T&T So­ca War­riors in­ter­im coach Derek King is hop­ing to get a pos­i­tive re­sult when his team faces Hon­duras on Fri­day at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional Chela­to Ucles, Tegu­ci­gal­pa, from 10 pm in their open­ing 2024/2025 CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League A Group B match. 

The 44-year-old King was speak­ing on ar­rival in Tegu­ci­gal­pa, Hon­duras, last evening fol­low­ing the team’s de­par­ture from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ear­ly yes­ter­day via Pana­ma. 

Over­all, T&T and Hon­duras have met 20 times, with Hon­duras win­ning 11 match­es and the So­ca War­riors earn­ing three wins, with the six oth­er match­es end­ing in drawn out­comes. 

How­ev­er,  T&T has suf­fered de­feats in the last four en­coun­ters against the Hon­durans, the last of which was in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League, 4-0 on No­vem­ber 17, 2019.

This fol­lowed a 2-0 home loss on Oc­to­ber 10, 2018, while T&T was al­so beat­en in their last two FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fiers 3-1 away on No­vem­ber 15, 2016 and 2-1 at home on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2017.

In fact, the So­ca War­riors’ last win of three came at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup on Ju­ly 15, 2013, via a 2-0 mar­gin thanks to goals from Ken­wyne Jones and Kevin Moli­no at Shell En­er­gy Sta­di­um in Hous­ton, Texas, with the oth­er wins com­ing via a 1-0 re­sult in Hon­duras in an­oth­er World Cup qual­i­fi­er on Oc­to­ber 7, 2001, and 3-1 at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup on Feb­ru­ary 1, 1998.

Speak­ing on his ar­rival in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can na­tion, King said he was ex­cit­ed to be lead­ing T&T in­to the match.

“We have ar­rived here in Hon­duras, and all the play­ers will ar­rive lat­er to­day (Tues­day) and to­mor­row (Wednes­day). We will train twice, and the fol­low­ing day (Thurs­day), we will have the nor­mal one-hour ses­sion be­fore the match on Fri­day.

With re­gards to the task of tak­ing on world-ranked Hon­duras in their back­yard, King said, “The chal­lenge ahead is very ex­cit­ing for us.

“As I said be­fore, for us to com­pete with the top teams in CON­CACF, we will have to come to places like these and get a re­sult,’ stat­ed King.

Fol­low­ing Fri­day’s match, the So­ca War­riors re­turn home to host French Guiana at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, on Sep­tem­ber 10 at 7 p.m..

T&T will al­so face Cu­ba in a pair of match­es in Group B on Oc­to­ber 10 away from home and then four days lat­er at home to close our round-robin play in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League.

Ja­maica and Nicaragua are al­so in Group B but will not face T&T in their four round-robin match­es, while Group A is made up of Cos­ta Ri­ca, Guatemala, Mar­tinique, Guade­loupe, Suri­name, and Guyana.

The CNL League A will get go­ing on Thurs­day, with Guyana host­ing Suri­name, Cos­ta Ri­ca at home to Guade­loupe, and Guatemala host­ing Mar­tinique, all in Group A, while Fri­day’s two oth­er Group B match­es fea­ture Ja­maica at home to Cu­ba and French Guiana en­ter­tain­ing Nicaragua.

King, 44, a for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er, was ap­point­ed to the post at the end of Ju­ly to re­place An­gus Eve, who was sacked on Ju­ly 31 with more than a year left on his con­tract.

Eve’s fir­ing al­so came two match­es in­to this coun­try’s 2026 FI­FA CON­CA­CAF World Cup Sec­ond Round Group B qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, with the So­ca War­riors sit­ting on four points from two match­es to trail Cos­ta Ri­ca, who has a max­i­mum of six points.

The So­ca War­riors drew their open­er at home with St. Kitts & Nevis 2-2, fol­lowed by an em­phat­ic 7-1 blowout of the Ba­hamas, Eve’s last match in charge, and will com­plete their four-match sched­ule in 2025 with a home en­counter against St. Kitts & Nevis on June 6, fol­lowed by an away out­ing to group favourites Cos­ta Ri­ca four days lat­er.

For the first two match­es in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League, King, who served as an as­sis­tant to Eve as well as un­der pre­vi­ous coach Stephen Hart, has kept faith with the play­ers who fea­tured in the first two World Cup qual­i­fiers in June, with on­ly 26-year-old Greece-based for­ward Levi Gar­cia of AEK Athens re­quest­ing time off and USA-based 21-year-old Ajani For­tune of At­lanta Unit­ed not be­ing avail­able. 

Af­ter Group Stage play in Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber, the first and sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers of each group will ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nals, where they will join the four top-ranked League A teams (Mex­i­co, USA, Pana­ma, and Cana­da). 

T&T Squad

Goal­keep­ers: Christo­pher Biggette(De­fence Force), Den­zil Smith (AC Port-of-Spain), Aaron Enill (Mon­tego Bay Unit­ed/Ja­maica)

De­fend­ers: Aubrey David (CS De­porti­vo Mu­nic­i­pal/Guatemala), Tris­ton Hodge (Hart­ford Ath­let­ic/USA), Le­land Archer (Charleston Bat­tery/USA), An­dre Ray­mond (St John­stone FC/Scot­land), Shan­non Gomez (San An­to­nion FC/USA), Alvin Jones (Po­lice FC), Justin Gar­cia (De­fence Force)

Mid­field­ers: Du­ane Muck­ette (AC Port-of-Spain), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Stef­fen Yeates (Pa­cif­ic FC/Cana­da), Dan­taye Gilbert (Jong PSV/Hol­land), Noah Pow­der (North­ern Col­orado Hail­storm/USA), Daniel Phillips (Steve­nage FC/Eng­land),

For­wards: Isa­iah Lee (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), Ryan Telfer (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Nathaniel James (Mount Pleas­ant/Ja­maica), Re­al Gill (North­ern Col­orado Hail­storm), Re­on Moore (Pa­cif­ic FC/Cana­da), Kaile Au­vray (Cav­a­liers FC/Ja­maica), Kevon Wood­ley (Po­lice FC).

Tech­ni­cal staff: Derek King (in­ter­im coach), Walt Nor­ie­ga (as­sis­tant coach), Ross Rus­sell (goal­keep­er coach), Adar­ryl John (ath­let­ic train­er), Saron Joseph (strength and con­di­tion­ing coach), Joseph Rooplal (mas­sage ther­a­pist), Michael Williams (equip­ment man­ag­er), Dr Akash Dhanai (doc­tor), Shaun Fuentes (me­dia of­fi­cer), Richard Piper (man­ag­er)