To qualify for the 2026 FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup, the United States Under-19 Women’s Youth National Team will need to either finish first or second in a four-team round-robin group that also includes Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Guyana.
The USA’s qualifying path was confirmed on Wednesday, March 26, when Concacaf held its draw for the 2025 Concacaf Women’s Under-20 Championship, which despite its name, will be an Under-19 event.
The full results of that draw:
Group A: United States, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Guyana
Group B: Mexico, Canada, Panama, Nicaragua
For reference, these were the pots for the draw (with Concacaf ranking points in parentheses):
Pot 1: USA (3683), Mexico (3536)
Pot 2: Canada (3417), Costa Rica (2261)
Pot 3: Puerto Rico (1620), Panama (1278)
Pot 4: Guyana (1221), Nicaragua (953)
In the draw, the USA avoided Canada but was grouped with the host, Costa Rica, which means that the USA will have one less rest day for their semifinal, compared to their opponent in that match.
Update (28-Mar-2025): Defender Izzy Dalke and forward Elayna Kocher suffered injuries (back and knee, respectively) during the preparatory camp in Florida and have been replaced by defender Gracie Milam and forward Audrey McKeen. (U.S. Soccer press release)
The two professionals, who both now play in the National Women’s Soccer League, are midfielder Kimmi Ascanio of the San Diego Wave and forward Micayla Johnson of the Chicago Stars. The other two returning players are both midfielders: Jaiden Rodriguez, who is set to play collegiate soccer for Southern California later this year, and Scottie Antonucci, whose post-secondary plans remain officially enigmatic.
In addition to O’Steen, who will be playing for Florida State, and Rodriguez, four other players have reclassified and will begin their NCAA careers in 2025: Forward Ashlyn Anderson at Florida State, midfielder Riley Kennedy at the University of North Carolina, defender Cecil Pearl at Virginia, and forward Nyanya Touray at Florida State.
The USA’s qualifying path for this year’s FIFA U-17 WWC involves just three round-robin group matches, which will be played over six days from Monday, March 31, to Saturday, April 5. The USA’s opponents are Trinidad & Tobago, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The second regional mini-camp of 2025 for U.S. Soccer’s Under-14 Girls’ Talent Identification Program gets underway outside of Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, March 20th, and features 80 players from the Northeast and Southeast Regions. All players selected were born in 2011.
Of the attendees with older sisters who have been in the U.S. Soccer women’s youth system, the most notable is midfielder Lilia Bhuta, whose sister Mia Bhuta now plays NCAA soccer for Stanford. In 2022, Mia Bhuta captained the USA at the FIFA Women’s Under-17 Women’s World Cup in India (Stanford player profile).
Two players, defender Anna Grace Richardson and forward Marley Skalski, previously attended a national identification camp in June 2024 (U.S. Soccer press release).
The 2025 Concacaf Women’s Under-20 Championship, which will determine the confederation’s four representatives for the 2026 FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup, will be held from Thursday, May 29, to Sunday, June 8. Costa Rica will be the host, with all matches to be played at Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto, the home stadium of L. D. Alajuelense.
The draw is scheduled for Wednesday, March 26, at 11:00 a.m. EDT.
The eight teams that will play in the Championship are the United States and Mexico, which both had byes for the preliminary qualifying stage, plus the six group winners from the preliminary round: Canada, Costa Rica, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama, and Puerto Rico.
Notably absent is Jamaica, which, along with the United States and Mexico, had participated in all previous editions of this tournament, including when it was designated as an Under-19 event in 2002 and 2004.
Pot 1: USA (3683), Mexico (3536) Pot 2: Canada (3417), Costa Rica (2261) Pot 3: Puerto Rico (1620), Panama (1278) Pot 4: Guyana (1221), Nicaragua (953)
In order to qualify for the 2025 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup, the USA only needs to top a four-team group that also includes El Salvador, Honduras, and Trinidad & Tobago.
The United States Under-17 Women’s Youth National Team’s shorter qualifying path compared to previous cycles is due to a new qualification format introduced by Concacaf this year. That format now involves a final stage which only consists of three concurrent round-robin groups. In previous cycles, when the FIFA U-17 WWC was held every two years, qualifying included a traditional tournament with a group stage and a knockout stage.
Additionally, with the expansion of the FIFA U-17 WWC from 16 to 24 teams, Concacaf now has an additional slot, so four teams — the top team from each group plus the best overall second-place team — will qualify for the tournament, which will be hosted by Morocco and runs from October 17th to November 8th.
On Monday, February 24th, Concacaf conducted the draw for the Final Round of the 2025 Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Qualifiers.
The full draw results are as follow:
Group A: Mexico (host*), Haiti, Costa Rica, Bermuda
Group B: Canada, Puerto Rico, Panama (host*), Nicaragua
Group C: USA, El Salvador, Honduras, Trinidad & Tobago (host*)
The Final Round’s matches will be played from Monday, March 31st to Sunday, April 6th. Groups “A” and “C” will play its matches on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, while Group B will play its matches on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Thus, teams will only have one off-day between their first two matches and two off-days between the second and third matches.
The Final Round will be played in three different nations:
Group A: Mexico, at the headquarters of the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol in Toluca
Group B: Panama, at Estadio Rommel Fernández in Panama City
Group C: Trinidad & Tobago, at Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva, Trinidad
Among the players called up by U.S. Soccer for the year’s first regional mini-camp of the Under-14 Talent Identification Program are younger sisters of current NWSL professionals. The 80-player roster also includes a granddaughter of the late San Diego Padres legend Tony Gwynn. All of the players selected for this camp, who hail from 36 youth clubs in U.S. Soccer’s West Region, were born in 2011.
At least three NWSL pros have sisters at this camp…
Alyssa Thompson and Gisele Thompson, both of Angel City FC, whose sister, Zoe, plays for Tudela FC in California1
Olivia Moultrie of the Portland Thorns, whose sister, Bella, plays for Soccer Chance Academy in Oregon2
Additionally, Kyla McCammon, who plays for Eastside FC in Washington state, looks to be the sister of the Seattle Reign’s Ainsley McCammon.3
Both Alyssa Thompson and Olivia Moultrie have been capped by the senior United States Women’s National Team. Gisele Thompson is uncapped but has been named to this year’s USWNT’s SheBelieves Cup roster, along with her sister, Alyssa.
Leighton Gwynn of City SC in San Diego, California, is a daughter of former Major League Baseball player Tony Gwynn Jr.4 (MLB profile, Wikipedia bio) and a granddaughter of the late Tony Gwynn (MLB profile, Wikipedia bio), who played for the San Diego Padres from 1982 to 2001 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007. A sister, Makayla Gwynn, also plays soccer and is a recent verbal commit for Grand Canyon University (Instagram, local news segment).
With Concacaf qualifying for the 2025 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup less than six weeks away, the United States Under-17 Women’s National Team is holding its second camp of the year. The previous camp ended on Sunday, February 2nd, while this current camp began on Tuesday, February 18th, meaning that there were just 15 off days between the two camps.
From that last camp, only nine players return. Five of those players also attended the first camp of the cycle, back in September 2024. Additionally, none of the four veterans of last year’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup who attended the last camp were called in for this camp.
Off the 24 players selected by head coach Katie Schoepfer, none are professionals. One player, Claire Kessenger, who is originally from Colorado (Instagram post by her former youth club), relocated with her family to the Barcelona area of Spain several years ago and currently plays for the CE Europa U-19 team. Previously, she was in the youth setup of RCD Espanyol (www.fcf.cat).
All but four of the players on this camp’s roster have announced their NCAA commitments. Two players are official commits for the 2025 fall season: forward Nyanya Touray and defender Miya Alamares, who will play for Florida State And UC Davis, respectively.
With just a few months to go until the Concacaf qualifying tournament for the 2026 FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup, the United States Under-19 Women’s Youth National Team is holding its first camp of the calendar year and its second camp of the annual cycle, following one in October 2024.
Head coach Carrie Kveton has called up 20 players, all born in 2006, for a friendly tournament that will be hosted by Spain and that will also feature the U-19 WNTs of England and the Netherlands. (Links to each opponent’s roster and quick discussions of those rosters are included at the end of this post.)
The USA’s roster includes just one professional, Miri O’Donell, who plays for Sporting CP in Portugal. Age-eligible NWSL players such as Jordyn Bugg and Emeri Adames, both of the Seattle Reign, who played in last year’s U-20 WWC, were not called into the camp. The other 2006 player from that roster, Claire Hutton, has been called up to the full USWNT for this month’s SheBelieves Cup.
Of the remaining 19 players, 13 played NCAA Division I soccer last fall, including Notre Dame’s Izzy Engle, who scored 19 goals during her freshman season. Engle’s tally, which did not involve any penalty kick goals, was only one behind MAC Hermann trophy winner Kate Faase (UNC profile), who had 20 goals, including three penalty kicks conversions, and was tied with Ohio State’s Kailyn Dudukovich (OSU profile), who had two penalty kick conversions.
The other six players on the roster are now college students after enrolling in January. Among those six are two players from the USA’s squad for last year’s U-20 WWC: Goalkeeper Caroline Birkel, now of Stanford, and midfielder Addison Halpern, now of the University of Virginia. A third player, defender Reese Klein, now of Clemson, was a pre-tournament alternate for the 2024 U-20 WWC. Klein played for Fort Lauderdale United of the new USL Super League via an amateur contract during the fall of 2024.
With the first round of the 2025 Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Qualifiers in the books, the names of all 12 teams that will face off in the final round are now known.
Joining the four teams that received byes to the final round — the USA, Mexico, Canada, and Haiti — are six group winners: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Puerto Rico.
Two second-place teams, Bermuda and Trinidad & Tobago, also advanced (Concacaf news item). The six groups were unbalanced, with two groups having just three teams instead of four, so a weighted points system (points divided by matches played) was apparently used (the regulations document is silent on this matter, but it has been used in the past). However, due to a quirk in that ranking system, one or both of those teams may have advanced more on the luck of the draw rather than on sporting factors.
For the final round, which is scheduled to start on Monday, March 31st, the above 12 teams will be divided into three round-robin groups of four. The top team from each group, along with the best second-place team from among those three groups, will advance to the 2025 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup.
Two of those players will be graduating a year early and have officially committed to NCAA teams for the 2025 fall season: Evan O’Steen and Jaiden Rodriguez, who are set to play for Florida State and Southern California, respectively. The 24-player roster for this camp also includes two other players who have reclassified for 2025 with official commits: Midfielder Pearl Cecil and forward Nyanya Touray, who will play for Virginia and Florida State, respectively.
This is the second camp of the current cycle for the U-17 USWYNT. The first camp was held back in September 2024 and did not involve any 2024 U-17 WWC players. From that roster, only nine players return, including just one goalkeeper, Josie “JB” Biehl, plus three defenders, one midfielder, and four forwards. One of the defenders from the previous camp, Pearl Cecil, is listed as a midfielder for this camp.
This U-17 camp, which exclusively has players with 2008 birth years, is being held concurrently with an Under-16 USWYNT camp that primarily features players with 2009 birth years. Both camps get underway on Monday, January 27th, in Mesa, Arizona, and run through Monday, February 3rd. The camps were scheduled to be held outside of San Diego, California, in Chula Vista, but were moved due to wildfires (USYNT x.com post).
The U-17 USWYNT is preparing for the Concacaf qualifiers to the 2025 FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup, which is now an annual event and will be hosted by Morocco. Unlike the previous two-year cycles, the qualifying event will not be a standard tournament. Instead, the USA, which received a bye to the final stage, will be placed in one of three four-team round-robin groups. Only the top team from each group, along with the best second-place team, will qualify for the FIFA U-17 WWC. (2025 Concacaf press release; Concacaf Instagram post) The final stage of Concacaf qualifying is scheduled to be played from Monday, March 31 to April 6, 2025 (2024 Concacaf press release).
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