Barbados in tough World Cup match-up
Russel Latapy (L) with Barbados Football Association president, Randy Harris. Photo by
George Alleyne
Caribbean Life, Sept. 4-10, 2020 39
By George Alleyne
Barbados will take on rising
CONCACAF star Panama in
an early fixture of the region’s
World Cup qualifying matches
set for Qatar in 2022.
The match which will start
on a date yet to be announced
owing to the ravages of COVID-
19 will see 14 of the 15-member
Caribbean Community
organisation (CARICOM) playing
in fixtures among the 30
teams, ranked six to 35 by
FIFA, set for the first round
of playoffs in this Confederation
of North, Central American
and Caribbean Association
Football.
Powerhouse Jamaica is
ranked four among the top
five, who all drew byes from
the first two rounds.
The 30 teams are drawn
into six groups of five and
will play against one another
within their sets of four in
fixtures of two away and two
home games each with top
winners qualifying for the second
round in which the six will
play similar two-match home
and away games.
The three winning teams
will take on the top five including
Jamaica in a similar home
and away set-up with the top
three qualifying for the Qatar
World Cup.
Having qualified for the
Russia World Cup for the
first time in 2018, Panama is
regarded as hot, and manager,
Thomas Christiansen, told
CONCACAF, “I think it’s been
a good draw for us, with all
due respect to the teams that
we are going to face, Barbados,
Dominica, Anguilla and
Dominican Republic. I think at
present moment the Dominican
Republic is the toughest of
those, but certainly all of the
teams are difficult and more
so when playing away when we
have to take a long trip.”
But Barbados’ manager and
former Trinidad and Tobago
international star, Russell
Latapy, has other ideas.
“We have a talented team
and if we are able to put everything
together at the right
time, we can become very difficult,”
he said to CONCACAF.
“But it is a fairly young
team, the average age is 22 or
23, so it is more of a team that
we are trying to build for the
future. I hope we can get the
experience from these games
and use that to try to get to
the Gold Cup.”
The other CARICOM teams
in the first round besides Barbados,
Dominica, and Jamaica
are Antigua and Barbuda; The
Bahamas; Belize; Grenada;
Guyana; Haiti; Montserrat; St.
Lucia; St. Kitts and Nevis; St.
Vincent and the Grenadines;
and Suriname.
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