Two match­es have been lined up against Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines next week, on Jan­u­ary 18th and 20th, at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va for the coun­try’s Un­der-20 foot­ballers, who will con­test the Un­der-20 World Cup Qual­i­fiers from next month.

The match­es will form a cru­cial part of the team’s prepa­ra­tion be­fore the team is trimmed to 26 play­ers to con­test Group E of the Con­ca­caf qual­i­fiers, fea­tur­ing Bar­ba­dos, Sint Maarten, Bermu­da, and Cos­ta Ri­ca, the host for the ear­ly qual­i­fiers start­ing on Feb­ru­ary 24.

At present, the squad com­pris­es a lo­cal group of 32 play­ers, with more play­ers from abroad ex­pect­ed.

Na­tion­al Coach Mar­vin Gor­don, who coach­es San Juan Jabloteh in Tier 1 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, in giv­ing an up­date on the team, said things have been go­ing nice­ly to date. The team has been prepar­ing for the past two months and could face a favourable group with on­ly the win­ners ex­pect­ed to progress.

At present, Gor­don and his staff are at­tempt­ing to sift out his best play­ers to wear the red, white and black.

“I think we’ve been pro­gress­ing well, from the year that we start­ed, over the last two months. I think the play­ers are tak­ing every­thing on board; the at­ti­tude and the at­mos­phere are good. It’s just about tak­ing it one day at a time, prepar­ing the team prop­er­ly, and mak­ing sure that we are on the right foot to try to qual­i­fy,” Gor­don as­sured.

“We have some play­ers still to come in from the UK; they should be in by the end of this month. We are sup­posed to have two friend­ly match­es against Grena­da and St Vin­cent. Af­ter that, we will break the squad down ba­si­cal­ly to a 26-man squad, and then from that, we se­lect 23.”

Ac­cord­ing to Gor­don, “Lo­cal­ly we have about 32 play­ers in train­ing, be­cause sev­en of the guys would have gone back to the US and gone to Ger­many. We have about sev­en of them who were not here in De­cem­ber. They were called to come back: two goal­keep­ers and five out­field play­ers. Then we have six Eng­lish-based play­ers com­ing in as well. Our first match is on the 24th of Feb­ru­ary, for the tour­na­ment in Cos­ta Ri­ca.”

De­spite the has­sle of putting to­geth­er a com­pet­i­tive team, Gor­don be­lieves his team has an ex­cel­lent chance to qual­i­fy for the World Cup. Af­ter the round-robin play, the first-place team from each group will ad­vance to the 2026 Con­ca­caf U-20 Cham­pi­onship, join­ing the six top-ranked na­tions that are pre-qual­i­fied di­rect­ly for the tour­na­ment.

The 12-team Cham­pi­onship is sched­uled for the sum­mer of 2026, run­ning from Ju­ly 25 to Au­gust 9, and will fea­ture the re­gion’s 12 best men’s U-20 na­tion­al teams di­vid­ed in­to three groups of four. The tour­na­ment will al­so serve as the qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion for both the 2027 FI­FA Men’s U-20 World Cup and the 2028 Sum­mer Olympics.

Af­ter round-robin play, the two top teams of each group and the two best third-place teams will ad­vance to a knock­out stage com­prised of the quar­ter-fi­nals, se­mi-fi­nals, and fi­nal.

Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that he will not be tak­ing any team for grant­ed.

“I think every game is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult. You know, in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, every game is a dif­fi­cult game. The game on­ly be­comes easy when you pre­pare prop­er­ly, and you want to get the right things out. So, we are not tak­ing any of the teams in the group light­ly. But in terms of our chances, I think we have a fan­tas­tic chance to get out of this group. With the core play­ers that we have. We have sev­en play­ers com­ing back from the last na­tion­al un­der-20 as well in the squad.”

“I think this group of un­der-20 play­ers – I don’t want to get ahead of my­self, but I think we have a good chance.”

Un­der-20 World Cup Qual­i­fiers Group

Group A

El Sal­vador, Suri­name, Be­lize, Grena­da, Saint Mar­tin, French Guiana

Group B

Ja­maica, Puer­to Ri­co, St. Kitts and Nevis, Cay­man Is­lands, Turks and Caicos Is­lands, Bonaire

Group C

Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Saint Lu­cia, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Do­mini­ca

Group D

Haiti, Cu­raçao, Guyana, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, An­guil­la

Group E

Cos­ta Ri­ca, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bermu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Sint Maarten

Group F

Cana­da, Nicaragua, Aru­ba, Mar­tinique, US Vir­gin Is­lands