Final score: 2-1 Curacao. Good performance by Montserrat, their best in a World Cup qualifier (a loss by fewer than two goals). And now they head home with a great opportunity to advance, especially since they have that important away goal.
According to Wikipedia, Montserrat is the least populous member of FIFA. 13 out of 14 people in my prediction contest predicted Curacao to advance, but Montserrat was in the better pot for the draw based on the FIFA Rankings used. The winner will face Cuba, who is one of the best countries that has to play in Round 2.
Sunday's games: Bermuda vs. Bahamas (5-0 after the first leg), 2 p.m. ET Dominica vs. British Virgin Islands (3-2 after the first leg), 5 p.m. ET Anguilla vs. Nicaragua (0-5 after the first leg), 5 p.m. ET Cayman Islands vs. Belize (0-0 after the first leg), 8 p.m. ET Unfortunately, I cannot find any coverage of the Bermuda-Bahamas game (although it is pretty much settled who will advance anyway). However, I found this to be head scratching: "Please note that as this is a World Cup qualifier rules are in place; and as such live video streaming is not permitted." We've had live streaming of several of the other World Cup qualifiers, both in CONCACAF and Asia. On the plus side, that link is a good place to go to receive constant updates on the game and the environment, and lots of pictures are being posted. I am not sure yet about video or audio coverage of the other three games. I will see what I can find out later. http://www.telecuracao.com/web/HomePage.aspx
Dominica-British Virgin Islands: live video (costs $2.99) Anguilla-Nicaragua: no links that I can find, although I would think the game may be Nicaraguan TV Cayman Islands-Belize: I cannot find any links; this is a live stream of the channel that broadcasted the first leg in Belize; however, I do not believe they are showing this game.
Dominica is looking good to advance as they are still 0-0 with the British Virgin Islands, a few minutes before halftime. (They won the first leg, 3-2, in a game that was defined as a road game despite being played in their own stadium, so those three "away" goals really come in handy.) Meanwhile, Nicaragua extended its aggregate lead over Anguilla to 7-0 after scoring in the 23rd minute today and then in first half stoppage time. Halftime is moments away.
Stream: http://www.patrickjonesbelize.com/2...fa-world-cup-qualifier-cayman-islands-belize/ Last 15 min.
Thanks to that I watched the last few seconds. It was the first qualifier I predicted the exact score for. Belize advanced on away goals. Montserrat-Curacao is on Tuesday and then Round 2 starts on June 8.
http://www.concacaf.com/article/kuylen-strikes-belize-progresses-in-wcq is titled "Kuylen strikes, Belize progresses in WCQ."
I believe only Vatican City would be the only "FIFA eligible member" that could be smaller by population. The Vatican has stated outright that they are not interested in joining FIFA. Note how I put that term in quotation marks until overturning the ruling on Gibraltar is complete as Montserrat has the exact same status as a British dependency.
I believe that the issue is that FIFA passed something recently that made places like Gibraltar and Montserrat not eligible to join FIFA but that football associations that were already members, such as Montserrat, would be grandfathered in. Montserrat-Curacao kicks off at 7 p.m. ET. (Curacao won the first leg, 2-1) I am very intrigued by this game, curious to see if Montserrat can pull this off and move on. Cool pics of the seating area for tonight's game: here and here. It doesn't appear that there will be any live coverage of the game.
Nobody scored in the first 43 minutes. http://liveislandevents.com/liveislandevents/ says you can watch for $5.
Yeah, I went to http://liveislandevents.com/liveislandevents/montserrat-vs-curacao-local-feed-free, but it said that access has been restricted. However, I did find a radio broadcast: http://tunein.com/radio/ZJB-Radio-Montserrat-919-s7159/ Sorry it took so long to find those links. As you can imagine, this information is not always the easiest to find for games featuring countries this small. By the way, it is in fact, 1-0 Curacao. They scored in (around) the 40th minute. The game is currently in the 50th minute.
Goal Montserrat! It's now 1-1, while Curacao leads on aggregate, 3-2. If Montserrat can get one more goal, and the game hits 90 minutes that way, we will see extra time as both teams would have won at home, 2-1. By the way, it looks like that first goal was scored in the 43rd minute, so likely just after you posted, EvanJ. The latest goal came around the 65th minute, and we are around the 70th minute right now.
And Curacao just scored "against the run of play" and will move on to the next round barring a miracle as Montserrat now need to score twice now in the last few minutes.
And there's the final whistle. Heartbreaker for Montserrat, but their radio announcers sound like they are in reasonably good spirits, which is good to hear. And congrats to Curacao, of course, as they did what was necessary to move on. Now, everybody takes quite a bit of time off from World Cup qualifiers as none are played anywhere in the world until qualifying in CONCACAF resumes on June 8.