Canada defeated El Salvador 9-1 on Saturday (April 22) to comfortably win their qualifying group and secure their ticket to the CONCACAF U20 Women’s Championship.
Canada and El Salvador had both won their previous three games ahead of Saturday’s crucial game in the CONCACAF U-20 qualifying tournament. But the Canadians, on goal difference plus 31 versus plus 13 for the Central Americans, needed just a draw to win the group and fill the full tournament field.
The 32 teams in the qualifying tournament were divided into six groups for round-robin play. The group winners advance to the CONCACAF U-20 Championship from May 24 to June 3 in the Dominican Republic, joining pre-qualified USA and Mexico.
The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Panama and Puerto Rico have already qualified.
“A great camp from start to finish here and our first four games together,” said Canada coach Cindy Tye. “We grew in every game and of course we prepared for the next stage.”
Olivia Smith, Kayla Briggs, Amanda Allen and Annabelle Chukwu each scored twice for Canada, with Florianna Jourde scoring one. Faith Fenwick was in goal for the Canadians.
Elizabeth Johannes scored for El Salvador.
The top three teams from the CONCACAF U-20 Championship will represent North, Central America and the Caribbean at next year’s FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup.
Saturday’s game was postponed by 2 1/2 hours and moved to the Felix Sanchez Stadium in Santo Domingo due to bad weather at the Estadio Panamericano in San Cristobal.
“I think some of our fundamentals are resilience and adaptability,” Tye said. “The kids just took care of it and it went on to the next field and next time like this was our time. There really wasn’t much to adjust for us.”
Canada has beaten their opponent 40-1 in four games. The Canadians opened the game with a 15-0 win over Martinique before beating St. Vincent and the Grenadines 12-0 and Cuba 4-0.
Canada have qualified for eight of the previous ten FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cups, finishing runners-up to USA in 2002 when Canada hosted the event.
The Canadian Press
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