The Cuban soccer team will have to overcome an arduous path to maintain level A in the 2024-2025 Concacaf Nations League.
It was placed in section B of the competition, considered the “death” group by specialists, due to the qualitative level of its members.
Once again they will share the key with the strong teams of Jamaica and Honduras, to which Trinidad and Tobago, also a World Cup player, will now join.
Taking as a reference that the Lions of the Caribbean also have a global participation, there are four teams in B that hold this status compared to only one in A (Costa Rica).
The Cubans will also have Nicaragua and French Guiana as contenders, although the tournament will be played with the complex Swiss system, which does not guarantee that all teams will necessarily see each other.
In fact, only four games will be played: two at home and two as visitors. These will take place on September 2 and 10 and then October 7 and 15 of this year.
The first two in each section advance to the quarterfinals, which will be played in November. Phase in which the best-placed teams in the Concacaf ranking await directly: the United States, Mexico, Canada and Panama.
The fifth and sixth places in the group descend to level B. The expectations for those led by Yunielys Castillo are to maintain the category, understanding the difficulty of the eliminatory segment.
With this they would be able to qualify directly for the 2025 Gold Cup, otherwise they would have to compete for the ticket in the playoffs.
In the last edition, those from the Greater Antilles did not have to face Jamaica, although they did face Honduras twice, highlighting the valuable draw at home.
The other rival they have faced in the recent past is Nicaragua, whom they managed to beat by the minimum in a friendly held in Pinoleros lands with a goal from Maykel Reyes.
A priori, the tricolor has enough credit to maintain the record at the highest level of Concacaf, however, the company is complex and depends too much on the rivals that the organization chart has in store, which will not be the same for all the acting teams.
