Caleb Wales is the lone match of­fi­cial se­lect­ed from T&T to of­fi­ci­ate at the 2023 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup which kicks off with the pre­lim­i­nary round of qual­i­fiers in the USA on Fri­day, June 16 at DRV PNK Sta­di­um in Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, USA.

The 17th edi­tion of the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s flag­ship com­pe­ti­tion for men’s na­tion­al teams will be played un­til Ju­ly 16, 2023, and will crown the re­gion’s best na­tion­al team.

Webb is among the 26 match of­fi­cials who have been named as an as­sis­tant ref­er­ee, and on­ly one of four Caribbean Foot­ball Union of­fi­cials as­signed along with Ja­maicans, Jas­sett Kerr-Wil­son, and Ojay Duhaney, as well as Suri­name’s Zachari Zeege­laar.

The oth­er Caribbean of­fi­cials se­lect­ed for the tour­na­ment are an­oth­er Ja­maican pair, Os­hane Nan­ton, and Da­neon Parch­ment, who were se­lect­ed among the 13 ref­er­ees.

Ear­li­er this year, Wales was ap­point­ed to serve in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League as a sec­ond ref­er­ee as­sis­tant for Cana­da’s home en­counter against Hon­duras at BMO Field, Toron­to.

Wales was in­volved at the Qatar FI­FA World Cup last De­cem­ber al­so served as one of the ref­er­ee as­sis­tants in the USA and Ser­bia friend­ly en­counter back in Jan­u­ary and was among a list of six T&T foot­ball of­fi­cials who were ap­proved by the Pier­lui­gi Col­li­na-led FI­FA Ref­er­ees Com­mit­tee, the body which ap­points the ref­er­ees and as­sis­tant ref­er­ees for match­es in com­pe­ti­tions or­gan­ised by FI­FA for the 2023 in­ter­na­tion­al lists.

Based on the rec­om­men­da­tions by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Ref­er­ees De­part­ment, Wales was one of three lo­cals ac­cept­ed as as­sis­tant ref­er­ees.

Wales was the lone foot­ball of­fi­cial from T&T to be se­lect­ed by FI­FA for the FI­FA World Cup in Qatar from No­vem­ber 21 to De­cem­ber 18, 2022 and one of 69 as­sis­tant ref­er­ees cho­sen.

Wales fol­lowed in the foot­steps of Merere Gon­za­les who was cho­sen to of­fi­ci­ate at the French World Cup in 1998 as an as­sis­tant ref­er­ee, and Michael Ra­goonath, who en­joyed a stint at the 2002 World Cup in South Ko­rea and Japan as an as­sis­tant ref­er­ee as well.

Apart from that, Dou­glas James, a then a teacher at Mal­ick Com­pre­hen­sive, was the first of­fi­cial from T&T and the Caribbean to ref­er­ee at a World Cup in 1994 in the Unit­ed States.

His achieve­ment was repli­cat­ed by Ramesh Ramd­han, as a ref­er­ee in the World Cup in 1998 in France.

The 2023 Gold Cup pre­lim­i­nar­ies will in­clude two di­rect elim­i­na­tion rounds, end­ing on June 20, and at the end of Round Two, the three matchup win­ners will ad­vance to the tour­na­ment’s Group Stage.

Group Stage ac­tion will take place be­tween June 24 and Ju­ly 4. It will fea­ture 16 na­tions di­vid­ed in­to four groups.

Af­ter round-robin play, the top two fin­ish­ers in each of the groups (eight teams) will ad­vance to a knock­out Stage.

The knock­out stage will be com­prised of quar­ter­fi­nals, to be played on Ju­ly 8 and 9; semi­fi­nals on Ju­ly 12, and the fi­nal at SoFi Sta­di­um, on Sun­day, Ju­ly 16.