The draw for the CONCACAF final round of 2018 Men’s World Cup qualifiers has been held at CONCACAF’s headquarters in Miami Beach, FL. All six teams will compete in one group, so that instead of assigning teams to groups, the draw decided the order of matches.

In the 2014 Men’s World Cup qualifiers, CONCACAF introduced a novel approach to setting out the final round match schedule. Representatives from the six teams held a meeting to decide their own fixture list, much as has traditionally been done in the UEFA group phase. However, the teams could not reach an agreement, and CONCACAF held a draw to determine the schedule by random chance.

This time around, CONCACAF skipped a step and proceeded straight to the draw, without even waiting for the semifinal round to complete. At this point, therefore, the schedule uses placeholders for the first and second placed teams in each semifinal group. Mexico have already secured first place in Group A and therefore know already that they will open the final round with an away match against the first placed team in Group C, and that they will conclude with an away match against the other team to advance from Group A.

The final round begins on FRI 11 NOV 2016. When it wraps up on TUE 10 OCT 2017, the top three teams qualify for the Men’s World Cup, and the fourth placed team moves on to the CONCACAF/​AFC playoff for another chance at qualifying.