Se­nior men’s na­tion­al foot­ball coach Dwight Yorke has said his play­ers will need to be at their very best when they face Cu­ra­cao in their open­ing Group B match of the fi­nal round of the CON­CA­CAF/FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers on Fri­day at 8pm at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo.

An al­most sold-out crowd of 22,575 seat­ed fans is ex­pect­ed to wit­ness a bat­tle be­tween T&T’s So­ca Soc­cer and the Dutch foot­ball style im­ple­ment­ed by Cu­ra­cao’s leg­endary Dutch coach Dick Ad­vo­caat. Yes­ter­day, Yorke was left gleam­ing with the ad­di­tion of key de­fend­ers – 21-year-old Ko­bi Hen­ry of Re­al Salt Lake, who was born in the Unit­ed States to T&T par­ents and rep­re­sent­ed the USA at un­der-17, U-19 and U-20 lev­els, and 24-year-old Jer­ron Jack­ie, a for­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do cen­tre-back of Por­tu­gal’s CD Gou­veia, both of whom were among a fi­nal squad of 26 play­ers who went through fi­nal prepa­ra­tion at the game venue and will be key to plug­ging the de­fen­sive hole that plagued the team in pre­vi­ous match­es.

Yorke al­so moved to in­clude lanky Eng­land-based strik­er Justin Obik­wu, who joined Eng­land’s League One club Lin­coln City on a sea­son-long loan from Coven­try City last week­end, among the 20 over­seas play­ers mak­ing up the team. Yorke, in a short in­ter­view ahead of train­ing, told the me­dia, “We’re com­ing up against a Cu­raçao team that we to­tal­ly have to re­spect. They’ve got a very ex­pe­ri­enced man­ag­er at the helm in the name of Dick Ad­vo­caat, so we know what type of foot­ball the Dutch bring to the par­ty, but we need to be at our best. And as much as the re­spect that we have for Cu­raçao, it’s about us, so the onus is on us to make sure we get the three points,” Yorke ex­plained.

“We’ve been prep­ping for this par­tic­u­lar day, of course, mi­nus one be­fore the game. There isn’t much else to do be­fore the game, more than fine-tune or tweak one or two things, as we say in foot­ball, but pret­ty much most of the work is done be­fore the ex­cite­ment to­mor­row (to­day).”

He added, “I am more ex­cit­ed be­cause if you’re not go­ing to get the buzz or be ex­cit­ed about what is up­on us, which is a re­al­ly cru­cial game at a very crit­i­cal stage for us – the World Cup cam­paign, which we know is a very high de­mand, high risk, high re­ward –the play­ers un­der­stand that. You’ll see in the num­bers that the coun­try is be­hind us, which is ul­ti­mate­ly im­por­tant, as well as to have that sup­port and the con­fi­dence of the play­ers; we’re ready to go.”

T&T’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion will de­pend on them win­ning the group, which al­so com­pris­es Bermu­da and Ja­maica, or fin­ish­ing among one of the two best sec­ond-place teams to en­ter an in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-off in March next year. T&T will next face Ja­maica away on Sat­ur­day. Fol­low­ing the match­es in Sep­tem­ber, T&T will play away to Bermu­da on Oc­to­ber 10 at the Bermu­da Na­tion­al Sports Cen­tre, De­von­shire, from 7 pm, and four days lat­er at Cu­raçao at the Sta­dion Ergilio Ha­to, Willem­stad, al­so from 7 pm, be­fore re­turn­ing home for their fi­nal two match­es against Ja­maica at Mu­cu­rapo on No­vem­ber 13, from 8 pm, and No­vem­ber 18 ver­sus Bermu­da at 9 pm.

Yorke as­sured there will be no ex­cus­es from him and his play­ers, not­ing that his play­ers will be re­quired to rise to the oc­ca­sion, say­ing he plans to con­tin­ue the good record they have at the sta­di­um.

Quizzed on the in­take of new play­ers, Yorke said, “We have been chas­ing these play­ers for a while, and it took us a while to get them be­cause they’ve got op­tions to play for Amer­i­ca and these types of things, so there was some due dili­gence work to be done, so we’re de­light­ed to have them on board, and now they’re com­mit­ted to T&T. I am sure that when the fans come in, they will not be house­hold names, but it is what we re­cruit­ed. We’ve seen them with our own eyes. I think they’ll be pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with the im­prove­ment in those ar­eas as well, but this is on­go­ing, as we try to add and build the qual­i­ty in this team. And now I feel the top 26 play­ers are avail­able. I think this is the strongest team that I’ve as­sem­bled to this point, and I think it gives me a lit­tle bit of an is­sue, which is the right is­sue in terms of se­lec­tion.”

“You know it’s not an easy call on these play­ers, so now we’ve got a re­al com­pet­i­tive­ness among the squad and not on­ly the 11 but al­so the knowl­edge that there is a ca­pa­bil­i­ty com­ing off the bench,” Yorke said.

<Ro­bust park­ing re­stric­tions for the match>

Mean­while, ACP Sean Hen­ry, the Gold Com­man­der for the match, said that there would be a ro­bust ac­tive traf­fic plan in place from Port-of-Spain in the cap­i­tal of the city all the way to the Mar­aval park­way and Au­drey Jef­fers high­way where­by po­lice of­fi­cers and traf­fic war­dens would be de­ployed from 2 pm to mid­night. There will be ma­jor park­ing re­stric­tions in all ar­eas around the sta­di­um. The po­lice will al­so em­ploy a ro­bust and ag­gres­sive wreck­ing re­sponse to per­sons who fail to com­ply with the traf­fic in­struc­tions and di­rec­tives of of­fi­cers on du­ty.

TT TEAM:

GOAL­KEEP­ERS:

Mar­vin Phillip (Cen­tral FC), Jabari St Hillaire (De­fence Force), Den­zil Smith (AV Al­ta FC/USA)

DE­FEND­ERS:

Ko­bi Hen­ry (Re­al Salt Lake/USA), Dar­nell Hospedales (Mon­tego Bay Unit­ed), Rio Car­dines (Crys­tal Palace/Eng­land), Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham (Mon­tego Bay Unit­ed/Ja­maica), An­dre Ray­mond (Ilves/Fin­land), Justin Gar­cia (Song Lam Nghe An/Viet­nam), Isa­iah Gar­cia (T&T De­fence Force Elite), Jer­ren Jack­ie (CD Gou­veia/Por­tu­gal).

MID­FIELD­ERS:

Stef­fen Yeates (York Unit­ed FC/Cana­da), Daniel Phillips (Steve­nage FC/Eng­land), Nathaniel James (Port­land Hearts of Pine/USA), Kevin Moli­no (T&T De­fence Force Elite), Tyrese Spicer (Or­lan­do City FC/USA), Wayne Fred­er­ick II (Col­orado Rapids/USA), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Re­al Gill (Huntsville City FC/USA), Noah Pow­der (Westch­ester FC/USA). Kaile Au­vray (Colum­bus Crew II/USA), Kai­him Thomas (T&T De­fence Force Elite)

FOR­WARDS:

Levi Gar­cia (Spar­tak Moscow/Rus­sia), Ryan Telfer (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Dante Sealy (CF Mon­tre­al/Cana­da), Justin Obik­wu (Lin­coln City/Eng­land)