The USA's quest to qualify for the 2006 kicks off with a second-round home-and-away series against a Caribbean nation on consecutive weekends in June.

Those matches will be the first of 18 or 20 potential games across a year-and-a-half that the USA will have to play to earn its fifth consecutive trip to the World Cup finals.

The matchups for the preliminary round and the second round will be determined at the qualifying draw on Dec. 5 in Frankfurt, Germany.

For the preliminary round and second round, the 34 CONCACAF teams will be divided into 10 groups of three teams and two groups of two teams, with each of these 12 groups containing one seeded team.

In addition to the United States, the other 11 seeded teams are: Barbados, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, St. Vincent & Grenadines, and Trinidad & Tobago. None of these teams can face each other in the preliminary round, and the United States also cannot face either Nicaragua or Belize, the two remaining teams from Central America, who will begin play in the second round.

The semifinal round will take place from August to November of 2004, with the teams divided into three groups of four teams each. Playing a six-game round-robin format, the top two finishers from each group will advance to the final six-team group that will be played from February through October 2005.

From the final-round, home-and-away round robin, the top three teams from the six-team group will automatically advance to the 2006 World Cup. The fourth-place finisher will meet the fifth-place team from Asia in a home-and-away playoff in November 2005 for the final berth in the finals.

WORLD CUP 2006
CONCACAF qualifying schedule

2004

PRELIMINARY ROUND
Feb. 18: Leg 1
March 31: Leg 2

* 10 home-and-away series (total goals)
* 20 Caribbean countries: Aruba, Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Grenada, Guyana, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis, Surinam, Turks & Caicos, U.S. Virgin Islands.
* Winners of each series will face one of the 12 seeded teams previously drawn into their group.
* 12 previously seeded teams (as semifinal-round qualifiers in 2002): Barbados, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, St. Vincent & Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, USA

SECOND ROUND
June 12-13: Leg 1
June 19-20: Leg 2

* 12 home-and-away series (total goals)
* 10 winners of Preliminary Round pairings vs. seeded teams
* 2 groups containing one remaining seeded team and either Nicaragua or Belize (teams that reached the final round qualifying in 2002 — Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago, USA — cannot be drawn into these groups)
* Winners of each of the 12 series advance to the semifinal round

SEMIFINAL ROUND
Aug. 18: Game 1
Sept. 4-5: Game 2
Sept. 8: Game 3
Oct. 9-10: Game 4
Oct. 13: Game 5
Nov. 17: Game 6

Competition Summary
* 3 four-team groups
* As finalists at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Costa Rica, Mexico and the United States will be in separate groups, should they advance this far.
* Top two teams in each group advance to Final Round

2005

FINAL ROUND
February 9: Game 1
March 26-27: Game 2
ááá March 30: Game 3
ááá June 4-5: Game 4
June 8: Game 5
Aug. 17: Game 6
Sept. 3-4: Game 7
Sept. 7: Game 8
Oct. 8-9: Game 9
Oct. 12: Game 10

* 1 six-team group, top three teams advance to 2006 World Cup
* Fourth-place team advances to play off against Asian team