Na­tion­al men’s se­nior foot­ball coach Ter­ry Fen­wick can feel a bit of re­lief fi­nal­ly know­ing the dates of his team’s first phase on the road to the 2022 FI­FA World Cup in Qatar.

On Fri­day, Con­ca­caf con­firmed the sched­ule for the ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed re­gion­al qual­i­fiers for the World Cup. This af­ter FI­FA, the sport’s gov­ern­ing body, an­nounced that cer­tain in­ter­na­tion­al match win­dows will be ex­tend­ed to en­able Con­fed­er­a­tions to sched­ule triple-match dates. This is due to the chal­lenges faced by glob­al foot­ball due to COVID-19, in par­tic­u­lar for those re­gions where sev­er­al 2020 FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al match win­dows were sus­pend­ed.

In Con­ca­caf’s case, FI­FA’s de­ci­sion means the Con­fed­er­a­tion can sched­ule three match­es in each of the Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber 2021 and Jan­u­ary and March 2022 FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al match win­dows.

This will en­able Con­ca­caf to be­gin its eight-team Fi­nal Round of the Con­ca­caf Qual­i­fiers in Sep­tem­ber 2021, fol­low­ing a First Round played in March and June 2021 and a Sec­ond Round in June 2021 (June 2021 in­cludes two FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al match win­dows).

On learn­ing, the War­riors’ open­ing match is at home to Guyana on March 25, Fen­wick said: “It’s a bit of im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion for us at this stage as it re­lates to the sched­ule of the World Cup qual­i­fiers. We knew the teams be­fore but now we know ex­act­ly what we’re go­ing to face.

“Be­ing at home in the open­ing game is good and we will pre­pare as best as pos­si­ble for this first game against Guyana which we know has a bit of his­to­ry with T&T and will cer­tain­ly be no pushovers. Mat­ter of fact, no team will be a walkover in these qual­i­fiers.”

The draw for the Con­ca­caf Qual­i­fiers for FI­FA World Cup Qatar 2022 took place in Au­gust 2020 and with the cer­tain­ty pro­vid­ed by FI­FA’s de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the triple-win­dows, Con­ca­caf can now con­firm the sched­ule.

The First Round will be played be­tween the Con­ca­caf Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions ranked 6-35 based on the FI­FA Men’s Rank­ing as of Ju­ly 16, 2020.

Fen­wick con­tin­ued: “With this sched­ule be­fore us now it tells you how im­por­tant it was for us to have got­ten the sus­pen­sion lift­ed and hav­ing the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee in charge of our foot­ball.

“I know for a fact that chair­man Robert Hadad and the rest of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee are at work and are putting things to­geth­er for us to be able to breathe a bit eas­i­er and for all the right con­di­tions to be in place for our teams. I’m grate­ful that we’d been able to restart train­ing last month and now we can look for­ward to ex­e­cut­ing our plans ahead of March.”

The FI­FA Coun­cil al­so vot­ed that the 2021 Club World Cup will be host­ed by Japan in late 2021 with sev­en teams. A Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) team has nev­er ad­vanced to that tour­na­ment, though four re­main in con­tention when the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League re­turns to ac­tion De­cem­ber 15 with At­lanta Unit­ed, LAFC, New York City FC and the Mon­tre­al Im­pact all com­pet­ing.

The 2021 Club World Cup en­sures there will be two edi­tions held with­in the same cal­en­dar year, since this year’s tour­na­ment is be­ing held Feb­ru­ary 1-11, 2021 in Qatar. The reign­ing Club World Cup cham­pi­on is Liv­er­pool, snap­ping a streak of three straight ti­tles by Re­al Madrid.