Nigel Si­mon

T&T So­ca War­riors and its Ger­man-born coach Ot­to Pfis­ter face a tough jour­ney as it seeks to qual­i­fy for the 2014 FI­FA World Cup Fi­nals in Fri­day. This was de­ter­mined at the draw for the pre­lim­i­nary stages of the tour­na­ment at a gala cer­e­mo­ny held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yes­ter­day. T&T will com­pete in the Sec­ond Round Group B with Caribbean Foot­ball Union min­nows, Bermu­da, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana start­ing in Sep­tem­ber with the win­ner of the group ad­vanc­ing to the Con­ca­caf semi­fi­nal stage in a group com­pris­ing re­cent Gold Cup win­ners' Mex­i­co, Cos­ta Ri­ca and the win­ner of an­oth­er Sec­ond Round se­ries, Group A which in­cludes El Sal­vador, Suri­name, Cay­man Is­lands, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

T&T is cur­rent­ly ranked 88th on the FI­FA World Rank­ings and was not among the top six seed­ed Con­ca­caf teams which in­clud­ed Mex­i­co, USA, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras, Cu­ba and Ja­maica. As such, T&T will con­test the sec­ond round (from Sep­tem­ber 2 to No­vem­ber 15,2011) with the group win­ners ad­vanc­ing to the se­mi-fi­nal round (Round 3) which takes place from June 8 to Oc­to­ber 16,2012

The top two teams from the four se­mi-fi­nal groups will ad­vance to the fi­nal round from which the top three qual­i­fies for the Brazil 2014 while the fourth place team will en­ter in to the in­ter-con­ti­nen­tal play­off with Ocea­nia.

Stoke City strik­er Ken­wyne Jones on hear­ing the news of T&T's draw, re­mained op­ti­mistic, say­ing hav­ing to play in Round Two could ac­tu­al­ly work in the team's favour. "Well a draw is a draw. We now know what is ahead of us in or­der to ad­vance in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Brazil," Jones said. "No game is an easy one in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball to­day. Hope­ful­ly we can get a good start and build our mo­men­tum in the sec­ond round for the se­mi-fi­nal stages. By then the team would have been play­ing to­geth­er for a few match­es well and we will be in tune for the se­mi-fi­nal which ob­vi­ous­ly is go­ing to be a lot tougher with Mex­i­co and Cos­ta Ri­ca in our group. Our aim goal ob­vi­ous­ly is to move to the Fi­nal round and then force our way through to the World Cup. It's not im­pos­si­ble," Jones added. T&T, which has not played an in­ter­na­tion­al match since the start of 2011 was sched­uled to meet Haiti in Port-au-Prince on Au­gust 10 but that match has been can­celled due to a lack of fund­ing ac­cord­ing to T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Tech­ni­cal Ad­vis­er, Kei­th Look Loy.

How­ev­er, T&TFF pres­i­dent, Oliv­er Camps, while ad­mit­ting that fund­ing is cur­rent­ly a chal­lenge for the fed­er­a­tion, is as­sur­ing that the nec­es­sary steps will be tak­en to en­sure the team can give its best shot at qual­i­fy­ing for Brazil 2014. "First­ly I must say the Sec­ond Round looks good for us and it will give our coach a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to see his team de­vel­op a chem­istry in those ear­ly match­es. But the Third Round is where the in­ten­si­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion re­al­ly in­creas­es and it's go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult jour­ney for us but cer­tain­ly one which we can over­come with the right plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion and ex­e­cu­tion. Of course the fi­nal round is an­oth­er hur­dle which I re­main op­ti­mistic that we can demon­strate our ca­pa­bil­i­ties ful­ly to be among the qual­i­fiers for the World Cup," Camps said. "It is rather un­for­tu­nate that we have had to can­cel our trip to Haiti. The Min­istry of Sport is un­able to as­sist and cur­rent­ly the fed­er­a­tion is un­able to meet those costs to take our best team to Haiti for the match. We re­main hope­ful that the Min­istry can as­sist but this re­mains an­oth­er one of our hur­dles. But I want to en­sure the fol­low­ers of our na­tion­al team that the fed­er­a­tion will do what it can to en­sure that we find the fund­ing. One of our next steps will be the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a prop­er mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to have cor­po­rate bod­ies on board to as­sist us in our quest to qual­i­fy for the next World Cup fi­nals and to as­sist in our over­all de­vel­op­ment pro­gram," Camps added. The ac­tu­al match fix­tures for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion will be an­nounced in due course.

NIGHT OF THE CHAM­PI­ON RE­SULTS

Sec­ond Round

Group A: El Sal­vador, Suri­name, Cay­man Is­lands, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

Group B: T&T, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da

Group C: Pana­ma, Do­mini­ca, Nicaragua, Ba­hamas

Group D: Cana­da, St. Kitts and Nevis, Puer­to Ri­co, St. Lu­cia

Group E: Grena­da, Guatemala, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Be­lize

Group F: Haiti, An­tigua, Cu­ra­cao, U.S. Vir­gin Is­lands

Third Round

Group A: USA, Ja­maica, Group E sec­ond-round win­ner, Group F sec­ond-round win­ner

Group B: Mex­i­co, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Group A sec­ond-round win­ner, Group B sec­ond-round win­ner

Group C: Hon­duras, Cu­ba, Group C sec­ond-round win­ner, Group D sec­ond-round win­ner

Fourth Round (hexag­o­nal)

The top two teams in each group will form the fourth-round group, as known as the hexag­o­nal, which will play 10 games in 2013.

2011

The Sec­ond Round of Con­ca­caf qual­i­fy­ing match­es will be played on the fol­low­ing dates:

* Sept 2-6-two games

* Oct. 7-11-two games

* Nov. 11-15-two games

2012

The third round of Con­ca­caf games will be played on:

* June 1-7-two games

* June 8-12-two games

* Sept. 7-11-two games

* Oct. 12-16-two games

2013

The fi­nal round of Con­ca­caf qual­i­fy­ing will be held on:

* March 22-26-two games

* June 7-11-two games

* June 14-18 _two games

* Sept. 6-10-two games

* Oct. 11-15_two games

FI­FA has set aside two dates be­tween No­vem­ber 15-19, 2013 for the fourth-place Con­ca­caf side to play a run­ner-up from Ocea­nia in an ag­gre­gate goals, home-and-away se­ries to de­ter­mine a spot in the World Cup.