De­spite the threat of a FI­FA ban hang­ing over its head due to cir­cum­stance ful­ly out of their con­trol T&T se­nior men's foot­ball team has been list­ed as one of six Pre-seed­ed teams along with Haiti, Guatemala, Cu­ba, Guade­loupe and Bermu­da for the 2021 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary draw which will in­volve 12 coun­tries.

This was dis­closed yes­ter­day when Con­ca­caf con­firmed that its first-ever Gold Cup draw will take place in Mi­a­mi, USA on Sep­tem­ber 28 at 8 pm, and the made-for-tv live event will be host­ed by Em­my award-win­ning TUDN sports­cast­er Lind­say Casinel­li and Fox Sports Lead foot­ball An­a­lyst and the Unit­ed States Men’s Na­tion­al Team leg­end Alexi Lalas.

The draw for the pre­lim­i­nary will in­volve the 12 na­tion­al teams in­clu­sive of Pot 1 na­tions French Guiana, Guyana, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Bar­ba­dos, Montser­rat and Ba­hamas who earned their places in the Gold Cup Qual­i­fiers through their per­for­mances in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League group stage, which was played in Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2019.

This in­cludes the bot­tom-placed fin­ish­ers in League A groups A, B and C, the run­ners-up in League B groups and the win­ners of League C groups.

The top six teams based on the Con­ca­caf Rank­ing will be pre-seed­ed in­to match-ups one through six, and the next six will be drawn from a sin­gle pot. Af­ter di­rect elim­i­na­tion play over three match-days be­tween Ju­ly 2 through Ju­ly 6, 2021, the 12 teams will be re­duced to a fi­nal three who will qual­i­fy for the Gold Cup Group Stage.

For the Pre­lim­i­nary Round (Pre­lims), Con­ca­caf’s Di­rec­tor of De­vel­op­ment and for­mer Grena­da in­ter­na­tion­al star Ja­son Roberts will draw the teams while the draw for the Group Stage will be con­duct­ed by Con­ca­caf Di­rec­tor of Com­pe­ti­tions, Car­los Fer­nan­dez, along­side for­mer Hon­duras na­tion­al team star Wil­son Pala­cios, a stand­out play­er in 2005, 2007 and 2011 edi­tions of the Gold Cup.

The teams will be split in­to four pots based on the Con­ca­caf Rank­ings and drawn in­to one of Groups A, B, C or D.

As the iden­ti­ty of the three qual­i­fy­ing teams through the Gold Cup Pre­lims will not be known un­til Ju­ly 6th, 2021, for the draw there will be three spheres la­belled as Pre­lims win­ners

The top four ranked na­tions (Pot 1) will be seed­ed based on the Con­ca­caf Rank­ing, with the cur­rent Gold Cup Cham­pi­ons Mex­i­co head­ing Group A, USA Group B, Cos­ta Ri­ca Group C and Hon­duras Group D.

The re­main­ing com­pet­ing teams will be dis­trib­uted in Pots 2, 3 and 4 based on their rank­ing.

The guest team, Qatar, will be pre-drawn in­to the group which be­gins play on the lat­est date (Group D) as the team will al­so com­pete in the Co­pa Amer­i­ca which con­cludes in ear­ly Ju­ly.

A num­ber of the na­tion­al team head coach­es will par­tic­i­pate vir­tu­al­ly in the evening’s event to pro­vide live in­ter­views fol­low­ing the out­come of the draw.

As part of the Con­fed­er­a­tion's foot­ball first phi­los­o­phy, Con­ca­caf last month an­nounced a se­ries of en­hance­ments to the 2021 edi­tion of its flag­ship re­gion­al tour­na­ment. These in­clude a draw, the in­tro­duc­tion of the Pre­lims to qual­i­fy the fi­nal three teams for the Group Stage and an ex­cit­ing change to the Knock­out Stage which will mean the top-seed­ed teams can meet be­fore the Fi­nal.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, through the de­vel­op­ment of a long-stand­ing agree­ment with the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion, the Asian Cup cham­pi­ons, Qatar, will com­pete as a guest par­tic­i­pant in the tour­na­ment. Con­ca­caf, the Qatar Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and the Supreme Com­mit­tee re­spon­si­ble for de­liv­er­ing the FI­FA World Cup Qatar 2022 will al­so part­ner on a game-chang­ing foot­ball de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost com­mu­ni­ty coach­ing in all Con­ca­caf na­tions.

The draw will be avail­able for fans across the re­gion to view on TUDN (Mex­i­co and USA), FS2 (USA and Caribbean), One Soc­cer (Cana­da) and oth­er lo­cal part­ners. For oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, the event will be avail­able on the Of­fi­cial Con­ca­caf App, Con­ca­caf Face­book page and Con­ca­caf YouTube chan­nel (sub­ject to ter­ri­to­ry re­stric­tions).

The pre­lims will be played Ju­ly 2 to Ju­ly 6, 2021, while the Group Stage will be­gin on Ju­ly 10 and the Gold Cup Fi­nal will be played on Au­gust 1.

Con­ca­caf Gold Cup Group Stage Draw Pots (based on Con­ca­caf Rank­ing as of Au­gust 2020)

Pot 1 (pre-seed­ed teams): Mex­i­co (Group A), USA (Group B), Cos­ta Ri­ca (Group C) and Hon­duras (Group D)

Pot 2: Ja­maica, Cana­da, Pana­ma and El Sal­vador

Pot 3: Mar­tinique, Cu­ra­cao, Suri­name and Grena­da

Pot 4: Three Pre­lims Win­ners and Qatar (Group D)