For­mer T&T World Cup duo, strik­er Stern John and de­fend­er Brent San­cho, ex­pressed their de­light with the news that ex­ist­ing qual­i­fy­ing for­mat with re­gards to the "Hex" is ex­pect­ed to change for the FI­FA 2022 World Cup in Qatar due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic which has great­ly af­fect­ed this year's FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball cal­en­dar.

The pair were speak­ing on Fri­day at the re-open­ing of the re­fur­bished St James Po­lice Bar­racks Train­ing Acad­e­my foot­ball field which un­der­went an $800,000 up­grade by Land­scap­ing & Cen­tral Con­tract­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.  

Be­fore the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, the top six Con­ca­caf teams in the FI­FA rank­ings as of June 2020 (Mex­i­co, USA, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica, Hon­duras,  El Sal­vador) were ex­pect­ed to en­ter in­to the Hexag­o­nal (six-team) fi­nal round, fea­tur­ing a round-robin for­mat from which the top three teams will earn di­rect tick­ets to Qatar, while the fourth-place fin­ish­er in the "Hex" was set to first con­test a play­off with the 29 oth­er Con­ca­caf na­tions who were to com­pete for one spot af­ter which that play­off win­ner was due to com­pete in an in­ter-con­ti­nen­tal play­off against ei­ther Asia, South Amer­i­ca or Ocea­nia for a World Cup spot.

As it stood, T&T, ranked tenth in Con­ca­caf,  along with 28 oth­er na­tions who are il­leg­i­ble to com­pete in Con­ca­caf, were due to bat­tle it out for the right to bat­tle the fourth-place team from the "Hex".

How­ev­er, on Tues­day, Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani speak­ing on One Soc­cer’s In­side the Game with Gareth Wheel­er in Toron­to, Cana­da, con­firmed that the up­com­ing qual­i­fiers for the 2022 World Cup, the “Hex” in its cur­rent form on the bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties will change due to de­lays from COVID-19.

The “Hex” was set to start in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, with the fourth-place team squar­ing off with the win­ner of the 29-team sec­ond-tier event in Oc­to­ber 2021. The win­ner of that play­off would then op­pose a team from Asia, South Amer­i­ca or Ocea­nia in March 2022 for a spot in the World Cup, lat­er that year.

Mon­tagliani not­ed that those plans have been com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that FI­FA can­celled its sched­uled in­ter­na­tion­al-match win­dows in March and June, and the Sep­tem­ber in­ter­na­tion­al date might end up be­ing scratched, too, de­pend­ing on when do­mes­tic leagues can restart.

A FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent as well, Mon­tagliani said: "We will be re­for­mat­ting the cur­rent one, so we are go­ing to have 35 coun­tries, and un­til we know from FI­FA how many win­dows we will have it’s go­ing to be very hard for me to say what it will be like.

On the ex­pect­ed re­for­mat­ting of the qual­i­fiers, John and San­cho who were mem­bers of the Leo Been­hakker-coached na­tion­al team at the 2006 FI­FA Ger­many World Cup, ex­pressed the be­lief that the new for­mat will work in T&T's favour.

San­cho said, "We def­i­nite­ly have got­ten a re­prieve be­cause as it stood be­fore we were ba­si­cal­ly out of the World Cup due to the lit­tle chance we had. Now ob­vi­ous­ly with the COVID-19 and the hav­oc it has played and will con­tin­ue to play on the FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow, it cer­tain­ly gives us a chance back in­to the main phase.

"But for us, we first have to get our house in or­der, of course, Yes the news that Con­ca­caf and FI­FA have to do a re­con­fig­ur­ing of the draw will give us a bet­ter chance at qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cup, but it will re­main a dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion for us.

"This is be­cause we have seen a lot of im­prove­ment from not just the nor­mal pow­ers like the USA, and Mex­i­co, but you can look at teams like Pana­ma, El Sal­vador, Cana­da and Hon­duras have all been show­ing tremen­dous strides in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball and pulling off some great re­sults over the last two years or so.

"Then we have the Caribbean Foot­ball Union na­tions like Ja­maica, and Haiti who have been do­ing quite well, so I think that even though the for­mat will change I still think it will be a daunt­ing task for us and we have a lot of work to do. But with that be­ing said we may still have been pre­sent­ed with a greater pos­si­bil­i­ty of qual­i­fy­ing than be­fore.

 John, T&T's all-time lead­ing goalscor­er with 70 goals from 115 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es, to be joint 15th on the FI­FA all-time for play­ers with their na­tion­al teams, was quick to note that it will present the na­tion­al team with a greater op­por­tu­ni­ty.

"Now that' the for­mat is ex­pect­ed to change and the sched­ule will be pushed back it will a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us and we will have a bet­ter chance to qual­i­fy for what­ev­er the fi­nal stage or new "Hex" will look like," said John, who was an as­sis­tant coach to for­mer na­tion­al coach and fel­low World Cup team mem­ber Den­nis Lawrence.

"So it's up to us now as I be­lieve most of the coun­tries are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same set­backs due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, so we will have to come out and hit the ground run­ning when the all-clear is giv­en for the re­turn to in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball and work away to get­ting back in­to the top seg­ment of Con­ca­caf foot­ball where I think we de­serve to be."