CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying: Easy for USA, Rough for Mexico

Sven Goran Eriksson probably thought he was going to have an easy road to the 2010 World Cup with the Mexican national team. He might have to rethink that idea after looking at the Group Stage for the third round of CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying.

Here's how the groups break down:

Group 1: USA, Cuba, Guatemala, Trinidad & Tobago
Group 2: Canada, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico
Group 3: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Haiti, Suriname

As Soccer By Ives points out, Group 2 is probably the closest thing to a group of death that you'll find in CONCACAF. Just about anyone from Group 2 could win Group 3 fairly easily. The USA and Costa Rica will have a much easier time getting through to the final qualifying round than Mexico will.

Third-round World Cup Qualifying matches will begin on August 20 and end on November 19. (You can see the full schedule here.) The top two teams in each group will advance to the final round, a six-team round robin that will begin in February of 2009. The top three teams from the final round go directly to the World Cup, while the 4th-place team will play the 5th-place team from the CONMEBOL WCQs in playoff to determine who makes it through. Right now, that 5th-place team is Brazil. Yeah, good luck with that.