April 9 – Concacaf is to play its 2018 Women’s Championship in the US in three cities: Cary, N.C., Edinburg, Texas, and Frisco, Texas. The tournament will be played October 4-17.
The competition will qualify three countries directly to the France 2019 Women’s World Cup, and one more to an inter-confederation play-off with a Conmebol nation. The eight teams will meet in two groups of four playing in Cary and Edinburg, with the top four in each group qualifying for the semi-finals in Frisco.
USA, Canada and Mexico are pre-qualified directly into the tournament. The USA will be seeded into Group A to be played at Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, while Canada will be the seeded team in Group B at H-E-B Park in Edinburg.
The North Americans will be joined by two from Central America and three from the Caribbean.
Central America qualifying tournament will be played in Nicaragua from July 6-10, between Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama.
In the Caribbean 23 countries will begin qualification on May 5 – Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands and US Virgin Islands.
Group winners will qualify for the final round of Caribbean qualifying August 18-26.
Before then the Caribbean women’s team will see competition in the CFU’s Women’s Challenge Series this month as the regional sub-confederation seeks to boost participation and competition in the women’s game.
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