The Caribbean Football Union has announced the grouping and format for the 2025 CFU U14 Challenge Series Girls, which will be hosted in Trinidad and Tobago from August 15- 24.
Twenty-three Member Associations will participate in the girls’ edition of the competition, with eight teams competing in Tier I and 15 in Tier II.
Tier I will consist of two groups of four teams each.
Tier I
Group A: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Martinique
Group B: Aruba, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago
The Tier I group stage will see teams compete in a round-robin format. At the end of the group stage, group winners and runners-up will advance to the semifinals and then to the Tier I finals, which will be played on 24 August 2024.
Third-place finishers will play one playoff match against each other to determine the 5th and 6th place ranking, and the fourth-place finishers will play one playoff match against each other to determine the 7th and 8th place ranking.
Tier II will have three groups consisting of 5 teams each.
Tier II
Group A: St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Bonaire, US Virgin Islands, Saint Lucia.
Group B: Grenada, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, French Guiana, Suriname.
Group C: Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Turks and Caicos Islands, Guyana.
Teams in each group will play each other once in a round-robin format, with the three group winners advancing to the Tier II semifinal. The second-place team with the highest number of points between the three groups will join the group winners in the Tier II semifinal.
The group winner with the highest number of points will face off against the best second-place team in the first semifinal, while the second and third-best group winners will compete in the second semifinal.
Tier II will kick off on August 15, while action in Tier I will begin one day later on August 16.
Further details regarding the official schedule will be confirmed at a later stage.
About the CFU U14 Challenge Series
Introduced in 2018, the CFU U-14 Challenge Series is a holistic developmental competition that caters to boys and girls in alternating years. It is the introduction to international competition for players. It aligns with the CFU’s developmental agenda and FIFA’s focus on further developing grassroots football in the region.
The Challenge Series is also pivotal to the CFU’s Next Generation Referee Course. It affords regional match officials with the requisite skills to advance to the FIFA International Refereeing Lists technical and practical training.
The series also trains match and venue coordinators.
When will the actual teams scheduled games be decided and posted? Will there be multiple locations for the various games?