Cana­da-based mid­field­er Stef­fen Yeates said he was hap­py to get the game win­ner in the T&T So­ca War­riors come-from-be­hind 2-1 vic­to­ry over Cu­ba in their first-leg 2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nary en­counter at Es­ta­dio An­to­nio Maceo in San­ti­a­go, Cu­ba, on Fri­day.

Cu­ba led 1-0 as ear­ly as the sixth minute thanks to Yas­niel Matos, but 25-year-old Isa­iah Lee equalised for the So­ca War­riors in the 20th be­fore fel­low 25-year-old Stef­fen Yeates of Cana­di­an Pre­mier Foot­ball League club York Unit­ed, who made his T&T de­but in 2024 against Grena­da at home in a Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fi­er, scored his first goal for T&T in six ap­pear­ances in the 53rd minute, which turned out to be the match-win­ner.

Com­ment­ing af­ter the match, Yeates said he was very hap­py to con­tribute to the team in a pos­i­tive way.

He added, Ob­vi­ous­ly, first­ly, I’m very hap­py that we were able to come away with the pos­i­tive re­sult and with a win get­ting in­to the next game on Tues­day against Cu­ba.

“So, again, I’m very hap­py for the tea, very hap­py for my­self and for my first in­ter­na­tion­al goal, and I think it’s big lead­ing in­to Tues­day.

We spoke about dif­fer­ent ad­ver­si­ties we might be able to face in this game, and we spoke about the fact that we may con­cede and we may go down a man, but we al­so spoke of not putting our heads down but con­tin­u­ing to fight, and maybe it’s some­thing we didn’t have in the past.

And again, we did con­cede ear­ly; it was un­for­tu­nate, but again as a group, we stuck to­geth­er col­lec­tive­ly and kept fo­cus on what we need­ed to do, and we end­ed up scor­ing again in the next 10 to 15 min­utes, and we were back in the fight.

In the sec­ond half, scor­ing pret­ty ear­ly by my­self was a good feel­ing, and again we kept to­geth­er as a team; we stayed tight, we stayed fo­cused, and again we end­ed up get­ting the re­sult we want­ed.

Eng­land-based Daniel Phillips of League One mid-ta­ble club Steve­nage added that he is al­ways hap­py to play for T&T and do his part for the team.

Phillips, 24, added, “Ob­vi­ous­ly every game you want to play and start every game, so I was glad to be picked and do my best for the team.

“My role was to be tough and dis­ci­plined and help keep our shape; as you know, it’s tough com­ing away from home in these kinds of places, and we knew that we had to soak up pres­sure and show qual­i­ty on the ball when we got it and play for­ward.”

“In every game you can’t be on top for 90 min­utes, and we knew that would hap­pen, and we soaked up the pres­sure quite well, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter con­ced­ing ear­ly on. Our heads didn’t drop, and we went back down the oth­er end and scored.

Re­flect­ing on the match fur­ther, he said, “I think we frus­trat­ed them re­al­ly well, and it showed that we could get a lot of chances on the coun­ter­at­tack when we soaked up pres­sure and forced them in­to mis­takes when we went down the oth­er end.

On his 68th-minute ef­fort that can­noned off the cross­bar, Phillips said, “That’s twice now in two games, so hope­ful­ly the next one will go in, but once again, I’m just hap­py to be in the po­si­tion and have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to shoot and score.”