De­fence Force goal­keep­er Christo­pher Biggette, 27, is the lone un-capped play­er named in a 40-man pro­vi­sion­al squad by So­ca War­riors coach An­gus Eve for their open­ing match of the up­com­ing 2023/2024 CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League which kicks off on Sep­tem­ber 7 against Cu­ra­cao at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

The So­ca War­riors have been drawn in League A Group A with Cu­ra­cao, El Sal­vador, Pana­ma, Mar­tinique, and Guatemala while Group B com­pris­es Haiti, Ja­maica, Hon­duras, Cu­ba, Suri­name, and Grena­da.

How­ev­er, the So­ca War­riors will on­ly con­test four match­es in their pool based on the com­pe­ti­tion’s for­mat with their open­ing fix­ture be­fore trav­el­ling to El Sal­vador four days lat­er.

T&T will then host Guatemala on Oc­to­ber 13, and then play away to Cu­ra­cao on Oc­to­ber 17 to end their group cam­paign, af­ter which the first and sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers will ad­vance to the CNL quar­ter­fi­nals, where they will join the four top-ranked League A na­tion­al teams.

The quar­ter­fi­nal round will be played in a home-and-away for­mat in the FI­FA Match Win­dow of No­vem­ber 2023, with the ag­gre­gate score win­ners in each quar­ter­fi­nal matchup ad­vanc­ing to the 2024 CNL Fi­nals and qual­i­fy­ing for the 2024 Con­mebol Co­pa Amer­i­ca.

The four seed­ed na­tions in the quar­ter­fi­nals are (in al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der): Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Mex­i­co, and the USA.

The pair­ing for the quar­ter­fi­nals will be de­ter­mined based on the Con­ca­caf Rank­ings of Oc­to­ber 2023 (af­ter the FI­FA Win­dow) and the 2023/24 CNL Group Stage re­sults.

Along with Biggette, a for­mer Jabloteh goal­keep­er be­fore mak­ing the switch to De­fence Force whom he helped to the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League and Knock­out ti­tles, Eve al­so re­called lo­cal­ly-based mid­field­ers Ty­rone Charles, Du­ane Muck­ette and Michael Poon-Angeron, all of AC Port-of-Spain, Tiger Tanks Club San­do strik­er Nathaniel James, the De­fence Force trio of Re­on Moore, Justin Gar­cia and Justin Sadoo as well as Ross Rus­sell Jr of Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, and USA-based Jesse Williams.

The oth­er lo­cal­ly based named in the 40-man squad in­clude goal­keep­ers Mar­vin Phillip (AC PoS), and Den­zil Smith (Club San­do), Jo­evin Jones (Po­lice FC), Re­al Gill (Club San­do), and Alvin Jones (Club San­do), who were all part of the 23-men Con­ca­caf Gold Cup squad.

Among the oth­er no­table play­ers short­list­ed are Shel­don Bateau (SK Bev­eren/Bel­gium), Kevin Moli­no of US Ma­jor League Soc­cer’s Colum­bus Crew, AEK Athens’ Levi Gar­cia, who is nurs­ing a groin in­jury, Le­land Archer (Charleston Bat­tery/USA), Nick­las Fren­derup (Ran­heim/Nor­way), Aubrey David (Ala­jue­lense/Cos­ta Ri­ca), Ryan Telfer (Mi­a­mi FC/USA), Tris­tan Hodge (Hart­ford Ath­let­ic/USA), Mo­lik Khan (Min­neso­ta Unit­ed/USA), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (Oak­land Roots/USA), Ajani For­tune (At­lanta Unit­ed/USA), and An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da) all mem­bers of the Gold Cup con­tin­gent while Cana­da-born mid­field­er Kris­t­ian Lee Him of IFK Es­kil­stu­na, Daniel Phillips (St John­stone), Jo­mal Williams (Once De­porti­vo), Cana­da-born strik­er Mal­colm Shaw, and USA-based nip­py winger Kaile Au­vray.

At the Gold Cup, T&T end­ed with a 2-1 win-loss record in Group A af­ter beat­ing St Kitts/Nevis 3-0 be­fore suf­fer­ing heavy de­feats against Ja­maica 4-1, and then 6-0 ver­sus the USA.

Fol­low­ing the squad of the squad Eve said he is al­ways op­ti­mistic go­ing in­to what­ev­er tour­na­ment the team has and this will pro­vide an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for the team to come to­geth­er.

With re­gards to his team’s chances of qual­i­fy­ing for the Co­pa Amer­i­ca, Eve ad­mit­ted that it will be a dif­fi­cult task but at the same time, it will give the play­ers the chance to im­prove their po­si­tion­ing in terms of en­hance their chances of World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Since be­ing ap­point­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2021 when he re­placed Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wich, Eve, 51, has en­joyed a record of 12 wins, nine draws, and sev­en de­feats, and among his ma­jor wins, were a 9-0 tri­umph over Bar­ba­dos and a 1-0 tri­umph away to Ja­maica ear­li­er this year in Ja­maica, while his team al­so played to a 0-0 draw with Ja­maica in March and with pow­er­house Mex­i­co to open their 2021 Gold Cup cam­paign.

Eve’s con­tract is ex­pect­ed to come up for re­view just ahead of the start of the 32-team Con­ca­caf qual­i­fiers for the 2026 World Cup in March 2024 as part of a com­pe­ti­tion in which teams will play up to 12 match­es to reach the tour­na­ment.

T&T 40-man Con­ca­caf Na­tions League pro­vi­sion­al squad:

Goal­keep­ers: Den­zil Smith, Mar­vin Phillip, Nick­las Fren­derup, Christo­pher Biggette

De­fend­ers: Aubrey David, Luke Singh, Ka­reem Moses, Le­land Archer, Shan­non Gomez, Shel­don Bateau,Tris­ton Hodge, Jesse Williams, Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham, Justin Gar­cia, Alvin Jones, An­dre Ray­mond

Mid­field­ers: Jo­evin Jones, Re­al Gill, Kevin Moli­no, Ryan Telfer, Ju­dah Gar­cia, Kaile Au­vray, Ne­veal Hack­shaw, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Ross Rus­sell Jr, Du­ane Muck­ette, Kris­t­ian Lee Him, Justin Sadoo, Ty­rone Charles, Mo­lik Khan, Noah Pow­der, Jo­mal Williams, Michael Poon Angeron,

For­wards: Re­on Moore, Nathaniel James, Ajani For­tune, Kadeem Corbin, Levi Gar­cia, Mal­colm Shaw, Daniel Phillips.