User:Quidster4040/sandbox/2016 CONCACAF Gold Cup

The 2016 CONCACAF Gold CUp, commonly referred to as 2016 Gold Cup was the 14th CONCACAF, the quadrennial international men's football championship of North America organised by CONCACAF. It was held in Cuba from 10 June to 10 July 2016. Mexico were the defending champions, having won the 2012 tournament, but were eliminated in the quarterfinals by Cuba. Costa Rica won the tournament for the first time, following a 3–2 victory after extra time over the United States, in the final played at the Estadio Pedro Marrero.

The tournament was contested by 16 teams. Under the format, the finalists contested a group stage consisting of four groups of four teams, followed by a knockout phase including three rounds and the final. Fifteen teams – joined Cuba in the final tournament, who qualified automatically as hosts.

Cuba was chosen as the host nation on 28 May 2010, after a bidding process in which they beat Aruba and Canada for the right to host the 2016 finals. The matches were played in ten stadiums in ten cities: Camagüey, Cienfuegos, Guantánamo, Havana, Holguín, Manzanillo, Nuevitas, Pinar del Río,  Santa Clara and Santiago.

As the winners, Costa Rica earned the right to compete at the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia.

Qualification

 * Main article: 2016 CONCACAF Gold Cup qualification

The qualifying draw took place at the MGM Grand Las Vegas in Las Vegas, on 23 February 2014.

A total of 39 teams competed for 15 places in the final tournament to join Cuba, who have automatically qualified as hosts. The seeding pots were formed on the basis of the Elo ratings.

The 39 national sides were drawn into four groups of seven teams and two groups of six teams. The group winners, and runners-up qualify directly for the final tournament. The six third-placed teams contested two-legged play-offs to determine the last three qualifiers.

Final draw
The draw for the finals took place at the Palais des Congrès de la Porte Maillot in Paris on 12 December 2015, 18:00 CET. The 24 qualified teams were drawn into six groups of four teams, with the hosts France being automatically placed in position A1. The remaining teams were seeded into four pots of five (Pot 1) or six teams (Pots 2, 3 and 4). As the title holders, Spain were seeded in Pot 1, while the other 22 teams were seeded according to the UEFA National team coefficients updated after the completion of the qualifying group stage (excluding the play-offs), which were released by UEFA on 14 October 2015.

The Pot 1 teams were assigned to the first positions of their groups, while the positions of all other teams were drawn separately (for the purposes of determining the match schedules in each group).

The draw resulted in the following groups: