T&T So­ca War­riors coach An­gus Eve said he was pleased with his team’s 7-1 blowout of Ba­hamas in their sec­ond match in Group B of the Sec­ond Round of FI­FA CON­CA­CAF World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the St Kitts and Nevis Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Tech­ni­cal Cen­tre, Bas­seterre on Sat­ur­day night.

Cana­di­an-born Cav­al­ry FC strik­er Mal­colm Shaw and Du­ane Muck­ette of lo­cal cham­pi­ons AC Port-of-Spain scored two goals each in the win as the So­ca War­riors fell just shy of their biggest-ever World Cup qual­i­fy­ing mar­gin of a win, an 8-0 trounc­ing of Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in 1996.

Com­ing off a dis­ap­point­ing 2-2 home draw with Grena­da in their Group B open­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day night, T&T stamped their au­thor­i­ty on the match with Shaw, one of sev­en changes to the start­ing team from the match against the Spice Boys open­ing the scor­ing in the sixth minute be­fore Po­lice FC’s Alvin Jones made it 2-0 from the penal­ty spot in the 14th minute.

Two min­utes be­fore half-time, Muck­ette made it 3-0 and on the stroke of half-time, he dou­bled his tal­ly and ex­tend­ed the lead to 4-0.

In the sec­ond half, Re­on Moore ex­tend­ed the lead to 5-0 in the 56th be­fore Shaw com­plet­ed his dou­ble in the 66th minute while sub­sti­tute and Ja­maican-based winger Nathaniel James, ex­tend­ed the lead to 7-0 in the 84th be­fore Pe­ter Wood Jul­mis tapped home a late con­so­la­tion for the Ba­hami­ans.

Speak­ing af­ter his team’s lop­sided vic­to­ry T&T coach Eve said, “The re­sult was the most im­por­tant thing for us tonight (Sat­ur­day). We want­ed to win the game and we want­ed to get three points and as the game went along we be­lieved we could have got­ten more and we pushed for more as you saw and it takes us up to four points which is most im­por­tant.”

With re­gards to the sev­en changes to his start­ing line-up from the 2-2 draw in their cam­paign open­er at home to Grena­da on Wednes­day with Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham, Muck­ette, Cana­da-born Stef­fen Yeates, Jones, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Tris­ton Hodge and Shaw all com­ing in­to the start­ing line-up in place of Daniel Phillips, An­dre Ray­mond, Ryan Telfer, Noah Pow­der, Shan­non Gomez, Ajani For­tune and the in­jured Levi Gar­cia, Eve said he just want­ed to fresh­en up the team.

He ex­plained fur­ther, “As I have said be­fore, I have con­fi­dence in all of the guys that we brought here and what hap­pened was some of the guys had dif­fer­ent trav­el plans to get here with some of the guys leav­ing a day af­ter the game on Wednes­day, and some leav­ing a day be­fore this game, and then we hooked up here with one ses­sion again be­fore we had to play.

“And I thought about the guys trav­el­ling right af­ter the match, and I want­ed to fresh­en up the team and give them a new per­spec­tive and we be­lieve in all of the play­ers as we be­lieved we could have changed up the squad some­what and get the de­sired re­sult.”

The 52-year-old Eve, who scored 32 goals as a winger dur­ing his se­nior na­tion­al team ca­reer, al­so had spe­cial prais­es for the two debu­tants in the game, 24-year-old Cana­di­an-born Stef­fen Yeates who plies his trade with Pa­cif­ic FC in the Cana­di­an Pre­mier League and 19-year-old Jong PSV of Hol­land strik­er, Dan­taye Gilbert.

Yeates, who was not used off the bench against Grena­da, played from the start and was named ‘Man-of-the-Match’, on­ly be­ing re­placed in the 77th minute by Gilbert.

About the per­for­mances of the pair, Eve who is the most capped T&T play­er ever with 117 se­nior team ap­pear­ances said, “I thought they did very well.

“Since last Oc­to­ber we had been look­ing at Yeates and he is an in­tel­li­gent foot­baller and plays the ball well. He is very good on the ball and cre­ative, and at the same time Dan­taye (Gilbert) has been do­ing well, but he came in­to the camp with a nig­gling an­kle in­jury, so we kind of saved him a lit­tle bit from the first match (Grena­da), and give him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play this match.”

Eve added, “It’s al­ways good to give a young play­er their de­but and tonight we give two play­ers their de­but and I think they did well.”

He al­so high­light­ed the per­for­mances of Shaw and Muck­ette both of whom scored two goals each in the con­test say­ing, “Du­ane (Muck­ette) has been do­ing good in the lo­cal league (T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League) and Mal­colm (Shaw) is play­ing more con­sis­tent­ly with his new team in Cana­da.

“So, as I said be­fore all of these play­ers are starters with their team, so when it comes to the na­tion­al team we be­lieve in every play­er that we bring here and we have no fear to change up the team,” boast­ed Eve.

Com­par­ing his team’s start in the two match­es played so far, Eve said, “I thought we were a lit­tle bit flat in the first game and we nev­er got go­ing un­til in the sec­ond half and we want­ed to right that wrong and I think that we did it to­day. The pass­ing was much bet­ter and the flu­en­cy of the team, it doesn’t mat­ter who you play as this team helped throw us out of the World Cup last time around, and I don’t think we could have scored on them.

“So, this shows im­prove­ment for us now beat­ing them 7-1, but I was most dis­ap­point­ed that we con­ced­ed that late goal.

“I told the guys we want­ed to keep a clean sheet and I think Den­zil (Smith) did every­thing in his pow­er and the de­fend­ers at that point in time didn’t back him up prop­er­ly, but one mis­take and one goal over 90-plus min­utes I guess I would take that.”

The So­ca War­riors will com­plete their four-match sched­ule in 2025 with a home en­counter against St Kitts & Nevis on June 6, fol­lowed by an away out­ing to group favourite Cos­ta Ri­ca, four days lat­er.

Eve shifts at­ten­tion to CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League prepa­ra­tions

Be­fore restart­ing their 2026 CON­CA­CAF FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign next year, the So­ca War­riors will shift their at­ten­tion to the start of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League League A group stage in Sep­tem­ber in Group B with Ja­maica, Hon­duras, Cu­ba, Nicaragua and French Guiana while Group A com­pris­es Cos­ta Ri­ca, Guatemala, Mar­tinique, Guade­loupe, Suri­name, and Guyana.

The So­ca War­riors will open their League A cam­paign ver­sus Hon­duras on Sep­tem­ber 6 be­fore host­ing French Guiana on Sep­tem­ber 10 fol­lowed by home-and-away en­coun­ters against Cu­ba on Oc­to­ber 10 away, and then at home on Oc­to­ber 14.

From the two groups of six teams which will play in a “Swiss style” league sys­tem, with each team play­ing a to­tal of four games (two at home and two away), the first and sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers of each group will ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nals, where they will join the four top-ranked League A teams (Mex­i­co, USA, Pana­ma, and Cana­da).

The tour­na­ment will be played dur­ing the FI­FA Match Win­dows of Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber, and No­vem­ber 2024 while the fi­nals are sched­uled for March 2025 and will serve as the qual­i­fiers for next sum­mer’s 2025 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup.

Last sea­son in the third edi­tion, the So­ca War­riors en­joyed a very fruit­ful cam­paign in League A Group A beat­ing Cu­ra­cao (1-0), El Sal­vador (3-2), and Guatemala (3-2) in their first three match­es be­fore suf­fer­ing a 5-3 away loss to Cu­ra­cao to end with nine points, and the sec­ond spot in the six-team pool, one point be­hind Pana­ma as both teams ad­vanced to the quar­ter­fi­nals.

How­ev­er, play­ing away to the USA in the quar­ter­fi­nals, the So­ca War­riors suf­fered a late col­lapse in a 3-0 loss, and de­spite a 2-1 win in the sec­ond leg at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, was dumped out of the Na­tions League 4-2 on ag­gre­gate.

T&T went on to meet Cana­da in their one-leg play-in match with a spot at the up­com­ing 2024 Co­pa Amer­i­ca at stake for the win­ner, but it was not to be as the Cana­di­ans came away with the 2-0 win last month to join Ja­maica, USA, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and Cos­ta Ri­ca as qual­i­fiers to the event.

With just over two months be­fore their open­er in the 2024/2025 edi­tion against Hon­duras, the T&T coach again ex­pressed his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the lack of prepa­ra­tion time on of­fer for teams dur­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow.

He said, “The win­dows (FI­FA in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow), they don’t have friend­lies in them and I com­plained about the first match and we didn’t have the co­he­sion with the guys be­cause we got them so late and when we get­ting them win­dows now where we could have played some friend­ly match­es ad get the play­ers back we still can’t get them back be­cause it’s a tour­na­ment, and we can’t get to ex­pose peo­ple and it’s a lit­tle bit dif­fi­cult but it’s the hands that we have been dealt so we are go­ing to try to do the best that we can and con­tin­ue to ex­pose play­ers be­cause we have some oth­er young play­ers we want to give an op­por­tu­ni­ty as we give Dan­taye (Gilbert) tonight (Sat­ur­day).

“We have young Fred­er­icks (Wayne) of Col­orado Rapids, and Spicer (Tyrese) of Toron­to FC who didn’t come this time around, and we al­so have Mo­lik Khan who for a bit we haven’t called him in and he is do­ing well. So there is a num­ber of young play­ers who we want to in­tro­duce to the team again.”

Eve al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to once again plead to the au­thor­i­ties for a change of the laws with re­gards to grant­i­ng cit­i­zen­ship for po­ten­tial play­ers to get T&T pass­ports and rep­re­sent the na­tion­al team.

The Care­nage-born T&T coach who had a stint with Eng­lish club Chester City said, “The last one was Stef­fen Yeates and there are a lot play­ers who you could pull from by the way of grand­par­ents but as you the law does not per­mit, so we are still look­ing and there are guys from the USA who are play­ing in the MLS right now and whose par­ents are T&T na­tion­als and we are talk­ing to them right now.”