Regional governing body CONCACAF has agreed to launch a new Nations League tournament for teams in North and Central America and the Caribbean.

The competition will begin in the international dates in September of next year and will feature all 41 member countries in CONCACAF, which includes the likes of Jamaica, United States and Mexico.

The tournament will also serve as a qualifying route to the CONCACAF Gold Cup and will see teams being divided into three divisions based on the strength of the teams and will feature promotion and relegation.

The format is similar to UEFA’S Nation League which will also begin next September.

According to CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani, the Nations League will address the problems facing the region’s smaller teams, often the Caribbean Island nations, who have found hard to get regular competitive action.

“This new tournament is highly beneficial to all our member associations and fans everywhere, since it provides significant opportunities to play important competitive matches with increased regularity throughout the year,” Montagliani said in a telephone interview.

“The biggest difference between our Nations League and the UEFA, is that their nations were already playing a significant amount of games… But for us it was to allow our countries to play a mininum amount of games over a four year window,” added the Canadian.

“Our bigger countries have the capacity to do that but the way our system was, in my opinion was archaic and you had countries who were playing four to six games in a four year period. It is kind of hard then to develop football in any capacity,” he said.