The draw for the initial phases of the Concacaf Preliminary Competition for the Fifa World Cup Russia 2018 will be held in Miami at the W Hotel South Beach, at 7 pm tomorrow.
The event, involving 27 of the 35 Concacaf member associations seeking to qualify for the 2018 Fifa World Cup, will determine the match-ups for the first two rounds of the five-round regional qualifying tournament in Concacaf, which begins in March and runs through 2017.
The seeding for the draw for this edition of Concacaf World Cup qualifying was based on Fifa rankings as of August 2014.
The 35 Member Associations competing to qualify for the 2018 Fifa World Cup have been ranked one-35 (please see below for the full ranking).
The 14 national teams ranked 22 to 35 (St Kitts/Nevis, Belize, Montserrat, Dominica, Barbados, Bermuda, Nicaragua, Turks & Caicos, Curacao, US Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla – in order of rank) will dispute Round One of the Preliminary Competition, which consists of seven home-and-away series to be contested from March 23-31 of this year.
For Round Two, the 13 member associations ranked nine-21 (Canada, Cuba, Aruba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Suriname, Guatemala, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, Guyana, Puerto Rico – in order of rank) will join the seven Round One series winners, for ten more home-and-away series to be held between June 8-16, 2015.
Round Three, which consists of another series of home-and-away match-ups featuring the ten Round Two series winners, joined by the two member associations ranked seventh and eighth—Jamaica and Haiti—will be played August 31-September 8.