Panama is fighting the CONCACAF title after winning the Futsal World Cup ticket

Guatemala City, May 7 (EFE): At the conclusion of the quarter-final match against Canada, the team captain Edgar Rivas said that Panama will play the CONCACAF championship after qualifying for the 2021 World Cup in Lithuania.

Panama beat Canada 4-3 on penalties and advanced to the semi-finals of the CONCACAF Championship where they face the United States team that beat the Dominican Republic 2-0.

The captain of Panama in the mixed zone considered, after the victory, that the joy felt by the group was “inexplicable now”, but considered that if the first step was to qualify for Lithuania 2021, then the second step is to “be the CONCACAF champion”.

“We are very proud. Yes we suffered, we knew we were going to suffer. Canada came out of doing its job. We knew how to get up, we worked, and even though the goal didn’t fall and we went to the penalty shootout, we won.,” He described.

Rivas commented that the Venezuelan coach who runs Panama, Jose Botana, “made us believe that if we were not a champion in the first, we could be in the second,” referring to the runner-up he achieved four years ago in Costa Rica. , Against the host.

For his part, Botana congratulated the Canadians on being a “worthy competitor” on the verge of breaking the Panamanian dream of a draw in original time and the narrow string of penalties that ended up winning Panama.

“Today marks 17 years since Panama debuted in futsal, and today we are celebrating qualifying for the World Cup for the third time in a row,” he added.

He said he felt it was “one more Panamanian” and stressed that the classification, personally, “is very important because there will be two Venezuelan technicians in Lithuania.”

The key to the other semi-final will be decided Thursday night between Costa Rica, Suriname and the World Cup host, Guatemala, against El Salvador.

The CONCACAF qualifying matches, which began on Monday and end on Sunday, are being held at the stage of the 2000 World Cup, the Sports Dome south of the Guatemalan capital.

The Lithuanian World Cup takes place from September 12th to October 3rd.

Costa Rica won the CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers for the 2016 and 2012 tournaments.

In the 2016 World Cup in Colombia, the teams that received the World Cup ticket by CONCACAF were Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Cuba. Of these, only Costa Rica managed to slip into the round of 16, surrendering to Portugal.