So­ca War­riors duo, mid­field­er Ne­veal Hack­shaw of Oak­land Roots and De­fence Force strik­er Re­on Moore are con­fi­dent of get­ting a pos­i­tive re­sult against the USA in their first-leg Con­ca­caf Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nal at the Q2 Sta­di­um in Austin, Texas on Thurs­day (No­vem­ber 16).

The Amer­i­cans, who along with Mex­i­co, Cana­da and Cos­ta Ri­ca were hand­ed byes in­to the quar­ter­fi­nals based on their FI­FA rank­ings, will then vis­it Port-of-Spain on No­vem­ber 20 for the sec­ond-leg match at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

The An­gus Eve-coached T&T reached the quar­ter­fi­nals hav­ing fin­ished sec­ond in the six-team Group A qual­i­fiers with nine points, with a 5-3 loss to Cu­ra­cao in their fi­nal match on Oc­to­ber 17, their on­ly blem­ish and will go in­to the meet­ing with the Amer­i­cans as heavy un­der­dogs hav­ing gone un­der in their last two meet­ings 6-0 at the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup last Ju­ly, and 7-0 in Jan­u­ary.

The USA cur­rent­ly holds a 21-3-4 all-time ad­van­tage against T&T, but speak­ing af­ter their fi­nal train­ing ses­sion at home at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar be­fore head­ing to the Unit­ed States as part of the 23-man squad, both Hack­shaw and Moore ex­pressed their con­fi­dence in the team's chances.

Hack­shaw, who has fea­tured 39 times for the se­nior team and has net­ted twice first ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the prepa­ra­tion ahead of the team's de­par­ture which in­clud­ed a few prac­tice match­es against some of the lo­cal T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) clubs, who are ready­ing them­selves for the start of the sec­ond sea­son on No­vem­ber 24.

The ro­bust mid­field­er said, "These ses­sions have been very im­por­tant as we try to get match fit with these games we have been play­ing here and I think the guys are play­ing and do­ing pret­ty good.

"Now we're just wait­ing to meet up with the rest of the guys and I think it's go­ing to be fun."

Look­ing ahead to the first-leg en­counter against the Amer­i­cans, Hack­shaw said he was feel­ing good and pos­i­tive.

He added, "I think with the bunch of guys we have now I think we're go­ing to give them a good fight. It's not go­ing to be easy both ways for us and for them, and I think we are go­ing to do good.

"This team we have here is a fight­ing team. It's a younger group, but I think every­one is al­ways up for the fight, and with the ad­di­tion of Levi (Gar­cia), I think we are go­ing to do great."

With re­gards to the Texas venue, Hack­shaw said, "It's go­ing to be cold and with their fans, it's go­ing to be a great at­mos­phere be­cause the field is re­al­ly nice, which is go­ing to be nice for us as well."

With the sec­ond leg to be played at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, the fol­low­ing Mon­day, Hack­shaw was al­so mind­ful that the So­ca War­riors will need a pos­i­tive re­sult to give them­selves a chance at home to ad­vance.

He said, "It's not go­ing to be easy for us, but we are go­ing there to give them a show, and we are not go­ing to step short and we are go­ing to go full hun­dred."

The 27-year-old Moore who has scored sev­en goals in 24 ap­pear­ances, in­clud­ing two in his last two match­es, added: "I think we will do well in Texas.

"The train­ing ses­sion with the boys have been high in­ten­si­ty so far, we are ful­ly en­thu­si­as­tic about the task at hand and we are go­ing to go there and show that we have what it takes to beat the USA."

With re­gards to the Amer­i­cans, Moore said he be­lieves they have se­lect­ed a good squad de­spite the ab­sence of the in­jured Ital­ian-based duo of Chris­t­ian Pulisic (AC Mi­lan) and Tim­o­thy Weah (Ju­ven­tus).

How­ev­er, the in-form T&T strik­er not­ed that at the end of the day, foot­ball is played on the day.

He boast­ed, "So I don't feel threat­ened in any way about the squad that the USA plays with."

Com­ment­ing on the re­turn of cap­tain Levi Gar­cia who missed all four match­es for the So­ca War­riors in the six-team League A qual­i­fiers, Moore said: "It will be a big plus for all the guys and the tech­ni­cal staff to have Levi back in the team be­cause what he brings to the ta­ble for us is great."

In the oth­er quar­ter­fi­nal match-ups, Cana­da faces Ja­maica, Mex­i­co bat­tles Hon­duras and Pana­ma meets Cos­ta Ri­ca.

At the end of the four home-and-away se­ries, the four win­ners will not on­ly ad­vance to the Na­tions League fi­nal four in March next year but al­so will clinch their spots in next sum­mer’s Co­pa Amer­i­ca, the em­i­nent South Amer­i­can com­pe­ti­tion, which will be held at venues in the USA.

The four los­ing quar­ter­fi­nal­ists will still have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for Co­pa Amer­i­ca 2024 via a sin­gle-match di­rect elim­i­na­tion play-in, where they will play for the two re­main­ing slots award­ed to Con­ca­caf na­tions for the Co­pa Amer­i­ca which will fea­ture 10 CON­MEBOL na­tions and six Con­ca­caf na­tions.