June 9 – Concacaf completed their first round of 2022 World Cup qualifying last night, with six nations progressing to the next knock out stage that will whittle them down to three teams for the final 8-team qualifying group.
With the final night of group play still seeing five groups undecided, it was not an evening for the faint hearted. Haiti, Canada, El Salvador, Panama, and Curacao powered through to join St Kitts and Nevis in the next round with Guatemala, qualifiers for Russia 2018, being the most notable absentee, missing out on topping their group on goal difference.
The individual performance of the night goes to Canada’s Jonathan David who plays his club football at French Ligue1 champions Lille. Canada put four unanswered goals past Suriname, David scoring a hat trick having played in Bayern’s Alphonso Davies for the opening goal.
Canada, who only conceded one goal in group play but scored 21, now move on to face Haiti on June 12 in the first of a two-legged play-off. This is a rematch of the 2019 Gold Cup quarter final when a forward looking and fast developing young Canadian squad were knocked out by an obdurate and never-say-die Haitian team.
Haiti moved into the second round with a trademark hard-fought 1-0 victory against Nicaragua. Haiti scored on the counter-attack with a finish by Derrick Etienne Jr in wet conditions that made the ground heavier and more difficult to play as the game progressed.
In their winner-takes-all clash, Curacao hung on to a 0-0 draw with Guatemala. With points and goal difference level, Curacao’s higher number of goals scored puts them through.
They will meet Panama who saw off the fast improving Dominican Republic with an emphatic 3-0 win with goals from Anibal Godoy, Edgar Barcenas and Cecilio Waterman.
The other play-off will be between St Kitts and Nevis and El Salvador who were too much for Antigua and Barbuda, beating them 3-0. This extinguished the hopes of a fairy tale qualification for minnows Montserrat who needed El Salvador to draw and then to record a big win themselves against Grenada.
Monserrat, courtesy of two more goals from their standout forward Kyle Taylor, beat Grenada 2-1.
Monserrat’s international dreams aren’t over for this season as they will be back in action in the Gold Cup play-offs against the hapless Trinidad and Tobago in July. The rewards from those play-offs will be a spot in the Gold Cup group stage that kicks off July 10. If Monserrat, driven by the goals of the mercurial Taylor, did make it through it would be proof that fairy tales really do happen, even in this most unsettling and difficult of years.
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