July 25 – Jamaica has stepped up to host the CONCACAF U20 championship next January. Before that the Caribbean island is hosting the finals of the CFU Men’s Caribbean Cup this November 9-18.
Kingston and Montego Bay will be the venues for the CONCACAF Under-20 Championship which kicks off on January 9. The National Stadium in Kingston and the Montego Bay Sports Complex will host group matches, with the final round to be played in Montego Bay on January 24.
The format of the 2015 CONCACAF Under-20 Championship has been revamped with the 12 qualifying teams being divided into two groups of six, to play a round-robin format on the first five match days.
The group winners will play in the final with the second and third placed teams from each group re-seeded into a group of four with the top team playing the fourth and the second and third playing off. Winners will play off for third overall and a place with the two finalists at the FIFA Under-20 World Cup New Zealand 2015.
“Jamaica has a strong sporting culture, and I am sure Jamaicans will once again create a passionate atmosphere for the championship,” said CONCACAF President Jeffrey Webb.
Five nations from the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), four from the Central American Football Union (UNCAF), and three from North America make it to the CONCACAF U20 finals. Mexico are defending champions and have twice been world champions winning in Puebla, Mexico, in 2013 and in Guatemala City in 2011.
This November Jamaica will see international senior team competition with the CFU Caribbean Cup Finals. The eight team finals have already qualified Jamaica as hosts and Cuba as reigning champions.
The top four teams from the CFU Cup qualify for the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup automatically while the fifth place team will play a playoff match against the fifth place team from the 2014 Copa Centroamericana tournament. This is the first time that the two overall fifth-placed teams compete to qualify for the CONCACAF Gold Cup, previously five teams from Central America and four from the Caribbean have qualified for the Confederation’s competition.
The winner of the tournament will also qualify for the 2016 Copa América Centenario, the ground-breaking 16-team tournament of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF national teams to be held in the US in 2016
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