The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis, to­geth­er with the Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Bev­er­ly Reid Samuel and Head of the Sport De­vel­op­ment Unit at SporTT, Justin Lat­apy-George, pre­sent­ed a cheque for TT$6,792,353 to the TTFA Pres­i­dent, Kieron Ed­wards, to sup­port the Men’s Na­tion­al Foot­ball Team 2024 to 2025 (Year 1) jour­ney to qual­i­fy for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup, host­ed across the Amer­i­c­as of Cana­da, Mex­i­co, and the USA. The pre­sen­ta­tion was made on Thurs­day.

This fund­ing is ex­pect­ed to cov­er a pe­ri­od from June 2024, when the T&T World Cup 2026 cam­paign start­ed against Grena­da with a 2-2 draw at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo. 

T&T will com­plete the sec­ond round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion with two cru­cial match­es against St. Kitts and Nevis on June 6th at home and Cos­ta Ri­ca on June 10th in San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca.

If suc­cess­ful, they’ll ad­vance to the third round start­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2025, at which time the TTFA will be in line for an­oth­er in­stall­ment from the gov­ern­ment for a sim­i­lar amount. 

At the end of the third round, the group win­ners will se­cure di­rect qual­i­fi­ca­tion, while the two best-ranked run­ners-up will move to the in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­offs.

Fol­low­ing the ap­point­ment of for­mer na­tion­al stand­out play­er and 2006 World Cup cap­tain Dwight Yorke, who was ap­point­ed as T&T’s se­nior men’s head coach on No­vem­ber 1, 2024, the Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis, had said that the TTFA will get the “equiv­a­lent” of US$1 mil­lion (TT$6.7M) for the first year. If the min­istry is sat­is­fied with how the mon­ey is be­ing spent, an ad­di­tion­al US$1 mil­lion will be dis­trib­uted for the sec­ond year of the agree­ment.

A few days af­ter Yorke’s ap­point­ment, the min­is­ter said, “What we have done is sup­port TTFA’s pro­pos­al for their World Cup cam­paign.” Min­is­ter Cud­joe-Lewis re­vealed, “They sub­mit­ted to us a World Cup pro­pos­al, and we are mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to their pro­pos­al like gov­ern­ments have done in the past. 

The fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion is ex­pect­ed to cov­er items such as coach­es fees, sup­port for lo­cal train­ing, lo­cal games, for­eign games, air­line tick­ets, and oth­er team ex­pens­es.

Yorke, who re­placed in­ter­im coach Derek King af­ter the TTFA and coach An­gus Eve part­ed ways in Ju­ly 2024, was un­veiled in an ex­trav­a­gant cer­e­mo­ny at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Bal­main, Cou­va, as the TTFA un­leashed the “Y fac­tor”—Yorke”, as the per­son to chart the So­ca War­riors World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion suc­cess.

Yorke’s back­room staff charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of nav­i­gat­ing the So­ca War­riors through the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup and World Cup qual­i­fiers in­clude King and his for­mer na­tion­al team­mate Rus­sell Lat­apy, to­geth­er with for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed U-23 Head Coach Neil Wood and Aus­tralian Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Coach An­tho­ny Crea. 

Yorke’s So­ca War­riors will go in­to com­pet­i­tive ac­tion for the first time in March 2025 when T&T will face Cu­ba on a home-and-away ba­sis in a Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary matchup. 

The win­ner of the two-legged af­fair will qual­i­fy for the 2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup tour­na­ment group stage, which will take place from June 14 to Ju­ly 6, 2025.

The pre­lim­i­nary match­es were de­ter­mined via Con­ca­caf’s rank­ings of the 14 par­tic­i­pat­ing teams af­ter the con­clu­sion of FI­FA’s No­vem­ber win­dow. The So­ca War­riors are ranked fifth be­hind Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica, Hon­duras, and Guatemala, with Cu­ba ranked tenth.

The four 2024/25 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League semi­fi­nal­ists—Cana­da, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and the US—will go di­rect­ly in­to the 2025 Gold Cup group stage for the tour­na­ment.

2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary matchups

Cos­ta Ri­ca vs Be­lize

Ja­maica vs St Vin­cent and the Grenadines

Hon­duras vs Bermu­da

Guatemala vs Guyana

T&T vs Cu­ba

Mar­tinique vs Suri­name

Nicaragua vs Guade­loupe