T&T's So­ca War­riors will be look­ing to cap­ture max­i­mum three points in their open­ing match of the Rus­sia 2018 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion when they face off with hosts Guatemala at the Es­ta­dio Ma­teo Flo­res from 7.06 pm (9.06 pm T&T time) tonight.

The match will be one of sev­er­al through­out CON­CA­CAF as se­mi-fi­nal round ac­tion gets on the way with fel­low group ri­vals Unit­ed States host­ing St Vin­cent/Grenadines in St Louis in the oth­er match of in­ter­est for the "So­ca War­riors".

The T&T team ar­rived in Guatemala City just around 3 pm lo­cal time on Wednes­day and were greet­ed by a bar­rage of Guatemala me­dia out­side the La Au­ro­ra in­ter­na­tion­al air­port.

Stephen Hart con­duct­ed a light ses­sion at around 6 pm at a near­by ar­ti­fi­cial sur­face pitch which was the on­ly one made avail­able to the vis­i­tors with lights. And the tem­per­a­ture dropped to 20 de­grees Cel­sius the evening pro­gressed.

Hart, how­ev­er, did man­age to over­see a more im­pact­ful ses­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing on a nat­ur­al grass sur­face be­fore putting his team through a short ses­sion at the match venue in the evening pe­ri­od. "We land­ed here and it's been a bit of a hike to get to the train­ing fa­cil­i­ties but they were de­cent. The main thing now is to keep our minds fo­cused on the game and not let lit­tle things af­fect us," Hart said.

Hart said he held an im­por­tant dis­cus­sion with the play­ers and told them that every­thing they did at the Gold Cup and in the past was no longer rel­e­vant. "This is a brand new Guatemala, this is a brand new sce­nario and I just put them in that frame of mind," Hart added.

Skip­per Ken­wyne Jones has been a big talk­ing point in the Guatemalan press, with sev­er­al queries from them about whether he is fit to play. The Cardiff City for­ward said he's feel­ing fine and ready to lead his team. "Things are run­ning smooth­ly. We are try­ing to iron out the fi­nal bits be­fore we go in­to the game. We had two great ses­sions and just try­ing to get a feel for over here, " Jones said.

"This is a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent com­pe­ti­tion. It's not go­ing to be easy for us here in Guatemala. We know what to ex­pect when we come to these Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries and they are go­ing to have that twelfth man sure­ly root­ing for them. And they are go­ing to come hard at us see­ing that we beat them in the Gold Cup.

"It's a bit more tech­ni­cal and tac­ti­cal for us es­pe­cial­ly when we come away from home. We are go­ing to try to do the things we plan to and try to come away with the three points.

"I feel great at the mo­ment. The play­ers are all train­ing very hard and keep­ing each oth­er on their toes," Jones added.

De­fend­er Radan­fah Abu Bakr is al­so keen ahead of the en­counter."I'm look­ing for­ward to it and the camp is quite pos­i­tive and we are con­fi­dent we can do well in this hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment. It's World Cup qual­i­fiers and it's a dif­fer­ent an­i­mal this time around," said the for­mer Cale­do­nia AIA de­fend­er.

The Guatemalans are smelling blood and will be gun­ning for Jones and his men af­ter be­ing blown away in the first half in Ju­ly at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup.

"We have more knowl­edge of T&T now, they've grown a lot since the Gold Cup, but we al­so have our own growth, we will now look at who is bet­ter able to face them. I know more or less how they at­tack, we have al­so seen them at least in the last five games. We have to win, play well or bad­ly, but we have to try to win, not here but every­where, to go to the World Cup you have to beat every­one," said their head coach Ivan Sopeg­no. The hosts will look to vet­er­an Car­los Ruiz and Mar­co Pa­pa to lead their at­tack on the night.

T&T have not won a World Cup qual­i­fi­er in Guatemala since 1989 when the Strike Squad de­feat­ed the home­side 1-0 on a Ker­ry Jamer­son win­ner.Hart will have all 22 play­ers at his dis­pos­al to­day with 11 re­serves al­lowed to sit on the bench.

Squad

Jan-Michael Williams (Cen­tral FC �T&T ), Mar­vin Phillip (Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed- T&T);Daneil Cyrus (Chica­go Fire–USA), Justin Hoyte (Da­gen­ham & Red­bridge–Eng­land), Car­lyle Mitchell (Seoul E-Land–South Ko­rea), Shel­don Bateau (FC Krylia Sama­ra–Rus­sia), Radan­fah Abu Bakr (HB Koge–Den­mark), Yohance Mar­shall (Mur­ciela­gos FC–Mex­i­co), Mekeil Williams (An­tigua GFC–Guatemala), Aubrey David (Shakhter Kara­gandy–Kaza­khstan), An­dre Bou­caud (Da­gen­ham & Red­bridge–Eng­land), Khaleem Hy­land (KV West­er­lo–Bel­gium), Ke­van George (Colum­bus Crew–USA), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (North East Stars), Trevin Cae­sar (Austin Az­tex–USA), Cordell Cato (San Jose Earth­quakes–USA), Jo­evin Jones (Chica­go Fire–USA), Lester Pelti­er (Slo­van Bratisla­va–Slo­va­kia), Keron Cum­mings (North East Stars � T&T);

Ken­wyne Jones (Cardiff City–Wales), Willis Plaza (Cen­tral FC � T&T), Jonathan Glenn (Breioab­lik–Ice­land).