The 79th-ranked Cana­di­an squad will meet 80th-ranked T&T in a friend­ly to­day at the Cen­tral Broward Re­gion­al Com­plex, Fort Laud­erdale, USA, with an eye to­wards its cru­cial Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fiers against Pana­ma next month. The Cen­tral Amer­i­can side who faces Por­tu­gal in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly to­day is the next op­po­nent for Stephen Hart's team, as the Cana­di­ans will face Pana­ma in a cru­cial home-and-away se­ries in World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion. The ex­hi­bi­tion match against T&T serves as a big part of the prepa­ra­tions ahead of the pair of games against the group-lead­ing Pana­ma­ni­ans, and Hart says to­day's friend­ly could help sort the fi­nal pieces ahead of the big­ger tests. "It gives us a chance to come to­geth­er and keep talk­ing about what our ob­jec­tives are [and] what our aims are," the coach said on Mon­day. "In terms of the game it­self, it'll be more about look­ing at in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances, who can fit in where, maybe try some­thing dif­fer­ent and see who can give us a lit­tle more flex­i­bil­i­ty in the squad."

Both Cana­da and T&T will be test­ing a lot of younger and more in­ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, as the short mid­week win­dow doesn't al­low for much flex­i­bil­i­ty in call­ing up some of the big­ger names based in Eu­rope. De­spite both teams hav­ing to field some less­er lights along­side more es­tab­lished play­ers, Hart feels that T&T - which was knocked out of con­tention for Brazil 2014 last year - will still pose a good chal­lenge for his side. "I think they've got some very good play­ers called in and it's a mat­ter of how long they've been to­geth­er, how much time they've been to­geth­er," he told the Cana­di­an Soc­cer As­so­ci­a­tion's video chan­nel. "I think, if you look at their pro­gramme, they'll be look­ing at it over a four-year pe­ri­od where I'm look­ing at it over the next month." With the match­es against Pana­ma un­der a month away, Hart and his staff have been hard at work study­ing not on­ly Cana­da's up­com­ing op­po­nent, but al­so its own per­for­mance in the pre­vi­ous round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion match­es ver­sus Cu­ba and Hon­duras. Af­ter win­ning 1-0 in Cu­ba to open the round, Hart felt his team played well enough to grab max­i­mum points against the Hon­durans in Toron­to, but a lack of fin­ish­ing saw the two teams split the points in a score­less draw, which al­lowed Pana­ma to jump in­to the group lead un­chal­lenged. In­clud­ed in the T&T squad is Mor­vant/Laven­tille-born un-capped Un­der-23 de­fend­er Ka­reem Moses of North East Stars who is joined by club­mates, de­fend­er Seon Pow­ers and goal­keep­er Cleon John, in the squad named by in­ter­im head coach Hus­ton Charles.

Charles will be in charge of the se­nior squad for on­ly the sec­ond-time af­ter start­ing with a 4-0 away to An­tigua & Bar­bu­da in Feb­ru­ary. The So­ca War­riors squad in­cludes sev­en over-seas based play­ers in Bel­gium-based mid­field­er, Khaleem Hy­land (KRC Genk), Van­cou­ver White­caps' de­fend­er Car­lyle Mitchell, mid­field­er Hughton Hec­tor of Viet­nam's Song Lam Nghe An, Char­lotte Ea­gles' strik­er Dar­ryl Roberts, Or­lan­do City Li­ons mid­field­er, Kevin Moli­no, speedy winger Lester "Corn Curls" Pelti­er of Slo­va­kia's SK Slo­van Bratisla­va and mid­field­er Keon Daniel of US Ma­jor League Soc­cer's Philadel­phia Union. The oth­er mem­bers of the team are W Con­nec­tion trio, Daniel Cyrus, Jo­evin Jones and Clyde Leon and the De­fence Force trio of Rodell El­cock, De­vorn Jorsling and Richard "Sha­ka" Roy. T&T's last out­ing against Cana­da was in 2000 in a 2002 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing match at the Queen's Park Oval which the So­ca War­riors won 4-0 on goals from Rus­sell Lat­apy, Reynold Car­ring­ton, Stoke­ly Ma­son and An­gus Eve. The So­ca War­riors al­so won an ear­li­er qual­i­fi­er 2-0 in Ed­mon­ton with Dwight Yorke and Eve net­ting the goals while Cana­da de­feat­ed T&T 1-0 in the se­mi-fi­nal of the 2000 Co­cana­da Gold Cup and went on to win the tour­na­ment in the USA while both teams al­so played to a 0-0 draw in Port of Spain, in Jan­u­ary 2000. Fol­low­ing the Cana­da match, T&T will be away to Puer­to Ri­co next month while an in­vi­ta­tion has been ex­tend­ed from a Eu­ro­pean op­po­nent for a game to be played at a lat­er date.

T&T Squad:

Goal­keep­ers: Jan-Michael Williams (W Con­nec­tion), Cleon John (North East Stars).

De­fend­ers: Seon Pow­er (North East Stars), Car­lyle Mitchell (Van­cou­ver White­caps), Daneil Cyrus (W Con­nec­tion), Jo­evin Jones (W Con­nec­tion), Cur­tis Gon­za­les (De­fence Force), Rodell El­cock (De­fence Force), Ka­reem Moses (North East Stars).

Mid­field­ers: Keon Daniel (Philadel­phia Union), Hugh­tun Hec­tor (Song Lam Nghe An), Khaleem Hy­land (KRC Genk), Clyde Leon (W Con­nec­tion), Kevin Moli­no (Or­lan­do City), Lester Pelti­er (SK Slo­van Bratisla­va).

For­wards: De­vorn Jorsling (De­fence Force), Richard Roy (De­fence Force), Dar­ryl Roberts (Char­lotte Ea­gles).

Tech­ni­cal staff: Hut­son Charles (in­ter­im coach), Dave Isaac (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Bruce An­nensen (Head of Del­e­ga­tion), Pe­ter Ram­per­sad (man­ag­er), Ter­rence Bab­wah (Doc­tor), An­tho­ny Sa­landy (videogr­pher), Shaun Fuentes (press of­fi­cer).