US To Start Revised WCup Qualifying Schedule In September

NEW YORK: The United States will start a revised and compacted World Cup qualifying schedule with a match in early September that could be at Trinidad and Tobago, which beat the Americans in October 2017 to eliminate them from the 2018 tournament in Russia.

Qualifying was to have began for the Americans this past September but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Under the revised schedule announced Friday by FIFA and the Confederation of North and Central American and Caribbean Football, the U.S. will play three matches each in the September and October 2021 international fixture windows and three apiece in January and March 2022. The Americans will play two in November 2021.

CONCACAF announced its first qualifying schedule in July 2019 that had the final round hexagonal scheduled to start in September 2020, then revised the final round to an octagonal in July 2020 and said then it would start in June 2021 and run through March 2022. A schedule was in announced in August,…