Derek King, coach of bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic said he is con­fi­dent his club can win its pre­lim­i­nary round home and away se­ries against Cos­ta Ri­ca's Bru­jas FC and qual­i­fy for the group stages of the 2010/2011 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. The draw for the pre­lim­i­nary round pair­ings and group stage brack­ets was made on Wednes­day by Con­ca­caf deputy gen­er­al sec­re­taries Ted Howard and Ita­lo Zanzi at the con­fed­er­a­tion's New York head­quar­ters. The first match be­tween Joe Pub­lic, win­ners of the Dig­i­cel Pro League and run­ners-up in the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­ons Cup Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers is card­ed for Ju­ly 27 to 29 be­fore the lo­cal club host the re­turn-leg sev­en days lat­er.

Bru­jas qual­i­fied for the tour­na­ment af­ter it won its first Cos­ta Ri­can league ti­tle in its five-year ex­is­tence last sea­son, hav­ing re­placed the fold­ed Gua­nacaste­ca in the Cos­ta Ri­can First Di­vi­sion in 2004. It has qual­i­fied for the do­mes­tic league play­offs in eight of the 11 sea­sons since its found­ing, and every sea­son since the play­offs were ex­pand­ed to eight teams. Com­ment­ing on the draw, the 29-year-old King who led Joe Pub­lic to a his­toric five do­mes­tic ti­tles last sea­son and the CFU Club Cham­pi­ons Cup run­ner-up be­hind the Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers first ad­mit­ted he knew lit­tle about his op­po­si­tion, but was con­fi­dent in his play­ers abil­i­ty. "We don't know much about Bru­jas," said King. "We did a lit­tle re­search and what we have gath­ered is that they have been around for about five years now in the top di­vi­sion in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

With just over two months be­fore their tie, King, a for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er stat­ed he was hop­ing to see his op­po­nents in one or two live match­es. "I will like to see them in ac­tion be­fore our se­ries, so I'm hop­ing to go over to Cos­ta Ri­ca and so some scout­ing. With the sec­ond-leg match at home King al­so feels his team has the edge in the tie. "Hav­ing the first-leg away from home means we will have to go out there and get a good re­sult that will put us in a great po­si­tion for the re­turn leg at home. The win­ners of the Joe Pub­lic/Bru­jas tie will ad­vance to Group A of the group stages where it will join MLS club, Colum­bus Crew (USA), Mu­nic­i­pal of Guatemala and the win­ners of an­oth­er pre­lim­i­nary round clash in­volv­ing T&T's San Juan Jabloteh and the run­ner-up be­tween Mex­i­can duo San­tos and Tolu­ca. Joe Pub­lic and Jabloteh qual­i­fied for this year's tour­na­ment af­ter plac­ing sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly, be­hind Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers, in the CFU Club Cham­pi­onships held in T&T ear­li­er this month. The Is­landers, the club of T&T quar­tet Keon Daniel, Os­ei Teles­ford, Nigel Hen­ry and Kevon Vil­laroel meet Christo­pher Bir­chall's Los An­ge­les Galaxy in an­oth­er pre­lim­i­nary round du­el

The pre­lim­i­nary round win­ners will ad­vance to the first round se­lect­ed four groups of four clubs group stage set to be­gin Au­gust 17-19.