MIAMI (CMC) — Caribbean powerhouse Trinidad and Tobago will meet Costa Rica in their opening game of the Final Round of CONCACAF Qualifying for the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018.
T&T and Costa Rica will do battle in one of three first round games of the Hexagonal stage carded for Friday, November 11. United States play Mexico and Panama take on Honduras in the other two games.
The schedule and pairings for the six-team home-and-away series were confirmed in a release issued on Wednesday by the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF).
All six teams secured places in the final round of qualifying by finishing among the top two of their respective groups in semifinal round play that concluded Tuesday evening. The placement and schedule for the Final Round was determined according to the group position in which each team finished the semifinal stage.
The seeding and order of matches were determined via a draw conducted in July at CONCACAF Headquarters on Miami Beach. The Hexagonal, a ten-match schedule for each of the contestants, will be played from November through October 2017.
The top three finishers advance directly to the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. The fourth-place team advances to an intercontinental home-and-away play-off to be disputed in November 2017, against a team from the Asian Football Confederation.