In­ter­im head coach Derek King has named a 23-man T&T se­nior men’s na­tion­al squad for an up­com­ing string of in­ter­na­tion­al fix­tures, be­gin­ning with a friend­ly clash against Bo­livia on March 15. The So­ca War­riors will trav­el to the Ra­mon Tahuichi Aguil­era Sta­di­um in San­ta Cruz to face the South Amer­i­can side be­fore shift­ing their fo­cus to the FI­FA Se­ries lat­er in the month.

​The squad fea­tures a blend of lo­cal­ly based tal­ent and over­seas pro­fes­sion­als as King looks to as­sess his op­tions. Goal­keep­ers Jabari Brice, Jabari St Hillaire, and Teshorne Ra­goo have been se­lect­ed to pro­vide cov­er be­tween the posts. The de­fen­sive line is an­chored by ex­pe­ri­enced fig­ures such as Alvin Jones and Ross Rus­sell Jr of Cen­tral FC, along­side Jesse Williams and Wales-based James Lester.

​In mid­field, the in­clu­sion of An­dre Ram­per­sad from Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers and Jo­evin Jones brings vet­er­an lead­er­ship to the cen­tre of the park. They are joined by ris­ing tal­ents like Lin­dell Sween and Poland-based Eli­jah Cord­ner. The at­tack­ing de­part­ment will re­ly on the pace and fin­ish­ing of Ryan Telfer and Kathon St Hillaire, with young prospects Ja­heim Faustin and Kaieem Lewis al­so earn­ing spots in the trav­el­ling con­tin­gent.

​Fol­low­ing the en­counter in Bo­livia, the team is sched­uled to jour­ney to Uzbek­istan for the FI­FA Se­ries. The So­ca War­riors are slat­ed to face Venezuela on March 27, fol­lowed by a fix­ture against Gabon on March 30.

Look­ing ahead to the Bo­livic en­counter the in­ter­im T&T coach said go­ing in­to Bo­livia with on­ly three days of prepa­ra­tions will al­ways be dif­fi­cult but his team can com­pete once we show that dis­ci­pline, and sttay com­pact.

He added, "As I told the guys, in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball is some­thing dif­fer­ent. Some­times they make one mis­take and it will cost you the game."

Asked if was con­fi­dent in his squad, King replied, 'As I told the play­ers, you know, it's up to them, right. This

game is very im­por­tant. You know, you go and you im­press and force the coach­es to, you know, make a

de­ci­sion on who we car­ry in­to the fi­nal squad for the Pro Se­ries.

"At present in train­ing we're giv­ing them the con­fi­dence, and at the end of the day, we have to work

on both sides of the ball. Not on­ly at­tack­ing, but de­fen­sive­ly as well and we keep stress­ing they have to stay or­gan­ised."

King was al­so hope­ful of hav­ing more camps for the lo­cal­ly based play­ers say­ing, "The lo­cal base play­ers is some­thing that we have to con­tin­ue work­ing with. Do­ing lit­tle camps with the lo­cal base play­ers, and ex­pos­ing them to, you know, prob­a­bly the Caribbean, and giv­ing them that ex­po­sure, be­cause I think it's all about giv­ing them the ex­pe­ri­ence.

"We have some nice lit­tle play­ers, but it's just to get them, teach them the un­der­stand­ing of the game. We have the abil­i­ty, but some­times, you know, in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, dis­ci­pline is the key. So, we will see how it goes in Bo­livia."

On their last vis­it to Bo­livia in Jan­u­ary, 2022 un­der for­mer coach An­gus Eve, T&T was beat­en 5-0 and King was mind­ful of the task at hand,

He said, "When you watch Bo­livia, the team is 90 per cent of their play­ers are play­ing at home, and this match is out­side the FI­FA win­dow, but they have an im­por­tant play­off game in the March win­dow against

Suri­name.

"So, they are prepar­ing as well, and it's just for us to go and give a good ac­count of our­selves.

"I want the play­ers to be brave, be­lieve in them­selves, try and win the in­di­vid­ual bat­tles, but we have to stay dis­ci­plined, cre­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ties and go in there to look for pos­i­tive re­sults.

Go­ing for­ward King stat­ed, "We're here to do our job and we want to do it to the best of our abil­i­ty, and as I said, we want to build on what coach Dwight Yorke did with the team for the past few months.

"And I think we have good qual­i­ty play­ers and there are play­ers that we're still look­ing at as well who are show­ing in­ter­est with par­ents who were born in T&T with the grand­par­ent role. And we'll be work­ing be­hind the scenes to get the best pos­si­ble team to rep­re­sent T&T.

Se­nior men's team

Goal­keep­ers: Jabari Brice (Cen­tral FC), Jabari St Hillaire (De­fence Force), Teshorne Ra­goo (Club San­do)

De­fend­er: Ross Rus­sell Jr (Cen­tral FC), Alvin Jones (Cen­tral FC), Adam Pierre (Cen­tral FC), Jay­don Ca­pri­et­ta (Club San­do), Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton (Club San­do), Isa­iah Gar­cia (De­fence Force), Jesse Williams (Cale­do­nia AIA), James Lester (Llanel­li Town Wales), Dar­nell Hospedales (Prison FC)

Mid­field­ers: Daniel David (Cen­tral FC), Der­rel Gar­cia (San Juan Jabloteh), An­dre Ram­per­sad (Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Jo­evin Jones (De­fence Force), Lin­dell Sween (San Juan Jabloteh), Eli­jah Cord­ner (Rakow/Poland)

For­wards: Ad­dae Pa­ponette, Ja­heim Faustin (San Juan Jabloteh), Ryan Telfer (Hal­i­fax Wan­ders/Cana­da), Kaieem Lewis (St Eliz­a­beth Tech­ni­cal/Ja­maica), Kathon St Hillaire (De­fence Force).

Coach: Derek King