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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Soca Warriors must win against Saudi Arabia to advance

by

Walter Alibey
30 days ago
20250622
Speedy T&T winger Tyrese Spicer among his teammates, Joevin Jones, Dante Sealy, Andre Raymond, and Steffen Yeates among others in training ahead of tonight’s Concacaf Gold Cup Group D clash with Saudi Arabia at 7pm. 

Speedy T&T winger Tyrese Spicer among his teammates, Joevin Jones, Dante Sealy, Andre Raymond, and Steffen Yeates among others in training ahead of tonight’s Concacaf Gold Cup Group D clash with Saudi Arabia at 7pm. 

Courtesy TTFA

T&T’s So­ca War­riors must win when they meet Sau­di Ara­bia on Sun­day (June 22) to have a chance of ad­vanc­ing from the group stage of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da.

To­day’s clash will take place at the Al­le­giant Sta­di­um in Las Ve­gas, USA at 7 pm.

T&T is cur­rent­ly at the bot­tom of the four-team stand­ings with one point with the Haitians, whom they drew with 1-1 on Thurs­day last, but has an in­fe­ri­or goal dif­fer­en­tial. This can all change, though, if the So­ca War­riors, World Cup qual­i­fiers back in 2006, can hold off the 61st-ranked team in world foot­ball. T&T is ranked 96th in the world and 11th in the Con­ca­caf re­gion.

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke, who took over at the helm of the team in No­vem­ber last year, re­ceived a bap­tism of fire on his de­but match in charge of the So­ca War­riors, as his charges went down 3-1 to the Saud­is in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly at the Al Shabab Riyadh Sta­di­um.

Yorke’s men have since made tremen­dous strides, which in­clude a 2-1 and a 4-0 vic­to­ry against Cu­ba, which earned them a place in the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup. How­ev­er, the War­riors have gone a full cir­cle, need­ing to over­come the Saud­is, who got the bet­ter of Haiti 1-0 but lost to the Unit­ed States 1-0 for three points and sec­ond in the stand­ings be­hind the Amer­i­cans.

Yes­ter­day, Yorke in the pre-game press brief­ing made it clear they are still in with a chance. “ De­spite the de­feat against Amer­i­ca 5-0 and the draw against Haiti 1-1, we’re still in with a chance to qual­i­fy, and we know there are two sce­nar­ios. If T&T wins and we get favourable re­sults from Amer­i­ca and Haiti, then we ad­vance. Sau­di Ara­bia may look at it from a dif­fer­ent an­gle, a point that would al­low them to go through, so of course, a vic­to­ry for them will see them go through au­to­mat­i­cal­ly,” Yorke ex­plained. “ At the end of the day, we know ex­act­ly what is re­quired, and that is to get three points in the end. We need to play a bit more on the front foot; we of­ten get off to slow starts. We al­ways say to the play­ers that we are a re­ac­tive team rather than a proac­tive team, so we need to be bet­ter than that, cer­tain­ly at the be­gin­ning of the games.”

“We end rel­a­tive­ly well, so we need to turn that around; we need to start well. I think if we have a lit­tle more self-be­lief, a lit­tle more self-con­fi­dence, and play foot­ball the way I know this team can play, and the abil­i­ty that we have, we can get a re­sult.”

Goal­keep­er Mar­vin Phillip told the me­dia that his play­ers must come out to play for each oth­er for 90-plus min­utes if we are to beat the Saud­is.

The So­ca War­riors have been hard-hit by a three-week-plus pe­ri­od on the road, hav­ing re­cent­ly con­test­ed the Uni­ty Cup in West Lon­don and have trav­elled straight to the Gold Cup.

Yorke, a for­mer na­tion­al strik­er who made the World Cup as a play­er and now wants to qual­i­fy the na­tion as a coach, said game man­age­ment would be im­por­tant for the So­ca War­riors tonight. “ Game man­age­ment is some­thing I try to in­stil in the play­ers. For 90-plus min­utes, you’ve got to see the mo­ments out there. If your back is against the wall you’ve got to be re­silient and dig deep. You’re gonna have your mo­ments as well, so it’s how you ex­e­cute when you’re in con­trol of the game, but cer­tain­ly for 90 min­utes you’ve got to man­age the game.”

T&T TEAM

1 Mar­vin Phillip (GK), 4 Shel­don Bateau, 5 Justin Gar­cia, 6 An­dre Ray­mond, 8 Daniel Phillips, 9 Nathaniel James, 11 Levi Gar­cia, 13 Tyrese Spicer, 15 Dante Seaoly, 17 Rio Car­dines, 18 An­dre Ram­per­sad, 21 Jabari St Hillaire (GK), 22 Den­zil Smith, 2 Dar­nell Hospedales, 7 Stef­fen Yeates, 10 Kevin Moli­no, 12 Isa­iah Lea­cock, 16 Alvin Jones, 19 Ajani For­tune, 20 Re­al Gill, 23 Noah Pow­der, 25 Kai­him Thomas, 26 Isa­iah Lee

STAND­INGS

Team*PTS*MP*W*L*D*GF*GA*GD

1.*USA*6*2*2*0*0*6*0*6

2.*Sau­di Ara­bia*3*2*1*1*0*1*1*0

3.*Haiti*1*2*0*1*1*1*2*-1

4.*Trinidad and To­ba­go*1*2*0*1*1*1*6*-5


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