TORONTO - The road to the 2018 World Cup will take Canada down an ugly Memory Lane.

Providing it gets past No. 118 Belize in a third-round home-and-away series in September, No. 103 Canada will become part of CONCACAF Group A in the fourth round. That pool will feature No. 40 Mexico, No. 80 Honduras and either No. 88 El Salvador or No. 149 Curacao with only the top two advancing.

The Hondurans eliminated Canada from World Cup qualifying contention last time out in a 8-1 humiliation in San Pedro Sula in October 2012 that cost coach Stephen Hart his job.

It was Canada's worst loss since an 8-0 drubbing by Mexico in 1993 at Azteca Stadium.

The 2018 World Cup, hosted by Russia, runs June 14 to July 15. The tournament's preliminary draw was held Saturday in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The Canadian men joined CONCACAF qualifying in the second round, defeating No. 174 Dominica 6-0 on aggregate.

The first leg of the Belize series is scheduled for Sept. 4 at BMO Field in Toronto with the second leg set for Sept. 8 in Belize.

"We can say Belize is a team that has made positive and continuous progress," Canadian coach Benito Floro said in a statement. "That's good for us because it won't be easy to pass this eliminatory round. We need to focus on these first two games with a lot of intensity.

"Of course we're only going to focus on Belize right now because if we don't win that, it doesn't matter to think about the groups. For us it's very important and we can't have any doubts about that."

Belize is currently the highest it has ever been in the FIFA rankings, vaulting 37 spots in the latest numbers.

Canada is 2-0 against Belize, winning a World Cup qualifying series 8-0 on aggregate in 2004. Both games were held in Kingston, Ont., because Belize did not have a suitable stadium at the time.

The fourth round promises to be a tough challenge for a young squad that is being retooled by Floro, a veteran Spanish coach who once led Real Madrid.

Canada's record against Mexico is a dismal 3-16-7 while against Honduras it's only slightly better at 6-10-5. They hold a winning record (7-4-3) over El Salvador.

"I think that all the teams have a similar level," Floro said. "It's true that Mexico is one step over the rest. But we need to trust in our players because history has demonstrated that it's possible to qualify for the hexagonal."

Canada has tied its last three home games with the Mexicans and is 1-1-3 in its last five meetings on Canadian soil. But it is 0-12-2 in Mexico where it has been outscored 43-4.

The Canadian men have made it to the World Cup finals just once, in 1986.

Costa Rica, Mexico, U.S., Honduras, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago, the top six teams in the region, bypassed the first three rounds of qualifying.

They join the six third-round winners in three round-robin groups, playing from November to September 2016. The top two from each pool advance to the next round.

The 34th-ranked U.S. arguably got the easiest draw in Pool C, which will feature No. 64 Trinidad and Tobago and either No. 115 St. Vincent and the Grenadines or No. 135 Aruba and No. 107 Antigua and Barbuda or No. 105 Guatemala.

Pool B promises to be a dogfight with No. 41 Costa Rica, No. 62 Panama and No. 160 Grenada or No. 79 Haiti and No. 76 Jamaica or No. 143 Nicaragua.

The top two teams in each of the three fourth-round groups advance to the final hexagonal competition, to be played from November 2016 to October 2017. The top three will qualify for the World Cup while the fourth-place team will meet the fifth-place Asian squad in a playoff to decide who joins them.

In other third-round CONCACAF matchups, which covers North, Central and South America, it's Curacao versus. El Salvador, Grenada versus Haiti, St. Vincent and the Grenadines versus Aruba, Jamaica versus Nicaragua and Antigua and Barbuda versus Guatemala.

Saturday's draw was hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was joined by outgoing FIFA president Sepp Blatter in the first major public event for the organization's leadership since American and Swiss criminal investigations of corruption in world soccer were unsealed two months ago.