THE staging of one group of the 2023 Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Championship Qualifiers on Jamaican soil, according to Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) General Secretary Dennis Chung, is a ripe opportunity for the country to promote its football.

The qualifiers will be played between August 26 and September 3 at Sabina Park, Kingston.

A total of 26 teams are divided into six groups, with Jamaica competing in Group E alongside Panama and Grenada. The group went down to three after Anguilla withdrew.

The six group winners will advance to the 2023 Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Championship, joining the top two-ranked nations, Mexico and the United States, who have been seeded directly into the Championship’s group stage.

“It is big. I mean, for you to be asked to host a group it means that there is a lot of confidence in you,” Chung told the Jamaica Observer.

“I mean, you have to make sure we have the infrastructure here — which we don’t have much of — but we have Sabina and the National Stadium. There is also a level of assurance that expresses your organisational capacity.

“So for them [Concacaf] to ask Jamaica, I mean, Jamaica has recently been recognised as a real powerhouse in football and this is a huge opportunity for us and we are grabbing it. We are working with Concacaf, among other things, but we felt this was the most important one for us to do,” the general secretary stated.

Panama will play Grenada on Saturday, August 26; Jamaica will engage Grenada on Monday, August 28; and Jamaica and Panama will meet in the final group stage game on Wednesday, August 30.

“The Under-17 programme has been going well. They have started a camp, so they had a camp recently and it continues. The coaching staff has been selected, and I am told by them that they are pretty confident about the team and so we are putting all the support in place.

“We are doing everything that we need to do to support the Girlz in terms of from a financial standpoint, structural standpoint, management standpoint — basically everything. We are doing the best, and we think we have the talent to move them forward,” Chung opined.

While Jamaica have yet to get past the qualifiers Chung believes that this may be the year when the Jamaica Under-17 players achieve victory.

“We have never progressed beyond the qualifiers but, based on the feedback, I think our chances are good. I am relying on the feedback from the technical staff and I think we have the capacity to do it,” Chung said.

Group A: El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, Curacao, Cayman Islands, and Martinique

Group B: Haiti, Cuba, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Martin

Group C: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Group D: Puerto Rico, Honduras, Nicaragua, US Virgin Islands, and Guadeloupe

Group E: Jamaica, Panama, and Grenada

Group F: Canada, Bermuda, Guyana, and Dominica