Haiti’s U-17 men’s soccer team chases back-to-back World Cup appearances

CAP-HAÏTIEN — Qualifying as soon as for a FIFA U-17 World Cup is uncommon for Haiti. Doing it twice in a row could be unprecedentedly monumental for the younger Haitian gamers.

Haiti’s under-17 males’s soccer crew will start its marketing campaign to qualify for the 2026 FIFA U-17 World Cup on Thursday when Les Petits Grenadiers face Grenada within the opening match of the Concacaf qualifiers’ first part.

“We consider within the gamers,” head coach Kowsky Sainvil mentioned in a video interview by the Haitian Soccer Federation (FHF). “Not many younger gamers get the chance to play in two consecutive World Cups. They perceive what’s at stake and wish to write their names in historical past.”

Haiti has been positioned in Group C and can play all three of its matches at Progreso Cementos Stadium in Guatemala Metropolis.

Haiti’s Group C schedule

• Haiti vs. Grenada — Feb. 5, 4 p.m. ET
• Haiti vs. Antigua and Barbuda — Feb. 7, 5 p.m. ET
• Haiti vs. Guatemala — Feb. 10, 7 p.m. ET

All matches will likely be streamed dwell on Concacaf’s YouTube channel.

Simply three months in the past, Haiti competed within the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar, shedding all matches — to Egypt (4-1), England (8-1) and Venezuela (4-2) — within the group stage. It marked Haiti’s fifth World Cup look throughout all age teams for males’s and ladies’s groups. 

Starting in 2025, FIFA shifted the U-17 World Cup to an annual competitors, operating by 2029, whereas increasing the sector from 24 to 48 groups. The format will increase Haiti’s probabilities of qualifying once more and supplies better publicity for younger expertise. Haiti’s U-17 ladies’s crew superior to the subsequent qualifying part earlier this week.

On the U-17 crew, seven gamers from the 2025 World Cup squad are eligible and included within the present roster. Amongst these to look at are goalkeeper Clifford Gene and winger Emerson Laissé, each of whom play for Mount Nice Academy in Jamaica. Laissé not too long ago accomplished a 10-day trial with Spain’s Actual Sociedad and was named match MVP throughout a December competitors, in response to sports reporter Caleb Jephté Pierre.

Winger Franco Celestin, one in every of Haiti’s standout gamers in Qatar, is not eligible since he’s now 17.

Coach Sainvil, who changed Eddy César in January, beforehand coached AS Capoise and Actual Hope Soccer Academy within the Haitian League. He mentioned the target is simple.

“The aim is easy and clear: Do it once more,” Sainvil mentioned. “Which means working arduous and combating to qualify for our nation.”