Fol­low­ing a lengthy time away from the So­ca War­riors team due to in­jury, tal­ent­ed mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no re­turns with tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in a team stashed with a blend of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence.

The Colum­bus Crew (US Ma­jor League Soc­cer) play­er was one of 23 play­ers se­lect­ed from a squad of 60 by coach An­gus Eve last week to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States. They were spared of a pre-qual­i­fy­ing play-off with Guade­loupe that was sched­uled for Fri­day last, and an­oth­er clash with the win­ner be­tween Guyana and Grena­da, when the Nicaraguan Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion was pe­nal­ized by foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA for the use of an in­el­i­gi­ble play­er-mid­field­er Richard Ro­driguez dur­ing the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League.

Moli­no said the key for the So­ca War­riors will be their abil­i­ty to lift their per­for­mances to com­pete in the tour­na­ment. The T&T team end­ed with two drawn match­es in the last CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in 2019 against Guatemala and Mex­i­co but lost to El Sal­vador 2-0.

This time, they will be grouped with de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons the Unit­ed States, re­gion­al ri­vals Ja­maica, who they drew 0-0 and de­feat­ed 1-0 in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly ac­counts in March, and the win­ner of the qual­i­fiers.

" I am more than hap­py to join the guys. Had a lit­tle scrape in my menis­cus and it took a while longer than I ex­pect­ed, but now I am here with the guys and look­ing for­ward to the tour­na­ment."

" We were ex­pect­ing to play in a play-off but we qual­i­fied be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion with Nicaragua, so we got more time to pre­pare and spend more time as a group, which has been go­ing re­al­ly well."

" I am just ex­cit­ed to be with some of the new guys and some of the ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, so we're just wait­ing and look­ing for­ward to it as a team. You just have to stay dis­ci­plined, be­cause these teams will be com­ing very strong and we have to be up for the chal­lenge and be ready to fight for the red, white, and black," Moli­no ex­plained.

The War­riors will open its cam­paign on June 25 against an un­known qual­i­fi­er which will come from a clash be­tween St Kitts/Nevis, who de­feat­ed Cu­ra­cao on Fri­day 3-2 on penal­ties, fol­low­ing a 1-1 score at the end of reg­u­la­tion time, and the win­ner be­tween French Guiana and Sint Maarten, that was sched­uled to play yes­ter­day.

The sec­ond TT match will be against the Ja­maicans on June 28 be­fore they com­plete the group phase against the might of the USA on Ju­ly 2 at the Bank of Amer­i­ca Sta­di­um.

Moli­no said, giv­en the chal­lenges that T&T foot­ball has been through the Gold Cup will be a mas­sive op­por­tu­ni­ty for his play­ers in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly to show that they can com­pete at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

T&T Gold Cup Team

Goal­keep­ers

Mar­vin Phillip (AC PoS), Nick­las Fren­derup (Ran­heim IL/Nor­way), Den­zil Smith (W Con­nec­tion)

De­fend­ers

Aubrey David (SD Au­cas/Ecuador), Shel­don Bateau (SK Bev­eren/Bel­gium), Le­land Archer (Charleston Bat­tery/USA), Ka­reem Moses (FF Jaro/Fin­land), Shan­non Gomez (San An­to­nio FC/USA), Alvin Jones (Club San­do), Tris­ton Hodge (Hart­ford Ath­let­ic/USA)

Mid­field­ers

Jo­evin Jones (Po­lice FC), Daniel Phillips (St John­stone FC/Scot­land), Ryan Telfer (Mi­a­mi FC/USA), Kevin Moli­no (Colum­bus Crew/USA), Levi Gar­cia (AEK Athens/Greece), Re­al Gill (Club San­do), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (Oak­land Roots/USA), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Kaile Au­vray (Sport­ing Kansas/USA), Mo­lik Khan (Min­neso­ta Unit­ed/USA), Ajani For­tune (At­lanta Unit­ed/USA).

For­wards

Mal­colm Shaw (Atleti­co Ot­tawa/Cana­da), Kadeem Corbin (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers).