New-found play­ers, mid­field­er Kris­t­ian Lee Him of Swedish (IFK Es­kil­stu­na, Swe­den) and de­fend­er Samory Pow­der of Hud­son Val­ley Ham­mers in the Unit­ed States were cho­sen on coach An­gus Eve’s 22-man team to face Guatemala in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­counter on Sun­day at the Sub­aru Park in Chester, Penn­syl­va­nia, USA.

Ac­cord­ing to Eve, who spoke to the me­dia at the team's fi­nal train­ing ses­sion at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Mara­bel­la on Thurs­day said, the play­ers fit in­to a cat­e­go­ry of play­ers who ei­ther have not been seen and who have been knock­ing on the door. Play­ers who have been do­ing well in the lo­cal league, and then some guys who have been on the radar and do­ing well for their teams.

And al­so, young­sters who want­ed to give some in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence too, such as Re­al Gill of Club San­do and Kai­him Thomas of the De­fence Force in the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, both of whom have played with the u-20s and now have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be seen at the se­nior lev­el.

Eve said the game against the Guatemalans will jump­start the coun­try’s CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup and FI­FA 2026 World Cup qual­i­fiers, for which he need­ed all hands on deck, rang­ing from the play­ers, the staff, the TTFA, the gov­ern­ment, the me­dia, cor­po­rate cit­i­zens and the lo­cal foot­ball mem­ber­ship.

He said, for far too long, there has been talk about want­i­ng to qual­i­fy for the world cup, but he has al­ways ques­tioned if that is so. “Are we re­al­ly prepar­ing? From the Min­istry of Sports, the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T, it’s a chal­lenge to even get a pitch for us to train on, so there are lots of things that we have to go in­to and deal with. It’s not just the staff or the TTFA, be­cause this is a coun­try thing,” Eve ex­plained.

The T&T team, which in­cludes AEK Athens strik­er Levi Gar­cia, Shel­don Bateau of SK Bev­eren in Bel­gium, Kaile Au­vray of Sport­ing Kansas in the US and An­dre Ray­mond of Du­miense FC in Por­tu­gal, has been go­ing through a pe­ri­od of struc­tur­ing, gelling and build­ing ca­ma­raderie as they pre­pare for their open­ing Gold Cup pre-qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment match against Guade­loupe next Fri­day in Fort Laud­erdale.

And four days lat­er, if they win, they will face the win­ner of the oth­er qual­i­fi­er be­tween Grena­da and Guyana on June 24 at the same venue.

Should the So­ca War­riors pre­vail in this en­counter, then they will qual­i­fy for Group D which will fea­ture re­gion­al gi­ants Cana­da, Guatemala and Cu­ba. The last time the War­riors met their Guatemalan coun­ter­parts at the Gold Cup was in 2019 in a game that end­ed 1-1.

In the Gold Cup, the team, tak­en over by Eve fol­low­ing a failed World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign un­der Ter­ry Fen­wick, al­so held Mex­i­co to a goal­less tie be­fore be­ing beat­en by El Sal­vador 2-0.

Eve said: “Al­though this is the Gold Cup, it is a step­ping stone for the World Cup qual­i­fiers, so we still have to de­vel­op the younger play­ers, keep bring­ing them through, keep giv­ing them op­por­tu­ni­ties so they can ex­cel and be com­fort­able at this lev­el.”

“So this is just a step­ping stone in that di­rec­tion, and giv­ing the play­ers this game against Guatemala, who is a very good out­fit and show­ing faith in them, will on­ly auger well for their con­fi­dence.”

He as­sured that their in­ten­tion is to play against the best team in the CON­CA­CAF re­gion, say­ing: “ If you want to play the best teams in CON­CA­CAF, you will have to build grad­u­al­ly to reach where you want to be. Cana­da didn’t qual­i­fy for a world cup for about 30 years and now they have a League and all these things are go­ing on. We just start­ed back our league, and we’re tak­ing ba­by steps but we will get there even­tu­al­ly.”

Eve al­so touched on Nicaraguan play­er Richard Ro­driguez who played il­le­gal­ly against T&T in their open­ing CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League match against T&T in Man­agua in June last year, which the Nicaraguans won 2-1.

It was ru­moured that Eve and the TTFA were in the process of fil­ing a protest to CON­CA­CAF, as it could en­able the So­ca War­riors’ an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing spot to the Gold Cup. How­ev­er, he said yes­ter­day that the fi­nal de­ci­sion rests in the hands of the CON­CA­CAF and not them.

Mean­while, Che Ben­ny, one of the play­ers who has been knock­ing on the door for a place on the team said he was de­light­ed to have earned a spot on the team, hav­ing worked in the past and through­out the TTPFL so far. He told the me­dia that his qual­i­ty will be a tremen­dous help to the team.

Gar­cia, who missed the last two rounds of the Na­tions Cup that even­tu­al­ly saw TT be­ing pipped for the top spot by Nicaragua in To­ba­go on March 27, said he is glad to be back to help pro­vide mo­ti­va­tion and en­cour­age­ment for the team.

TEAM

GOAL­KEEP­ERS

1 Mar­vin Phillip (AC Port-of-Spain), 21 Den­zil Smith (W Con­nec­tion)

DE­FEND­ERS

3 Shel­don Bateau (SK Bev­eren), 4 Alv­in­Jones (Club San­do), 5 Ross Rus­sell Jr (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), 6 Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham (Club San­do), 7 An­dre Ray­mond (Du­miense FC, Por­tu­gal), 8 Justin Gar­cia (De­fence Force), 9 Jameel Nep­tune (De­fence Force), 10 Samory Pow­der (Hud­son Val­ley Ham­mers, US), 11 Stephon Mar­cano (Ven­tu­ra Fu­sion, US).

MID­FIELD­ERS

12 Daniel Phillips (St John­stone, Scot­land), 13 Du­ane Muck­ette (AC Port of Spain), 14 Kaile Au­vray (Sport­ing Kansas, US), 15 Re­al Gill (Club San­do), 16 Justin Sadoo (De­fence Force), 17 Michel Poon-Angeron (AC Port of Spain), 18 Kai­him Thomas (De­fence Force), 19 Che Ben­ny (AC Port of Spain), 20 Kris­t­ian Lee Him (IFK Es­kil­stu­na, Swe­den)

FOR­WARDS

21 Nathaniel James (Club San­do), 22 Kadeem Corbin (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers)