CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Set for Mexico in March...

CONCACAF announced Friday its qualifying competition for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games would go ahead in March this year in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Canada will face El Salvador (March 19), Haiti (March 22) and Honduras (March 25), with a better than evens chance of progressing to the semi-finals.

The top two teams in the group progress. The winners will face the runners-up from the opposite quadrangular containing Mexico, USA, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

The runners-up in Canada’s group will face the winners of the group containing Mexico and USA.

The two finalists will qualify for the Olympic Games Soccer tournament, scheduled for late July. It seems inevitable that Canada will need to defeat either Mexico or the USA to book an Olympic spot.

Remembering Olympic football is essentially an u23 tournament, CF Montreal expects to be well-represented with Clement Bayhia, Mathieu Choiniere, James Pantemis and Kamal Miller all eligible for the squad.

Former Impact players David Choiniere (now Forge FC), Daniel Kinumbe (now HFX Wanderers), Thomas Meilleur-Giguere (now Pacific FC) and Shamit Shome (FC Edmonton) are all in the frame and will be expecting to be included in the squad for Mexico,

The Guadalajara stadiums being used are the Jalisco Stadium (55,100) home of Liga MX club Atlas and Chivas’ Akron Stadium (50,000). All games will be played behind closed doors.

CONCACAF’s Olympic qualifying tournament was postponed a year ago due to the pandemic.