T&T’s So­ca War­riors are set to face the gi­ants of African foot­ball Nige­ria and Ghana, as well as re­gion­al ri­vals Ja­maica, in a four-team show­down for the Uni­ty Cup in May.

It’s a bold move to boost the So­ca War­riors team ahead of the FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers, which con­tin­ue on June 6 with a clash with St Kitts/Nevis at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards re­vealed on Wednes­day.

Ed­wards, fol­low­ing a con­vinc­ing 4-0 tri­umph by the So­ca War­riors in front of a packed Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Tues­day that pro­pelled the coun­try to the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, June 14-Ju­ly 6.

Ed­wards told Guardian Me­dia Sports Wednes­day it’s time to move to the next lev­el. “Next up on the agen­da is the Uni­ty Cup in May. We head to Lon­don, Eng­land, for two games. The Uni­ty Cup com­pris­es four teams: Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, Ghana and Nige­ria.”

“We play Ja­maica in the first game, then Nige­ria plays Ghana; the win­ners of the two games will play each oth­er on the 31st of May. The first game is on the 27th of May, and the losers of the two games play each oth­er on the same day, May 31, so they would play the first game, and the win­ners play the sec­ond, so that is the Uni­ty Cup,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

He ex­plained fur­ther, “The idea is to have high-lev­el op­po­si­tion for the team’s prepa­ra­tion for the World Cup qual­i­fi­er on June 6 against St Kitts/Nevis at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.”

The War­riors are sec­ond in Group B of the qual­i­fiers so far af­ter they were held to a shock­ing 2-2 draw by Grena­da be­fore they re­bound­ed with a heavy 7-1 thrash­ing of the Ba­hamas for a to­tal of four points. They need to be among the top two teams in the group to ad­vance.

Ed­wards, who ad­mit­ted he has been fol­low­ing Yorke from the mo­ment he took up the coach­ing job of the T&T team, said he ex­pect­ed Tues­day’s vic­to­ry over Cu­ba when asked by Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day.

“It was ex­pect­ed. I would have been around the team from the in­cep­tion of coach Yorke; I would have seen the team in Sau­di Ara­bia and in Ja­maica and saw the pro­gres­sion. I would have had many dis­cus­sions with Yorke in terms of his ideas, his phi­los­o­phy, what he’s try­ing to in­stil in the team, and how he wants the team to work. So, it’s about time,” Ed­wards said.

“It’s about hav­ing enough match­es in terms of him get­ting to see his play­ers and get­ting to see the com­po­si­tion of var­i­ous play­ers, so when I saw the team’s per­for­mance in Cu­ba go­ing 1-0 down to them com­ing back and win­ning the match, I knew that when they came back home, they would have put on a good show.”

“Of course, the ear­ly man ad­van­tage helped, but be­cause we had a man up, we did not throw cau­tion to the wind and that kind of thing; they stayed struc­tured and dis­ci­plined in terms of what Coach Yorke want­ed. So, for me, it’s one that I ex­pect­ed to see that lev­el of per­for­mance.

He con­tin­ues to tell me there is a lot of work to be done still in terms of where we want to go for the fi­nal round of World Cup qual­i­fy­ing and what that will take.”

“Qual­i­fy­ing for the Gold Cup was im­por­tant, so I think that would give us some qual­i­ty match­es in June and Ju­ly, as top teams in CON­CA­CAF have qual­i­fied for the Gold Cup, you would know, so the World Cup would be a very com­pet­i­tive one.”

“It will give Coach Yorke an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the guys, get dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tions to­geth­er, get the look in for dif­fer­ent guys and give Coach Yorke enough match prac­tice. Hav­ing those games in Eng­land would do that as well be­cause Ja­maica should be at full strength, as well as Ghana and Nige­ria, so it would give the guys a good run in, and it would con­tin­ue the process that coach Yorke has for the team to get to the 2026 World Cup,” Ed­wards ex­plained.