ta Ri­ca were joined by Group A (Hon­duras, Bermu­da); Group B (Cos­ta Ri­ca, T&T); Group C (Cu­ra­cao, Haiti); Group D (Pana­ma, Nicaragua); Group E (Ja­maica, Guatemala) and Group F (Suri­name, El Sal­vador).

The fi­nal round will fea­ture the group win­ners and run­ners-up (12 teams in to­tal) of the sec­ond round, di­vid­ed in­to three groups of four teams each.

The draw will be ex­e­cut­ed us­ing a sin­gle-blind sys­tem in­volv­ing four pots, with the par­tic­i­pat­ing 12 teams dis­trib­uted in­to the pots ac­cord­ing to the FI­FA/Co­ca-Co­la men's world rank­ing as fol­lows and based on the pots the two T&T, ranked 100th, are as­sured not to face are Haiti, ranked 86th, and Guatemala, ranked 105th, as they are all in Pot Three.

Pot 1: #31 Pana­ma, #50 Cos­ta Ri­ca, #62 Ja­maica (Three high­est-ranked teams)

Pot 2: #73 Hon­duras, #81 El Sal­vador, #85 Cu­ra­cao (Three next high­est-ranked teams)

Pot 3: #86 Haiti, #100 T&T, #105 Guatemala (Three next high­est-ranked teams)

Pot 4: #131 Nicaragua, #134 Suri­name, #162 Bermu­da (Three low­est-ranked teams)

The draw will be­gin by ran­dom­ly se­lect­ing a sphere from Pot 1 and plac­ing that team in­to Group A, po­si­tion A1. The sec­ond sphere drawn will place a team in­to Group B, po­si­tion B1, and the third in­to Group C, po­si­tion C1.

This process will then be re­peat­ed for Pots 2, 3 and 4, se­quen­tial­ly plac­ing teams in­to Groups A, B and C. At the end of the draw, each group will con­tain one team from each pot.

In the fi­nal round, teams will play every oth­er team in their group home and away, play­ing a to­tal of six match­es (three at home and three away). These match­es will be played dur­ing Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2025.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the fi­nal round, the three group win­ners will qual­i­fy di­rect­ly for the FI­FA World Cup 2026, join­ing hosts Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the Unit­ed States.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the two best run­ners-up will rep­re­sent Con­ca­caf in the FI­FA Play-Off Tour­na­ment where they will be joined by one team each from AFC, CAF, CON­MEBOL and OFC in the in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-offs.

The teams will be ranked ac­cord­ing to the FI­FA men's world rank­ing, with the four low­est-ranked teams play­ing in two sin­gle-elim­i­na­tion match­es.

The win­ners will meet the two high­est-ranked teams in an­oth­er set of sin­gle-elim­i­na­tion match­es, with the win­ners of these match­es qual­i­fy­ing for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup. For the first time, the Con­ca­caf re­gion could have up to eight teams at the FI­FA World Cup.

Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing Third Round sched­ule:

Sep­tem­ber 1 - 9, 2025: Match­day 1 & Match­day 2

Oc­to­ber 6 -14, 2025: Match­day 3 & Match­day 4

No­vem­ber 10-18, 2025: Match­day 5 & Match­day 6


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored