2010 FIFA World Cup qualification (CONCACAF)

The CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football) qualification stage for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa consisted of 35 national teams competing for the three berths given automatically to CONCACAF by FIFA. The United States, Mexico and Honduras qualified. The fourth-place finisher, Costa Rica, played a two-game playoff with the CONMEBOL fifth-place finisher,^[1] Uruguay, for a possible fourth berth.

Format

The First and Second Rounds^[2] reduced the 35 entrants to 24 and 12 teams, respectively. The remaining 12 teams were then placed into three Third Round groups of four, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the Fourth and final qualification group. The Third Round began in August 2008 and ended in November 2008. The top 3 teams from the Fourth Round group of 6 (held from February to October 2009) qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The 4th place team competed in a home-and-away playoff against the 5th-place team from CONMEBOL.

Seeding

The draw took place on 25 November 2007 in Durban, South Africa^[3][4] and it determined the fixtures for the preliminary rounds. In addition, because second round winners are paired off for the third round, the top 13 seeds have been subdivided as follows:^[5]

• Pot A: The top 3 teams, who would be top seeds of each third round group.
• Pot B: The next 3 teams, who would be the seconds seeds of the third round groups.
• Pot C: The next 6 teams, who would receive a bye to the second round, and would not be drawn against a Pot A or Pot B team in that round.
• Pot D: St. Vincent and the Grenadines, who also receive a bye in the first round, but would be paired against one of the top 12 teams in Round 2.

In the 2nd round, the 13 top-ranked CONCACAF teams from the May 2007 FIFA World Ranking joined 11 winners from the 1st Round.

First round

The 22 teams ranked 14 to 35 competed in the First Round. Teams ranked 14th–24th were randomly drawn against teams ranked 25th–35th. Teams played home and away against their opponents, except three ties: Puerto Rico–Dominican Republic, Grenada–U.S. Virgin Islands and Montserrat–Suriname, which were played over one leg in late March due to several Member Associations failing to meet the new FIFA Stadium standards and being unable to secure a home venue.^[6] The winners advanced to the Second Round.

Team 1	Agg.	Team 2	1st leg	2nd leg
Group 1
Dominica	1–2	Barbados	1–1	0–1
Turks and Caicos Islands	2–3	Saint Lucia	2–1	0–2
Bermuda	4–2	Cayman Islands	1–1	3–1
Aruba	0–4	Antigua and Barbuda	0–3	0–1
Group 2
Belize	4–2	Saint Kitts and Nevis	3–11	1–1
Bahamas	(a) 3–3	British Virgin Islands	1–1	2–22
Dominican Republic	0–1	Puerto Rico	N/A	0–1 (aet)3
Group 3
U.S. Virgin Islands	0–10	Grenada	N/A	0–103
Suriname	7–1	Montserrat	N/A	7–14
El Salvador	16–0	Anguilla	12–0	4–05
Nicaragua	0–3	Netherlands Antilles	0–1	0–2

¹ Belize moved their home leg to Guatemala.^[6]

² Both legs played in the Bahamas.^[6]

³ Played as one leg due to a lack of acceptable grounds for FIFA competition.^[6]

⁴ Played as one leg at Trinidad and Tobago because neither side are able to provide a suitable venue according to FIFA's guidelines.^[6]

⁵ Played in the United States because Anguilla's stadium is not a suitable venue.^[7]

Second round

In the Second Round, the 11 first round winners joined the 13 teams which received a bye to the Second Round. Teams ranked 1st–12th were randomly drawn against the unseeded teams (the 11 first round winners plus Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which was ranked 13th). Teams played home and away against their opponents and the winners advanced to the next round. Matches took place in June 2008.

Team 1	Agg.	Team 2	1st leg	2nd leg
Group 1
United States	9–0	Barbados	8–0	1–0
Guatemala	9–1	Saint Lucia	6–0	3–11
Trinidad and Tobago	3–2	Bermuda	1–2	2–0
Antigua and Barbuda	3–8	Cuba	3–4	0–4
Group 2
Belize	0–9	Mexico	0–22	0–7
Jamaica	13–0	Bahamas	7–0	6–03
Honduras	6–2	Puerto Rico	4–0	2–2
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	1–7	Canada	0–34	1–4
Group 3
Grenada	2–5	Costa Rica	2–2	0–3
Suriname	3–1	Guyana	1–0	2–1
Panama	2–3	El Salvador	1–0	1–3
Haiti	1–0	Netherlands Antilles	0–0	1–0

¹ Saint Lucia moved their home leg to the United States.

² Belize moved their home leg to the United States.^[8]

³ Bahamas moved their home leg to Jamaica.^[9]

⁴ Order of legs reversed subsequent to original draw.^[10]

Third round

The winners from the Second Round were placed into three groups of four teams, where they played a double round robin home and away schedule. The top two teams from each group advanced to the Fourth Round.

Group 1

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  United States 6 5 0 1 14 3 +11 15  Trinidad and Tobago 6 3 2 1 9 6 +3 11  Guatemala 6 1 2 3 6 7 −1 5  Cuba 6 1 0 5 5 18 −13 3

Cuba  – 2–1 1–3 0–1 Guatemala  4–1 – 0–0 0–1 Trinidad and Tobago  3–0 1–1 – 2–1 United States  6–1 2–0 3–0 –

Group 2

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  Honduras 6 4 0 2 9 5 +4 12  Mexico 6 3 1 2 9 6 +3 10  Jamaica 6 3 1 2 6 6 0 10  Canada 6 0 2 4 6 13 −7 2

Canada  – 1 – 2 1 – 1 2 – 2 Honduras  3 – 1 – 2 – 0 1 – 0 Jamaica  3 – 0 1 – 0 – 1 – 0 Mexico  2 – 1 2 – 1 3 – 0 –

Group 3

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  Costa Rica 6 6 0 0 20 3 +17 18  El Salvador 6 3 1 2 11 4 +7 10  Haiti 6 0 3 3 4 13 −9 3  Suriname 6 0 2 4 4 19 −15 2

Costa Rica  – 1 – 0 2 – 0 7 – 0 El Salvador  1 – 3 – 5 – 0 3 – 0 Haiti  1 – 3 0 – 0 – 2 – 2 Suriname  1 – 4 0 – 2 1 – 1 –

Fourth round

The six teams that reached the fourth round formed one double-round-robin, home-and-away group nicknamed the "Hexagonal." The top three teams qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The fourth place team qualified for a home-and-away play-off against the fifth-place team from CONMEBOL.

The allocation of teams in the draw took place in Johannesburg, South Africa on 22 November 2008.^[11]

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  United States 10 6 2 2 19 13 +6 20  Mexico 10 6 1 3 18 12 +6 19  Honduras 10 5 1 4 17 11 +6 16  Costa Rica 10 5 1 4 15 15 0 16  El Salvador 10 2 2 6 9 15 −6 8  Trinidad and Tobago 10 1 3 6 10 22 −12 6

Costa Rica  – 1–0 2–0 0–3 4–0 3–1 El Salvador  1–0 – 0–1 2–1 2–2 2–2 Honduras  4–0 1–0 – 3–1 4–1 2–3 Mexico  2–0 4–1 1–0 – 2–1 2–1 Trinidad and Tobago  2–3 1–0 1–1 2–2 – 0–1 United States  2–2 2–1 2–1 2–0 3–0 –

• The United States, Mexico and Honduras qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
• Costa Rica advanced to the CONMEBOL–CONCACAF play-off.

Play-off against CONMEBOL team

The 4th place team played the 5th place team from the CONMEBOL (South American Zone) Qualification in a home and away play-off. The winner of this play-off qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The draw for the order in which the two matches were played was held on 2 June 2009 during the FIFA Congress in Nassau, the Bahamas.^[12] The CONCACAF side played the first leg at home.

Team 1	Agg.	Team 2	1st leg	2nd leg
Costa Rica	1–2	Uruguay	0–1	1–1

Uruguay won 2 – 1 on aggregate and qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Goalscorers

As of 9 September, there have been 349 goals scored over 109 games, for an average of 3.20 goals per game.

Rank	Player	Total goals	Goals by round
			R1	R2	R3	R4	PO
1	Rudis Corrales	8	6	0	1	1	X
2	Carlos Pavón	7	—	0	0	7	Q
	Luton Shelton	7	—	5	2	X	X
4	Ali Gerba	6	—	4	2	X	X
	Bryan Ruiz	6	—	1	3	2	0
	Eliseo Quintanilla	6	1	2	1	2	X
	Carlos Ruíz	6	—	4	2	X	X
	Carlo Costly	6	—	0	1	5	Q
	Jozy Altidore	6	—	0	1	5	Q
10	Celso Borges	5	—	0	2	3	0
	Wensley Christoph	5	2	0	3	X	X
	Clint Dempsey	5	—	2	2	1	Q

"—" = First Round Bye
"X" = Eliminated
"Q" = Team qualified for World Cup and did not need playoff

4 goals

3 goals

2 goals

1 goal

Own goals

References

External links

• North, Central America & Caribbean Zone at FIFA.com