Just over one year since their last ap­pear­ance for T&T se­nior men’s foot­ball team, Kevin Moli­no and Jo­evin Jones, both for­mer cap­tains of the So­ca War­riors, are back in na­tion­al colours for this coun­try’s fi­nal two match­es in Group B of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League against Cu­ba.

The re­call of the duo for the Oc­to­ber 10 and 14 match­es was hint­ed at by T&T in­ter­im coach Derek King when he spoke to re­porters dur­ing a train­ing ses­sion with a lo­cal group of play­ers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Train­ing Field, Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day.

The So­ca War­riors cur­rent­ly have one point af­ter two match­es in the six-team round-robin group af­ter a 4-0 loss away to Hon­duras and a 0-0 home draw with French Guiana. They will meet Cu­ba in Ha­vana on Thurs­day, Oc­to­ber 10, be­fore host­ing the same op­po­nents at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let, on Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 14.

King on Sat­ur­day an­nounced a 23-man ros­ter for this coun­try’s two up­com­ing Con­ca­caf Na­tions League match away to Cu­ba on Oc­to­ber 10th and in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go on Oc­to­ber 14th.

Fol­low­ing a home-based train­ing camp, King fi­nalised his squad that al­so in­clud­ed  Toron­to FC’s for­ward Tyrese Spicer. 

AEK Athens for­ward Levi Gar­cia is not avail­able, hav­ing just re­turned to play from in­jury. Gar­cia was a 66th minute sub­sti­tute in AEK’s match against Pane­to­likos on Sat­ur­day. The club re­quest­ed that the play­er be ex­cused from in­ter­na­tion­al du­ty at this time.

The lo­cal con­tin­gent de­parts Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al on Sun­day and the full squad will as­sem­ble in San­ti­a­go on Mon­day morn­ing with King’s first train­ing ses­sion sched­uled for Mon­day af­ter­noon.

In the pre­vi­ous meet­ing be­tween the two teams in Cu­ba, T&T were 3-1 win­ners in a 2010 World Cup qual­i­fi­er played in 2008 in Ha­vana. T&T would go on to win the re­turn qual­i­fi­er 3-0 in Port of Spain. T&T al­so won the 2015 Gold Cup meet­ing 2-0 while Cu­ba were 1-0 win­ners when both na­tions met in the 2012 Caribbean Cup fi­nal in An­tigua.

In League A, the 12 match­es that will be played in Oc­to­ber will de­ter­mine the four teams (group win­ners and run­ners-up) that will join Con­ca­caf’s four top-ranked teams – Cana­da, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and the Unit­ed States (list­ed al­pha­bet­i­cal­ly) – in the Quar­ter­fi­nals, as well as the third and fourth-place fin­ish­ers and fifth and sixth-place fin­ish­ers that will progress to the 2025 Gold Cup Pre­lims and CNL Play-In, re­spec­tive­ly. 

The CNL Quar­ter­fi­nals will be played in a home-and-away for­mat in No­vem­ber 2024, with the ag­gre­gate score win­ner in each matchup ad­vanc­ing to the 2025 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League Fi­nals and qual­i­fy­ing for the 2025 Gold Cup. The Quar­ter­fi­nal losers will ad­vance to the 2025 Gold Cup Pre­lims.  

CNL Quar­ter­fi­nal pair­ings will be de­ter­mined based on the Con­ca­caf Rank­ings as of Oc­to­ber 2024 (af­ter the FI­FA Win­dow) and the Group Stage re­sults, as fol­lows: 

QF1: Fourth-ranked seed­ed team vs Best first place (1A/1B) 

QF2: Third-ranked seed­ed team vs Next first place (1A/1B) 

QF3: Sec­ond-ranked seed­ed team vs Best sec­ond place (2A/2B) 

QF4: Best-ranked seed­ed team vs Next sec­ond place (2A/2B) 

The CNL Play-In will take place in No­vem­ber 2024, and the Gold Cup Pre­lims will be in March 2025