T&T women's foot­ballers have been drawn in Group F of the Con­ca­caf FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers along with Guyana, Nicaragua, Do­mini­ca and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands. They will open at home against Nicaragua.

The group is one of six groups of five teams cho­sen from teams ranked third and un­der in the FI­FA Women's rank­ings as of Ju­ly 2021, for the 30 Con­ca­caf Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions. Ac­tion will take place dur­ing the FI­FA Women’s Match Win­dows of No­vem­ber 2021 and April 2022, and will serve as the pre­lim­i­nary round of the 2022 Con­ca­caf W Cham­pi­onship.

At an of­fi­cial draw on Sat­ur­day, it was de­cid­ed that the road to a re­vamped 2022 Con­ca­caf World Cham­pi­onship will take place among the 30 teams in the CON­CA­CAF, and the group win­ners will ad­vance for an op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for the Women's World Cup in Aus­tralia and New Zealand in 2023, as well as the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris France and the Women's Gold Cup that same year.

The oth­er groups com­prise- Group A: Mex­i­co, Puer­to Ri­co, Suri­name, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and An­guil­la; Group B: Cos­ta Ri­ca, Guatemala, Saint Kitts and Nevis, US Vir­gin Is­lands, and Cu­ra­cao; Group C: Ja­maica, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Bermu­da, Grena­da and Cay­man Is­lands; Group D: Pana­ma, El Sal­vador, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize and Aru­ba and Group E: Haiti, Cu­ba, Hon­duras, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines and the British Vir­gin Is­lands.

Na­tion­al coach, Welsh­man James Thomas be­gan train­ing about a month ago and will be ex­pect­ed to be among the top team in his group. Af­ter be­ing joined by his staff a few weeks ago, the coach will host the me­dia in a Zoom meet­ing on Sun­day to ex­plain how he feels about the group he has been drawn in.

Sat­ur­day's draw was host­ed by for­mer Cana­di­an Women’s Na­tion­al team play­er and Olympic bronze medal­ist Kay­lyn Kyle and Con­ca­caf Head of Women’s Foot­ball Ka­ri­na LeBlanc, and con­sist­ed CON­CA­CAF Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Philippe Mog­gio, for­mer Ja­maica in­ter­na­tion­al Tashana Vin­cent and for­mer Guatemala U-17 and U-20 in­ter­na­tion­al Lau­ren Mark.

It re­vealed: " Af­ter group stage play, where each na­tion will play two match­es at home and two match­es away, the top fin­ish­er in each of the groups will ad­vance to the CON­CA­CAF W Cham­pi­onship, join­ing the top two ranked CON­CA­CAF na­tions (USA and Cana­da) who have re­ceived a bye straight to the W Cham­pi­onship."

It not­ed that as an­nounced on Thurs­day last (Au­gust 19), the re­vamped 2022 CON­CA­CAF W Cham­pi­onship is one of the two new ma­jor women’s sum­mer com­pe­ti­tions tak­ing place from 2021 through 2024. This im­por­tant tour­na­ment will serve as the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s Qual­i­fi­er to the FI­FA Women’s World Cup Aus­tralia and New Zealand 2023 and the 2024 Paris Sum­mer Olympic Games.

In to­tal, eight teams will par­tic­i­pate in the 2022 CON­CA­CAF W Cham­pi­onship, in­clud­ing the USA and Cana­da, and the six CON­CA­CAF W Qual­i­fiers group win­ners. Af­ter Group Stage play, the top two fin­ish­ers in each group will qual­i­fy for the com­pe­ti­tion’s semi­fi­nals and guar­an­tee their place in the FI­FA Women’s World Cup Aus­tralia and New Zealand 2023.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, both Group Stage third place fin­ish­ers will ad­vance to a FI­FA Women’s World Cup in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play-off. At the con­clu­sion of the event, the win­ning na­tion will guar­an­tee its place in the 2024 Paris Sum­mer Olympic Games Women’s Foot­ball Tour­na­ment and the 2024 Con­ca­caf W Gold Cup.

The run­ner-up and the third place will al­so progress to a Con­ca­caf Olympic play-in to be played in Sep­tem­ber of 2023. The win­ner of the play-in will al­so guar­an­tee their place in the 2024 Paris Sum­mer Olympic Games and the 2024 W Gold Cup.