T&T’s So­ca War­riors need on­ly a draw to seal a place in this year’s edi­tion of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup to be played in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da from June 14 to Ju­ly 6.

How­ev­er, na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke has as­sured that there is no need for cel­e­bra­tion just yet un­til the job is done on Tues­day night. Due to the So­ca War­riors’ 2-1 tri­umph last Fri­day, they need on­ly a draw to win the tie. How­ev­er, the Cubans, who in their last three meet­ings with T&T have lost twice and drawn the oth­er, will need to win by two clear goals to earn a qual­i­fy­ing berth at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup.

Yorke’s win co­in­ci­den­tal­ly comes as the first vic­to­ry on Cuban soil since 2008 for the So­ca War­riors and sets the stage for qual­i­fi­ca­tion from 7 pm tonight at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, amidst an ex­pect­ed ap­pre­cia­tive crowd.

To his cred­it al­so, Yorke’s War­riors will be strength­ened by the in­clu­sion of De­fence Force mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no and de­fend­er Ja­mal Jack, both of whom were left out of the open­ing game due to un­avail­abil­i­ty and visa is­sues.

Yorke as­sured that de­spite an im­per­fect dis­play last Fri­day, there would not be too much of a dif­fer­ence in his team’s ap­proach tonight: “I don’t think we will see too much of a dif­fer­ence in the ap­proach. I al­ways said that my phi­los­o­phy is that we play front-foot foot­ball and at­tack­ing-style foot­ball. Ul­ti­mate­ly, we are slight­ly ahead go­ing in­to the sec­ond game, and we know that Cu­ba will throw every­thing at us be­cause they are in a sit­u­a­tion where they need to turn the tide around, and we are ful­ly aware of that.”

“So tac­ti­cal­ly, we need to be aware of what they’re go­ing to do to cause us some prob­lems be­cause they have caused us some prob­lems, but we still have to re­main ag­gres­sive,” Yorke told the me­dia yes­ter­day at the pre-game press con­fer­ence.

He told the me­dia that his charges are mind­ful of creep­ing com­pla­cen­cy, which will play no part in his team.

Yorke, in his first vic­to­ry as coach of a coun­try, sought to clar­i­fy his po­si­tion as he spoke to the me­dia at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va be­fore the team held its last train­ing ses­sion at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Union Mara­bal­la.

“We’re very mind­ful that the re­sult in Cu­ba does not de­ter us or make us lose our fo­cus on the task at hand. We want­ed to go to Cu­ba to get a pos­i­tive re­sult, and we did that. On the flip side of that, we know that play­ing at home in the sec­ond game is al­ways go­ing to be chal­leng­ing, prob­a­bly even tougher than the one in Cu­ba, be­cause peo­ple would ex­pect us to get a good re­sult, al­though it al­so shows in the past, we had some de­cent re­sults and even vic­to­ry,” Yorke ex­plained.

“Com­ing away with a vic­to­ry will be very im­por­tant; it gives us a slight ad­van­tage go­ing in­to the game, but my ex­pe­ri­ence over the years and cer­tain­ly the back­room staff and these play­ers who have been work­ing for the past three and a half months un­der­stand the val­ue of what it takes, and cer­tain­ly there is no com­pla­cen­cy that will step in.”

“We wouldn’t be un­der­es­ti­mat­ing Cu­ba; we know that they cause us some prob­lems, cer­tain­ly in the dy­ing min­utes of the game, and we need to make sure and make it very dif­fi­cult; we need to re­main ag­gres­sive and fight to win the game, so that’s where our fo­cus is,” Yorke said.

T&T Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary

round squad

GOAL­KEEP­ERS: Mar­vin Phillip (AC PoS), Den­zil Smith (AV Al­ta FC/USA), Jabari St Hillaire (De­fence Force).

DE­FEND­ERS: Dar­nell Hospedales (Mon­tego Bay Utd/Ja­maica), Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham (Mon­tego Bay Unit­ed/Ja­maica), An­dre Ray­mond (Dun­fermline Ath­let­ic Scot­land), Alvin Jones (De­porti­vo Re­al So­ciedad/Hon­duras), Aubrey David (CSD Mu­nic­i­pal/Hon­duras), Ja­mal Jack (Club San­do)

MID­FIELD­ERS: Jo­evin Jones (Po­lice FC), Ste­fen Yeates (York Unit­ed/Cana­da), Daniel Phillips (Steve­nage/Eng­land), Natah­niel James (Port­land Heart of Pine/USA), Isa­iah Lee (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), Shan­non Gomez (San An­to­nio FC/USA), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Wayne Fred­er­ick II (Col­orado Rapids/USA), Kai­him Thomas (De­fence Force), Ajani For­tune (At­lanta Unit­ed/USA), Kevin Moli­no (De­fence Force)

FOR­WARDS: Tyrese Spicer (Toron­to FC/Cana­da), Dan­taye Gilbert/Hol­land), Re­al Gill (Hun­stville City FC/USA), Brent Sam (De­fence Force), Isa­iah Gar­cia (De­fence Force).