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2021 Gold Cup Qualifying Draw: Pots and Fixtures Revealed for 2020 Matches
December 12, 2019
There are four spots remaining in the 2021 Gold Cup, and the 12 teams battling for those slots found out their qualifying draw Wednesday.
The draw was held in Miami and broadcast on the CONCACAF YouTube page.
The qualifying process is two rounds with four matchups per round. Wednesday's draw set up the following matchups.
Round 1
Matchup 1: Guadeloupe vs. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Matchup 2: Barbados vs. Guyana
Matchup 3: Bahamas vs. French Guiana
Matchup 4: Guatemala vs. Montserrat
Round 2
Matchup 1: Winner of Round 1, Matchup 1 vs. Haiti
Matchup 2: Winner of Round 1, Matchup 2 vs. Trinidad and Tobago
Matchup 3: Winner of Round 1, Matchup 3 vs. Bermuda
Matchup 4: Winner of Round 1, Matchup 4 vs. Cuba
Wednesday's draw was relatively stress-free for the 12 teams that already qualified for the 2021 Gold Cup through the group stage of the 2019-20 Concacaf Nations League. Those teams are Canada, Costa Rica, Curacao, El Salvador, Grenada, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Suriname and the United States.
That left 12 remaining teams fighting for four spots who will participate in the qualifiers.
As the official Gold Cup website explained, Bermuda, Cuba, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago are in League A, French Guiana, Guyana, Montserrat and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are in League B, and the Bahamas, Barbados, Guadeloupe and Guatemala are in League C.
Leagues B and C are the lower-ranked nations and were drawn into a qualifier against each other, and the winners of those qualifiers advance to face those from League A in the second round of qualifiers.
Essentially, the four teams from League A received a bye and will face the winners of the first round of qualifiers for those final four spots.
The first round of qualifiers take place in March 2020, and the second round takes place in June 2020.
Wednesday's single-blind system draw placed teams from League A in Pot A, teams from League B in Pot B and teams from League C in Pot C. The draw started by selecting a team from Pot C for matchup 1, 2, 3 or 4 and then doing the same to determine their opponents from Pot B.
The draw for Pot A followed a similar procedure, only the first team drawn will face the winner of matchup 1, and so on.
These teams all have an uphill battle to win the Gold Cup from the extensive qualifying process through the final. Mexico and the United States are the dominant forces at the event and have combined to win the last 10 titles.
The last time a different country won the Gold Cup was in 2000 when Canada took home the trophy.
Mexico is the reigning champion after it beat the United States 1-0 in the 2019 final.