T&T So­ca War­riors and coach An­gus Eve face a pos­si­ble sec­ond-round win­ner-take-all clash with the Guyana “Gold­en Jaguars’ coach by for­mer T&T coach Ja­maal Shabazz for a place in the main draw of the 2023 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, which will al­so of­fer six places to the Co­pa Amer­i­ca.

This was de­ter­mined fol­low­ing Con­ca­caf’s re­lease of the de­tails re­gard­ing the 2023 Gold Cup draw, in­clud­ing the event’s hosts, pots, and seed­ed na­tions.

The live draw, sched­uled to take place on April 14, 2023, at SoFi Sta­di­um, in In­gle­wood, Cal­i­for­nia, will start at noon PT/lo­cal time (3:00 pm ET) and will be host­ed by TUDN sports­cast­er Va­le­ria Marin, Fox Sports Lead Soc­cer An­a­lyst and US Men’s Na­tion­al Team leg­end Alexi Lalas and ES­PN play-by-play com­men­ta­tor Fer­nan­do Palo­mo.

Con­ca­caf Pres­i­dent and FI­FA Vice Pres­i­dent, Vic­tor Mon­tagliani, will par­tic­i­pate in the event, along­side the teams’ head coach­es and im­por­tant guests. All will be avail­able for in­ter­views at the event’s ar­rival red car­pet and post-draw mixed zone.

The 17th edi­tion of the Gold Cup is sched­uled to take place be­tween June 16 - Ju­ly 16, 2023, with the Fi­nal at SoFi Sta­di­um, on Sun­day, Ju­ly 16, which will crown Con­ca­caf’s best men’s na­tion­al team and will con­clude two months of elite foot­ball in the re­gion that al­so in­clude the 2023 Sco­tia­bank Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League Fi­nal and 2022/23 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League Fi­nals.

But be­fore the So­ca War­riors can step foot on the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup group stage they will have to get through two rounds of pre­lim­i­nary qual­i­fi­ca­tion match­es af­ter fail­ing to qual­i­fy di­rect­ly from their four-team Con­ca­caf Na­tions League B Group C round-robin home-and-away se­ries.

T&T went in­to its fi­nal match at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let, To­ba­go need­ing a win against group lead­ers Nicaragua to se­cure the top spot in the group, and au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Gold Cup.

How­ev­er, Eve’s men could on­ly muster a 1-1 draw to end with 13 points, one be­hind Nicaragua to miss out on be­ing among the 12 au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers.

Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the sec­ond edi­tion of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League (CNL) which served as the qual­i­fi­er for the 2023 Gold Cup, the 12 teams who se­cured a berth in the 2023 Gold Cup Group Stage, join­ing Asian Cham­pi­ons and guest na­tion, Qatar were League A group win­ners: Cana­da, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and USA along with League A run­ners-up Cos­ta Ri­ca, El Sal­vador, Hon­duras, and Ja­maica along with the League B group win­ning quar­tet of Cu­ba, Guatemala, Haiti, and Nicaragua.

The 12 oth­er teams to qual­i­fy for the Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary qual­i­fiers were League A third-place fin­ish­ers, Cu­raçao, Grena­da, Mar­tinique, and Suri­name along with League B sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers French Guiana, Guade­loupe, Guyana, and T&T and League C group win­ners Puer­to Ri­co, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lu­cia, and Sint Maarten.

And in the 2023 Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary draw which was car­ried out us­ing a sin­gle-blind sys­tem and one pot and based on the Con­ca­caf rank­ings as of March 31, 2023, the teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pre­lims were seed­ed in­to a Round One matchup or placed in Pot One, as fol­lows Round One matchups (six high­est-ranked teams): T&T (#1), Mar­tinique (#2), Cu­raçao (#3), French Guiana (#4), Suri­name (#5), and Guyana (#6) who will be drawn against one of the teams from Pot One (Six low­est ranked teams) were Guade­loupe, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lu­cia, Grena­da, Puer­to Ri­co, and Sint Maarten.

The draw then de­ter­mined that the T&T match against one of the teams from Pot One will meet the win­ner of the Guyana match (#1 vs #6) while #2 meets #5, and #3 comes up against #6 to give the three qual­i­fiers for the 2023 Gold Cup Group Stage Draw which will be car­ried out us­ing a dou­ble-blind sys­tem, in­volv­ing eight pots.

T&T has qual­i­fied for the Gold Cup main draw 11 out 16 times with its best show­ing com­ing in 2000 un­der coach Bertille St Clair when they were edged out by Cana­da 1-0 in their semi­fi­nal while they topped their main draw group com­pris­ing Mex­i­co, Cu­ba and Guatemala in 2015 un­der Stephen Hart be­fore los­ing 6-5 on penal­ty-kicks to Pana­ma in the quar­ter­fi­nals af­ter a 1-1 draw.

T&T was al­so beat­en 1-0 by Mex­i­co in the quar­ter­fi­nals in 2013, the on­ly oth­er time they have man­aged to qual­i­fy out of their round-robin pool.

Two years ago, with Eve at the helm for just un­der a month, T&T al­so had to go through a pre­lim­i­nary stage and ham­mered Montser­rat 6-1 be­fore get­ting the bet­ter of French Guiana 8-7 in sud­den-death penal­ty-kicks af­ter a 1-1 draw to reach the main draw where they drew goal­less with Mex­i­co, went un­der to El Sal­vador 2-0 and drew 1-1 with Guatemala in Group C.