{"id":41540,"date":"2025-11-19T10:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T10:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/haiti-reach-2026-world-cup-despite-coach-having-never-been-to-the-country\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T10:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T10:49:11","slug":"haiti-reach-2026-world-cup-despite-coach-having-never-been-to-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/haiti-reach-2026-world-cup-despite-coach-having-never-been-to-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Haiti reach 2026 World Cup despite coach having never been to the country"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Haiti have beaten Nicaragua 2-0 to qualify for just their second ever World Cup – despite their manager having never been to the Caribbean island.<\/b><\/p>\n

The team’s 52-year-old French coach, Sebastien Migne, has been unable to set foot on Haiti since being appointed 18 months ago because a conflict<\/a> in the country forces them to play their home matches 500 miles away in Curacao – an island nation just off the coast of South American country Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Since Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010, the country has been in turmoil. Armed gangs have taken control of almost all of the nation’s capital Port-au-Prince in a conflict that has forced some 1.3m people from their homes and fuelled famine-level hunger.<\/p>\n

Travellers are warned against visiting the nation of 12m people because of the risk of kidnappings, crimes, terrorist activity and civil unrest.<\/p>\n

“It’s impossible because it’s too dangerous,” said Migne.<\/p>\n

“I usually live in the countries where I work, but I can’t here. There are no more international flights landing there,” he told France Football magazine.<\/p>\n

Migne, who was Cameroon’s assistant at the last World Cup, relied on information about local players from Haitian football federation officials by telephone. “They gave me information, and I managed the team remotely.”<\/p>\n

Their squad is now all foreign-based and includes Wolves’ France-born midfielder Jean-Ricner Bellegarde. They also hope to persuade Sunderland forward Wilson Isidor, who was born in France to Haitian parents, to join them.<\/p>\n

Haiti’s victory over Nicaragua sealed their place at the summer’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada for the first time since 1974.<\/p>\n

They will be joined by Panama, who beat El Salvador 3-0, and World Cup debutant Curacao after they drew with Jamaica as qualifiers from the Concacaf region.<\/p>\n

In Haiti’s only other World Cup appearance, they were beaten by Italy, Poland and Argentina as they were knocked out in the first round.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Haiti have beaten Nicaragua 2-0 to qualify for just their second ever World Cup – despite their manager having never been to the Caribbean island. The team’s 52-year-old French coach, Sebastien Migne, has been unable to set foot on Haiti since being appointed 18 months ago because a conflict in the country forces them to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41542,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41540\/revisions\/41542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}