Three things to know about the CONCACAF Women’s Championship

The 2018 CONCACAF Women’s Championship will be held in the USA with the participation of teams from Central and North America as well as the Caribbean. Here are three things you need to know about the tournament, which will decide the teams that will represent the region next year at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France:

What national teams will participate in the 2018 tournament?

This edition will have 8 teams divided in two groups.

Group A has the host country, the United States, which is the current World Cup champion and it is ranked #1 in the World. The Americans will try to defend the title they won four years ago. Mexico, which is ranked 24th, will try to qualify for the fourth time to the World Cup tournament. Trinidad & Tobago, which was fourth place in the last edition, will fight to get into their first World Cup appearance in team history. The fourth team in group A is Panama. The Central American team is coming to their third CONCACAF tournament with the mission to emulated what the men’s team did a year ago when they qualified to their first senior World Cup.

In Group B, there is Canada, which is currently ranked #5 in the World, will try to win its third CONCACAF title and compete for the World Championship title in 2019. Jamaica, which is participating in this tournament for the sixth time, will compete for one of the three spots CONCACAF will have next year in the French World Cup. In addition, Costa Rica will come to this tournament to repeat what they did four years ago when they qualified to the big tournament, which was played in Canada. Completing this group is Cuba. This Caribbean nation is competing in this tournament for the first time. Their main focus is to acquire international experience to continue developing the sport in their country.

Canadian National team before their game against Costa Rica (photo credit: David Chant).

Where and When?

There are three cities which will host this tournament.

Cary, North Caroline is where all the matches of group A will take place. The group games will be played between October 4^th and the 10^th. The matches will be played at WakeMed Soccer Park, which is home of the NWSL Champion NC Courage, and has a capacity of 10,000.

Edinburg, Texas, which was surprisingly announced as a host city for the group stage, is where all matches of group B will be taking place. Those matches will be taking place at HEB Park, which can hold 10,000 fans, between October 5^th to the 11^th.

Frisco, Texas. The north suburb of Dallas will host the championship game, in addition to the semifinals and the game for the third place. The semifinals will be played on October 14^th and the third place match and championship game will be played on October 17^th. All matches will be taking place at the FC Dallas home, the Toyota Stadium.

Tournament Format and qualification to the 2019 France Women’s World Cup?

As explained before, the teams participating in this tournament were allocated into two groups. Each team will face each of the other three teams in its respective group. The top two teams will advance to the semifinals. The winner of Group A will face Group B runner-up, whereas the runner-up of Group A will face the winner of Group B.

The winners of the semifinal matches will advance to the championship game and will be qualified to the 2019 World Cup. The semis losers will face each other for the third place. The winner of this third place match will also be qualified to France 2019, whereas the loser will have one last chance to advance to the World Cup as they will be competing in a set of play-off matches against Argentina, which was the third place of the Copa America Femenina.