This coun­try’s Un­der-20 men’s foot­ball teams will be keen on a pos­i­tive start when they meet Haiti in their Group F open­er of the Con­ca­caf Men’s Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onship at the Fran­cis­co Morazan Sta­di­um, San Pe­dro Su­la, Hon­duras on Sun­day from 6 pm (TT time).

The sec­ond match in the group will fea­ture Mex­i­co and Suri­name from 10.30 pm at the same venue.

To­day's meet­ing be­tween the An­gus Eve-coached U-20 So­ca War­riors and Haiti will be their first-ever meet­ing with the for­mer hop­ing to qual­i­fy for a third FI­FA Men’s U-20 World Cup, af­ter qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 1991 Fi­nals in Por­tu­gal and 2009 in Egypt, while Haiti is try­ing to qual­i­fy for their first.

On Fri­day evening, Eve and his squad ar­rived in Hon­duras fol­low­ing a ten-day camp in Cos­ta Ri­ca where they played two friend­ly en­coun­ters against that coun­try's U-20 team, a 0-0 draw and a 2-0 loss which was fol­lowed by a third friend­ly against a lo­cal club team Sport­ing FC, which end­ed in a 2-0 de­feat as well at the Com­ple­jo De­porti­vo Fede­fút­bol Plycem.

Dur­ing the first two match­es against the Cos­ta Ri­cans, the lo­cal U-20s were un­der the su­per­vi­sion of as­sis­tant coach Reynold Car­ring­ton while coach Eve and cap­tain Mo­lik Khan missed the match due to se­nior na­tion­al team com­mit­ments, and the trio of Tarik Lee, Chris­t­ian Bai­ley, and Tris­tan Ed­wards al­so missed the first match due to CXC Ex­ams along with Aus­tria-based de­fend­er Noah Ro­ka, who on­ly joined the team on the morn­ing of the match af­ter his ex­ams as well.

How­ev­er, speak­ing on ar­rival in Hon­duras as his team get set to make their 21st ap­pear­ance in the com­pe­ti­tion said things have been hec­tic with prob­lems aris­ing with their Co­pa Air­lines flight with the play­ers be­ing in the air­port for sev­er­al hours.

He said, "It's no fault of any­body here (Hon­duras) but we had a prob­lem on the Co­pa Air­lines flight so we had the guys in the air­port for like five hours. As again it's no fault of any­body here as the Co­pa flight we had to con­nect with had a med­ical emer­gency and it nev­er reached in un­til about two and a half hours af­ter the time that it was sup­posed to reach.

"But at the end of the day, we are here and every­body is safe and we just have one guy with a nig­gling in­jury but oth­er than that we are in good spir­its."

The T&T team which ar­rived in Hon­duras was mi­nus de­fend­er Jaron Pas­call who re­mained in Cos­ta Ri­ca in or­der to sit his CXC Ex­am­i­na­tion and was ex­pect­ed to join the team yes­ter­day ahead of the match and coach Eve cred­it­ed the lo­cal fed­er­a­tion for putting the play­ers' ed­u­ca­tion first while ad­mit­ting to hav­ing to ad­just his ses­sions to suit.

Eve said, "The TTFA has to be giv­en a lot of cred­it in hav­ing an in­vig­i­la­tor with the team and the boys are do­ing all of their ex­ams out here so it's a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult and we have to sched­ule train­ing around that be­cause un­like some oth­er teams here who have pro­fes­sion­al play­ers, we have school­boys, so cred­it to the TTFA for or­gan­is­ing for them to get their ex­ams done."

Goal­keep­er Tris­tan Ed­wards was al­so draft­ed in­to the fi­nal team to re­place Rushon Sandy in the fi­nal squad and Eve not­ed this change was due to ill­ness.

"He (Sandy) was omit­ted af­ter show­ing COVID-19-like symp­toms which were very strong and forced him to miss train­ing for three to four days and we went through all the nor­mal pro­to­cols and got Con­ca­caf to con­firm the change to the team."

Look­ing ahead to the team's open­ing game com­ing on the back of a ten-day camp in Cos­ta Ri­ca, Eve said he thinks the team is ready.

"The camp was very fruit­ful and we had two re­al­ly good games against Cos­ta Ri­ca U-20s and again a num­ber of the Cos­ta Ri­ca guys are play­ing with their se­nior team and have played se­nior team foot­ball, we just had Mo­lik Khan and in our con­tin­gency, we just have one pro­fes­sion­al play­er which is Mo­lik Khan and a cou­ple of oth­er guys who play lo­cal­ly for clubs.

"But in the main, its col­lege kids that we have here, and I've been very hap­py with their ap­pli­ca­tion and at­ti­tude to­wards the work. The one area that we are lack­ing, to be hon­est, is ex­pe­ri­ence, end­ed Eve, who was a mem­ber of the T&T team at the U-20 World Cup in 1991 in Por­tu­gal."

Skip­per Khan, a mem­ber of US Ma­jor League Soc­cer's Min­neso­ta Unit­ed, said the last few days has shown the team that they are an am­bi­tious group and once they gel to­geth­er they can do good things and this is a group that is very con­fi­dent and it's a group of young men that have a point to prove.

Skip­per Khan said, "I feel good and every­one feels good in the camp and its just a pos­i­tive vibes and we all feel con­fi­dent that we can come out with the re­sults need­ed.

"Coach (Eve) ob­vi­ous­ly have us in the right frame of mind for com­pe­ti­tion mood and every­one I think un­der­stand the task at hand and I think we are here to com­pete and stay and go all the way.

"It's a bunch of youths look­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty and this is the right place and the right group to do that."

Look­ing ahead to the match against the Haitians, Khan said the key for his team will be main­ly to fo­cus.

"We just have to keep fo­cus and do what we have to do and pre­pare our minds and that's ba­si­cal­ly the key for us and the peo­ple back home can ex­pect re­sults and full com­mit­ment from us."

Haiti will be mak­ing their 10th tour­na­ment ap­pear­ance but the Les Grenadiers as they are known have nev­er qual­i­fied for a U-20 World Cup. The Haitians fin­ished fifth in both the 2003 and 2007 tour­na­ments and over­all pos­sess­es a record of 8W-5D-18L with 42 goals scored and 61 con­ced­ed.

Fol­low­ing to­day's match, T&T tour­na­ment run­ners-up in 1990 meet 13-time cham­pi­ons Mex­i­co, on Tues­day from 10.30 pm (TT time), be­fore end­ing round-robin pool play ver­sus Suri­name on Thurs­day at the same venue from 6 pm.

The So­ca War­riors have al­ways been com­pet­i­tive at the Con­ca­caf U-20 lev­el and al­so have two third-place fin­ish­es (1974, 1986) to their name.

Over­all, the Caribbean side boasts a 24W-22D-36L record, with 104 goals scored and 140 con­ced­ed. Isa­iah Lee (4) and Jabari Mitchell (3) are T&T’s all-time top scor­ers in the com­pe­ti­tion.

The quar­tet of Cu­ba, Cana­da, USA, and St Kitts and Nevis are in Group E; El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Pana­ma, and Aru­ba are in Group G, and Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da and host Hon­duras com­prise Group H.

At the end of the group stage round-robin play the top three teams in the group will ad­vance to the round-of-16 where they will join al­ready qual­i­fied Cu­ra­cao, Nicaragua, Puer­to Ri­co and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic who all qual­i­fied di­rect­ly as win­ners of their re­spec­tive groups in the Con­ca­caf Men’s U-20 Cham­pi­onship Qual­i­fiers held last No­vem­ber in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

The 16-team Knock­out Stage will be­gin with the round-of-16 (June 25-26), fol­lowed by the quar­ter­fi­nals (June 28-29), semi­fi­nals (Ju­ly 1), and fi­nal (Ju­ly 3).

Un­like the pre­vi­ous edi­tions, the com­pe­ti­tion will de­ter­mine not on­ly the four Con­ca­caf rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the 2023 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in In­done­sia but al­so the two Con­ca­caf rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the 2024 Sum­mer Olympics in Paris, France.

T&T U-20 men’s squad:

Kai­him Thomas, Isa­iah Thomp­son, An­drew De Gannes, Tyrik Trot­man, Ja­heim Wick­ham, Josi­ah Wil­son, Jaron Pas­call, Re­al Gill, Nathaniel James, Josi­ah Coop­er, Luke Phillip, Mar­vin Wal­drop, Ja­heim Joseph, Kas­sidy David­son, Tarik Lee, Chris­t­ian Bai­ley, Tris­tan Ed­wards, Noah Ro­ka.