Destination New Jersey: Hope in the Caribbean & Latin American domination

Football Daily

BBC

Soccer, Sports, News, Sports News, Sport

4.3 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Destination New Jersey continues, and on this episode of the pod the focus is on the Americas. Kelly Cates is joined by Rory Smith as they get a real flavour of how the tournament is building around the globe.

Destination New Jersey regular and CBS Sports Latin American journalist Nico Cantor joins the pod to talk about the domination there – as there could be as many as 12 countries from South and Central America at the World Cup - that’s a quarter of the teams!

Attention turns to the Caribbean. Only four teams from the Caribbean Islands have ever competed at a men’s World Cup finals. But this time around, the American Dream is still alive for five nations in this region including Jamaica - so Jamaican news and sports journalist Karen Madden joins Kelly and Rory to talk about what it would mean to the country to qualify for the tournament, after the devastating effects of Storm Melissa.

One country aiming to be part of it for the first time in 40 years is Iraq. In this international window they face the UAE in a playoff to reach the intercontinental playoffs, which take place in Mexico in March. Hassan Balal from the Iraq Football Pod gives his analysis on the state of the national team at the moment.

Then Boston is the focus, as the city prepares to host seven games at the Foxborough Stadium.

Timecodes: 4’00 - Latin American Journalist Nico Cantor chat. 11:47 - Jamaican news and sports journalist Karen Madden on teams in the Caribbean. 15’00 -Interview with Juninho Bacuna, who’s one of many Curaçao internationals born in the Netherlands. 28:30 – Hassan Balal on the state of the national team in Iraq. 35:00 - Julie Duffy from Boston’s tourism board.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	Hello, Living Legends, I'm Laura Whitmore.
0:09.5	And I'm Ian Sterling. It's officially cozy season, people.
0:13.1	The perfect time for hot chocolate, blankets, and a little bit of true crime.
0:18.4	Get your fix on murder they wrote, our weekly podcasts diving into the wildest true crime stories.
0:23.7	From a murderous granny to the con man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice.
0:28.2	Oh, and don't forget Murder You wrote.
0:30.1	Crazy cases from where you live.
0:32.3	That one's only on BBC Sounds.
0:33.9	Murder They Wrote.
0:35.1	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:37.8	This is the Football Daily podcast with Kelly Kitts.
0:42.5	Hello and welcome in 250 days time.
0:46.8	The biggest game in football will take place at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, the final
0:51.9	of the 26 Men's World Cup. But who will be there?
0:56.5	We'll have a look at what's going on in North America. Who will join the co-host USA, Canada and Mexico
1:02.1	from that part of the world? We'll also take a look at Asia, where eight teams have already
1:06.6	qualified. Could Iraq become the ninth? Plus, we'll see how preparations are shaping up for one of
1:12.2	the host cities in the USA. Rory Smith is alongside me to tell these incredible stories that only the
1:18.7	World Cup can give us, Rory. Absolutely. This is the, this is kind of the business end of it,
1:22.8	isn't it, Kelly? We're finally sort of there, almost. Almost there. Just 250 days to go. Everybody else is counted down to Christmas, but you're counting down to the World Cup. The World Cup's much more important. It's once every four years. It's much more important than Christmas. I mean, I suppose the kind of the complication is the intercontinental playoffs. They are too far in advance, Kelly, for me to even be thinking about them. As far as I can tell, every country in the world
1:46.3	can still qualify for the intercontinental playoffs.
	...

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