Fresh off their historic 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup qualification, the Golden Jaguars will know their fate today, as the official draw for the inaugural CONCACAF Nations League will be conducted at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
The group phase of the Nations League, which consists of three tiered leagues, will be played during the official FIFA international match windows. Those are September, October, and November of 2019.
All eligible teams were assigned following their sporting performance in the recent Nations League Qualifiers into Leagues [A], [B], and [C].
The Golden Jaguars, ranked [21st] in the tournament, will feature in Pot-2 of League-B, after narrowly missing out on a top-6 finish required to seal a place in League-A, the premier section of the event.
The other Pot-2 sides are Suriname [20th], St. Kitts & Nevis [18th] and Dominican Republic [20th], with Jamaica [6th], El Salvador [9th], Nicaragua [14th] and French Guiana [16th] making up Pot-1.
Pot-3 consist of Antigua & Barbuda [22nd], St. Vincent and Grenadines [25th], St. Lucia [26th] and Belize [24th], while Pot-4 features Grenada [28th], Aruba [31st], Dominica [32nd] and Montserrat [35th].
League-[A] consists of Pot-1 sides Mexico [1st], United States of America [2nd], Costa Rica [3rd] and Honduras [4th], with Pot-2 comprising Panama [5th], Canada [7th], Haiti [10th] and Trinidad and Tobago [11th] and Pot-3 featuring Martinique [12th], Cuba [13th], Curacao [15th] and Bermuda [23rd].
Meanwhile Pot-1 of League-C contains Guatemala [8th], Guadeloupe [17th], Bonaire [27th] and Barbados [29th], with Pot-2 comprising Bahamas [33rd], Puerto Rico [30th], Cayman Islands [34th] and Turks & Caicos [36th] and Pot-3 featuring US Virgin Islands [37th], Saint Martin [38th], Sint Maarten [39th], British Virgin Islands [40th] and Anguilla [41st].
Each league will be sub-divided into four groups, featuring promotion and relegation. The countries will compete in a home-and-away round-robin format during the duration of the group campaign.
League-[A] which contains 12 teams, six of which were the hexagonal participants in the 2018 World Cup Qualifiers, will be split into four groups of three teams.
The four group winners will qualify to the Nations League final championship, which will be staged in March 2020. The aforesaid championship will determine the champion of the competition.
The four last-placed League-[A] teams in each group will be relegated to League-[B] for the next edition of the tournament.
League-[B], which features the 16 teams positioned 7th-22nd from the concluded qualifiers, will be divided into four groups of four teams.
The eventual four group winners will be promoted to League-[A], while the cellar occupants of each group will be relegated to League-[C] for the next edition.
On the other hand, League-[C] consists of the remaining 13 countries. These are the teams that finished 23rd-34th in qualifying along Guatemala who did not enter the qualifying period.
This section will contain four groups, with three groups of three teams and one group of four teams. The four group winners will be promoted to League B for the next edition of the competition.
