In­ter Mi­a­mi de­fend­er Chaz Williams and mid­field­er Der­reL "Zoom Zoom" Gar­cia have been se­lect­ed in a 21-man team to con­test the Con­ca­caf Un­der-20 Qual­i­fiers start­ing on Tues­day in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

T&T will con­test Group E of the qual­i­fiers, which will al­so com­prise Bermu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Sint Maarten, and host Cos­ta Ri­ca. T&T will open their cam­paign against the Bermu­dans on Tues­day and lat­er against Bar­ba­dos on Thurs­day at the Cos­ta Ri­can Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Ground.

Coach Mar­vin Gor­don fi­nalised his team Fri­day and ex­pressed his con­fi­dence in the team cho­sen to wear the red, white and black of T&T. In ad­di­tion to Zoom Zoom, the team al­so in­cludes many of the stars of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) of last year, such as Josi­ah Ochoa, Sheri­dan Mc­Nish, Adam Pierre, Malachi Webb, Ca­den Tre­strail, and Phillip Nel­son.

Gor­don will be chal­lenged to bet­ter re­cent per­for­mances by the coun­try’s U-17 boys’ and girls’ teams, both of which failed to se­cure qual­i­fy­ing berths for their re­spec­tive World Cup Qual­i­fiers. The U-17 boys’ team un­der coach Ran­dolph Boyce fin­ished third in their group, along with the U-17 girls’ team, which was coached by Ayan­na Rus­sell.

Gor­don, who is al­so the head coach of Tier 1 cam­paign­ers in the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, San Juan Jabloteh, will have De­vorn Jorsling, the De­fence Force Elite coach, as one of his as­sis­tants.

Gor­don’s charges fea­tured suc­cess­ful­ly in a se­ries of friend­ly match­es re­cent­ly with their Grena­di­an coun­ter­parts, the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines U-20s, the De­fence Force, and AC Port-of-Spain. Gor­don, speak­ing ahead of the team’s de­par­ture on the week­end, ad­mit­ted that nar­row­ing the squad to 21 play­ers was no easy task.

“I think se­lect­ing this fi­nal team was dif­fi­cult for my back­room staff and me,” Gor­don told TTFA Me­dia. “Every play­er worked hard and re­al­ly tried to get in­to the fi­nal squad. We had to pick the best com­bi­na­tion of 21 play­ers who can rep­re­sent this coun­try and give us a chance to qual­i­fy out of this group.”

The squad fea­tures a blend of nine for­eign-based play­ers along­side a strong lo­cal con­tin­gent.

Ac­cord­ing to Gor­don, “I’m pleased with the group and the at­ti­tude of the play­ers. There is abil­i­ty, but abil­i­ty with­out the right in­gre­di­ents—at­ti­tude, dis­ci­pline and hard work—means noth­ing. All 21 play­ers ticked the box­es we were look­ing for. They have the con­fi­dence to go out and ex­press them­selves.”

He em­pha­sised that his fo­cus has now been shift­ed en­tire­ly to per­for­mances on the field. “From here on, it’s not about talk­ing. It’s about ac­tion and get­ting re­sults. We are go­ing to ap­proach every game like a fi­nal and do every­thing in our pow­er to qual­i­fy.”

Gor­don al­so called on the na­tion for its back­ing. “I want to urge the peo­ple of T&T to sup­port us in every­thing we are try­ing to do. It’s about the coun­try first and fore­most. I took this job be­liev­ing we can qual­i­fy for the World Cup with this staff and this group of play­ers. I be­lieve in that. Now it’s about go­ing on the foot­ball field, be­ing ready, and get­ting the right re­sults.”

T&T will be aim­ing to top Group E and se­cure their place among the re­gion’s best when the qual­i­fiers con­clude in ear­ly March.

The 32 par­tic­i­pat­ing teams have been di­vid­ed in­to two groups of six and four groups of five.

The group win­ners will ad­vance to the 2026 Con­ca­caf U-20 Cham­pi­onship, join­ing the six top-ranked na­tions that have al­ready se­cured au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

The 12-team Cham­pi­onship is sched­uled to run from Ju­ly 25 to Au­gust 9, and will serve as the re­gion’s qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment for the 2027 FI­FA Men’s U-20 World Cup and the 2028 Sum­mer Olympics.

T&T U-20 team

Bryan Gafiuk, Je­re­my Mel­oney, Sheri­dan Mc Nish, Adam Pierre, Jay­don Capret­ta, Ca­den Tre­strail, Malachi Webb, Josi­ah Ochoa, Phillip Nel­son, Der­rel Gar­cia, Chaz Williams, Col­in Xavier Joseph, Lyshaun Mor­ris, Ta­lan Mc Mil­lan, Jadon Mc Shine, Jaden Chan Tack, Do­minic Joseph, Jadon-Paul Alexan­der, Josi­ah Kallicha­ran, Gio­van­ni Hospedales, Sylvon Theophilus.