T&T will con­test a re­vamped Con­ca­caf Un­der-20 Men's Cham­pi­onships in Hon­duras from June 18 to Ju­ly 3, which will be the qual­i­fiers for the 2023 U-20 FI­FA World Cup in In­done­sia and the 2024 Sum­mer Olympics Games in France.

The host cities are San Pe­dro Su­la and Tegu­ci­gal­pa, the coun­try's cap­i­tal city.

On Thurs­day a re­lease from the Con­ca­caf said: "As pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced, the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s Coun­cil ap­proved in Sep­tem­ber 2021 a new stream­lined ap­proach for this im­por­tant tour­na­ment, which will see the re­gion’s FI­FA U-20 World Cup and Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion process­es com­bined in­to a sin­gle event. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, by re­or­gan­is­ing it as a sum­mer com­pe­ti­tion, fed­er­a­tions should have more op­por­tu­ni­ties to se­lect their best young play­ers.

"Pre­vi­ous­ly, men’s Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion took place through a sep­a­rate Con­ca­caf tour­na­ment which typ­i­cal­ly took place dur­ing league sea­sons in the Con­ca­caf re­gion and oth­er parts of the World."

Con­ca­caf gen­er­al sec­re­tary Philippe Mog­gio said: "This en­hanced Con­ca­caf Men’s U-20 Cham­pi­onship will show­case fu­ture stars of our re­gion as they com­pete for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy their teams to the FI­FA U-20 World Cup and the Sum­mer Olympic Games. We look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with our hosts, the Hon­duran Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion, as well as our part­ners and lo­cal stake­hold­ers to de­liv­er an out­stand­ing com­pe­ti­tion for fed­er­a­tions, their play­ers and coach­es, and the fans.”

The T&T team be­gan train­ing late last year un­der new coach An­gus Eve and is cur­rent­ly in pot two along­side Cana­da, Ja­maica and Guatemala. The host na­tion is one of the top four-seed­ed teams with the oth­ers be­ing the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Pana­ma.

The Group Stage will take place on March 3 (11 am TT time), at the Con­ca­caf head­quar­ters in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da and fans will be able to fol­low the event via the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s of­fi­cial App, web­site, Face­book page, and YouTube chan­nel.

"For the draw, the top four ranked teams, USA, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and Hon­duras have been seed­ed in­to Groups E, F, G, and H re­spec­tive­ly. The re­main­ing 12 na­tions will be split in­to three pots ac­cord­ing to their rank­ing as fol­lows (list­ed in rank­ing or­der per pot and the high­est-ranked teams in Pot 1).

The pots are: Pot one: Cos­ta Ri­ca, El Sal­vador, Cu­ba, and Haiti; Pot two: Cana­da, T&T, Guatemala, and Ja­maica; and Pot three: An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Suri­name, St Kitts and Nevis, and Aru­ba.

From the cham­pi­onships, the four semi­fi­nal teams will earn World Cup berths but on­ly the top two teams will se­cure places in France for the Olympic Games.

The com­pe­ti­tion will kick off the third week of June with a Group Stage be­tween the top-ranked 16 teams (ac­cord­ing to the Con­ca­caf Men’s U-20 Rank­ing). Af­ter Group Stage play (June 18-23) the top three teams in each of the groups will ad­vance to the Round of 16, join­ing the four CMU20C Qual­i­fiers win­ners (qual­i­fiers be­tween the low­est-ranked na­tions took place in No­vem­ber 2021).

16 teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Group Stage:

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Haiti, Hon­duras, Ja­maica, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, St Kitts and Nevis, Suri­name, T&T and Unit­ed States.

16 teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Round of 16:

Cu­ra­cao, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Nicaragua, Puer­to Ri­co and the top three teams in each of the groups (12 teams).

Teams will be drawn and placed in­to Groups E, F, G, and H in se­quen­tial or­der.

Group E: Unit­ed States, E2, E3, and E4

Group F: Mex­i­co, F2, F3, and F4

Group G: Pana­ma, G2, G3, and G4

Group H: Hon­duras, H2, H3, and H4