WORLD CUP: Panama faces England, Belgium, Tunisia
Panama, which squeezed into the 2018 World Cup in Russia at the last minute, after a 2-1 victory over Costa Rica was placed in Group G along with Belgium, England and Tunisia, after the draw in the Moscow Kremlin on Dec. 1.
Panama’s win, providing its first visit to the world’s most watched sporting spectacle also led to the elimination of the USA.
The World Cup will take place between June 14 and July 15, 2018.
Over 740,000 of the 2,600,000 available tickets have already been sold, and the next draw for seats begins on December 5.
The Panamanian team with an average age of 30 will debut against Belgium on June 18, at the Sochi stadium, and will meet England on June 24 in Nizhny Novgorod. Four days later they will take on Tunisia in the Mordovia Arena. The World Cup will be played in 11 cities spread out from Kaliningrad,
Hernán Bolillo Gómez is the Panama coach and will be participating in his third World Cup
after traveling with Colombia in 1998 and Ecuador in 2002.
The draw was led by England captain Gary Lineker, along with legends of the eight nations that have won the World Cup: Diego Maradona (Argentina), Cafu (Brazil), Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), Diego Forlán (Uruguay), Miroslav Klose (Germany), Carles Puyol (Spain), Gordon Banks (England) and Laurent Blanc (France), in addition to Nikita Simonyan for Russia.
