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3 teams to qualify
Preliminary Phase
Caribbean Zone
Teams in the Caribbean Zone were drawn into home-and-away, knock-out
pairings, grouped into three pools. Cuba, St. Vincent and Trinidad
Tobago were seeded as head of the respective pools (based
on their results in the 1998 qualifying). The winners of Round 3
of each pool qualify as Caribbean #1, #2 and #3 for the semi-final
round.
Central American Zone
Two groups of three teams each are playing a round robin, with home-and-away
matches. The winners of each group will qualify directly for the
semi-final round. The groups' runners-up play off against the Round
3 losers of Group 2 and Group 3 of the Caribbean Zone.
Semi-Final Round
The draw for the semifinal round of qualifying in the Football Confederation
for the 2002 Korea/Japan FIFA World Cup was held Friday 28 April
at the FIFA Sonnenberg headquarters in Zurich, determining the three
groups of four teams that will begin play in July.
The 12 teams will be known after the completion of the Interzone
Round in mid-June, when the runners-up of the three Caribbean Zone
groups will play the runners-up of the two Central American Zone
groups, along with Canada. The winners of the Caribbean Zone and
Central American Zone groups will be determined when play is completed
after the third weekend of May.
The three groups of four teams will each play in a round-robin
on a home and away basis from 12-16 July 2000 to 14-15 November
2000. The top two teams of each group go through to the Final Round,
where three finalists will advance to the 2002 World Cup Finals.
Final Round
The two top teams of each group of the semi-final round form one
final group, playing a home-and-away round robin.
The opening date of matches in the Final Round of qualifying for
the 2002 FIFA World Cup has been moved back two weeks. The first
set of the matches, originally set to be played over the weekend
of 13-14 February, will now be played over the weekend of 27/28
February.
The date change was necessitated by a shift of dates in the UEFA
(Europe) calendar for World Cup qualifying matches.
The 3 top teams in the final round qualify for the final competition.
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