Trinidad and To­ba­go’s So­ca War­riors put col­lec­tive smiles on the faces of all their com­pa­tri­ots yes­ter­day, af­ter they of­fi­cial­ly qual­i­fied for the pres­ti­gious Con­ca­caf Gold Cup.

Skip­per Khaleem Hy­land’s men edged out a plucky French Guiana 8-7 in a penal­ty shootout af­ter a 1-1 tie in reg­u­la­tion at the DRV PNK Sta­di­um in Flori­da to reach Con­ca­caf’s show­piece event.

Skip­per Hy­land him­self could do lit­tle in the dy­ing stages af­ter limp­ing off the field with an in­jury in the first half. In the end, it took goal­keep­ing hero­ics from Nick­las Fren­derup and a penal­ty con­ver­sion from Cur­tis Gon­za­les to do the trick.

While there were few Trinida­di­ans in the stand to cel­e­brate with the So­ca War­riors yes­ter­day, there would have been thou­sands cel­e­brat­ing col­lec­tive­ly right here at home, in the Di­as­po­ra and wher­ev­er else Tri­nis re­side around the world.

And for Hy­land’s men, what a turn­around it has been.

Just weeks ago, T&T’s foot­ball had hit rock bot­tom once more when the team failed to reach the next phase of qual­i­fy­ing for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Af­ter em­bar­rass­ing­ly bow­ing out from a group that in­clud­ed min­nows the Ba­hamas, St Kitts and Nevis, Guyana and Puer­to Ri­co, then coach Ter­ry Fen­wick was de­served­ly fired last month. He was re­placed by lo­cal­ly-bred An­gus Eve, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er who has suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred his play­ing knowl­edge to the coach­ing sphere.

Since then, Eve has not looked back. He has re­port­ed­ly brought a breath of fresh air to the T&T team, with play­ers fi­nal­ly smil­ing again on the train­ing pitch.

That ini­tial­ly trans­lat­ed in­to a 6-1 vic­to­ry over Montser­rat in the team’s first Gold Cup qual­i­fi­er last week in Eve’s first game at the helm, a dis­play which many agreed had been one of T&T’s best in years. They fol­lowed that up with yes­ter­day’s hard-fought win against a French Guiana team that was al­so push­ing just as hard for glo­ry, again un­der pres­sure with key play­ers in­jured out and then with the loss of Hy­land. But once again, the team showed that they have de­vel­oped a new­found re­solve by pulling off the vic­to­ry.

The So­ca War­riors will now be se­vere­ly test­ed ahead, with the likes of Mex­i­co, El Sal­vador and Cu­ra­cao in the Gold Cup. In or­der to build on the cur­rent foun­da­tion, how­ev­er, they will now have to be giv­en the tools for fur­ther suc­cess.

But from here, Hy­land, Eve and the team can on­ly go up.

The ques­tion now is whether the FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee un­der Robert Hadad will give Eve, who was giv­en an in­ter­im tenure, the chance to con­tin­ue the work he has start­ed.

Ei­ther way, we al­so hope that the fans and cor­po­rate T&T will al­so do all they can to en­sure the team gets all the sup­port it needs go­ing for­ward.