CHICAGO (Feb. 24, 2025) – The U.S. Under-17 Women’s National Team will face El Salvador, Honduras and Trinidad and Tobago in Group C in the Final Round of the 2025 Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Qualifiers. The Final Round of qualifiers will be held between March 31 and April 6, 2025, with the USA’s group taking place in Trinidad & Tobago.
Concacaf has once again changed the qualifying format for the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. Starting this year, the world championship will be staged annually and has been expanded from 16 to 24 nations. Instead of a tournament in which the top three Concacaf finishers qualify for the Women’s U-17 World Cup, 12 teams were drawn into three groups of four teams each with the winner of each group and the best second place team qualifying for the World Cup, set for Oct. 17-Nov. 8 in Morocco.
The new Concacaf U-17 Women’s Qualifiers format includes two rounds: Round One and the Final Round. For Round One, 22 nations -- all ranked fifth and below based on the Concacaf U-17 Women's Rankings -- were split into six groups. After round-robin play between January 27 and February 1, eight teams progressed to the Final Round, joining the confederation’s four best-ranked teams.
The 12 participating teams in the Final Round are Canada, Haiti, Mexico and the United States, which all earned byes into the Final Round, and Puerto Rico, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua – which were the six Round One group winners – along with Trinidad & Tobago and Bermuda, which were the two best second-place finishers in Round One.
The other two groups feature host Mexico, Haiti, Costa Rica and Bermuda in Group A and Canada, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua and host Panama in Group B.
CONCACAF WOMEN’S U-17 QUALIFIERS – FINAL ROUND GROUPS
| Group A (Mexico) | Group B (Panama) | Group C (Trinidad and Tobago) |
|---|
| Mexico | Canada | USA |
| Haiti | Puerto Rico | El Salvador |
| Costa Rica | Panama | Honduras |
| Bermuda | Nicaragua | Trinidad and Tobago |
With the start of the expanded annual U-17 Women’s World Cup this year, the Concacaf region has been allocated an additional fourth berth. Since the tournament’s inception in 2008, North America, Central America and the Caribbean have received three berths. The next five editions of the tournament will be held in Morocco.
The change in format means the USA can no longer win a Concacaf U-17 Women’s Championship, of which it has won six and the last four in a row. The USA won the Concacaf U-17 Women’s Championship in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2022 and 2024.
Seven countries have already qualified for the 2025 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. In addition to host Morocco, China PR, Japan, Korea DPR and Korea Republic have qualified from Asia via nominations by the Asian Football Confederation based on results of the last three editions of AFC U-17 Women's Asian Cup in Thailand in 2017, in Thailand in 2019 and in Indonesia in 2024. New Zealand and Samoa have qualified from Oceania via the 2024 OFC U-16 Women’s Championship.
