Who will be number one has not yet been defined, but it is certain that Haiti will have a goalkeeper who will compete in the fifth division during the World Cup.
Josue Duverger plays for Cosmos Koblenz, whose stadium has a capacity for 9,500 people, and is not always selected as a starter in the team competing in the 5th German division. In the Haitian team, he must also remain in reserve. He has as competitors two teammates who play in France, but none of them in the first division.
Alexandre Pierre defends Sochaux, who finished the season in second place in the French 3rd division.
Johnny Placide plays for Bastia, who finished second to last in the second division and will compete in the third division in 2026/27.
At 38 years old, weighing 89 kg and measuring 1.81 m tall, Placide is most likely to be the starter in the World Cup. He has played 15 games for Haiti and, even without many appearances in the French team’s failed season, he was chosen as captain in the qualifying campaign by coach Sébastien Migné.
Migné was responsible for taking Haiti back to the World Cup after 52 years. The French coach was not even two years old when the Haitians competed in the World Cup in Germany in 1974 and finished without scoring. They lost to Italy (3-1), Poland (7-0) and Argentina (4-1).
Haiti returns to the World Cup in 2026, when it will compete in its second edition of the World Cup, after leading its group in the Qualifiers, ahead of Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The debut on American territory will be against Scotland, in Boston, on June 13th. Afterwards, they will face Brazil, on the 19th, in Philadelphia, and end the group stage against Morocco, on the 24th, in Atlanta.
“We will face Brazil, which is one of the most iconic teams in the world, and Morocco, which was a semi-finalist in the last World Cup. The positive side is that we will be in the spotlight, and this will be a great reward for our boys. Now it is time to prove that we are up to the challenge”, said Migné.
The coach, however, has seen Brazil up close — and done well. In Qatar, in 2022, he was an assistant to Rigobert Song, from Cameroon, who beat the Brazilian team in the group stage.
“I was lucky enough to face Brazil with Cameroon. We will try to repeat the feat. If it was a best of ten matches, we wouldn’t have a chance, but anything can happen in a single game”, said the French coach, an admirer of the work of Carlo Ancelotti, from the Brazilian team.
Another person who knows South American football closely is defender Ricardo Adé, who plays for LDU, in Ecuador, a club used to competing in continental competitions, such as Libertadores and Sudamericana.
In addition to the three goalkeepers, Migné called up other players who do not play in the first division. Defender Duke Lacroix plays for Colorado Springs, while midfielder Carl Fred Sainte plays for El Paso Locomotive, clubs that compete in the USL Championship, a league in the United States that is below the MLS, a competition in which Lionel Messi plays, for example.
Two others, Yassin Fortune and Leverton Pierre, defend Vizela, who is fighting to finish in the top five of the Portuguese second division.
Among the athletes who play in the national elite are strikers Duckens Nazon, from Esteghlal, from Iran, and Lenny Joseph, from Ferencváros, from Hungary.
On the other hand, two other players compete in the English Premier League: Wilson Isidor, from Sunderland, and Jean-Ricner Bellegarde, from Wolverhampton, a club that fell to the second division this season.
