T&T's So­ca War­riors is in Group D, along with Guyana, Pana­ma and the Unit­ed States when the Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (CON­CA­CAF) made the an­nounce­ment about the groups and sched­ule for the 2019 event when it was un­veiled at Banc of Cal­i­for­nia Sta­di­um in Los An­ge­les, USA in the pres­ence of the par­tic­i­pat­ing head coach­es, as well as foot­ball per­son­al­i­ties, city dig­ni­taries, and Con­fed­er­a­tion of­fi­cials.

“The love for foot­ball is demon­strat­ed with every pass­ing edi­tion of the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup,” said Con­ca­caf Pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani. “Bring­ing the 16-team Gold Cup to Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ja­maica and the Unit­ed States is a wa­ter­shed mo­ment for foot­ball in our Con­fed­er­a­tion. This 15th edi­tion will make the tour­na­ment more com­pet­i­tive and com­pelling for play­ers and fans while show­cas­ing our re­gion’s uni­ty, pas­sion for foot­ball and tal­ent on the field.”

As part of the event, the Con­fed­er­a­tion held Con­ca­caf NextPlay, a grass­roots de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive, con­sist­ing of train­ing from Con­ca­caf of­fi­cials for coach­es to de­liv­er the NextPlay method­ol­o­gy in their lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. The pro­gram is fo­cused on uti­liz­ing the game to cre­ate safe spaces while pro­mot­ing so­cial val­ues. Af­ter the coach­es train­ing, a foot­ball clin­ic for boys and girls took place at the Banc of Cal­i­for­nia Sta­di­um.

In­spired by the di­verse com­mu­ni­ties served by the or­ga­ni­za­tion, as well as its mis­sion and val­ues, Con­ca­caf NextPlay em­pha­sizes the Con­fed­er­a­tion’s com­mit­ment to so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by pro­mot­ing ac­cess to foot­ball with­in the re­gion, while lever­ag­ing the pow­er of the game to dri­ve so­cial change.

The 2019 Gold Cup will be the biggest-ever edi­tion of the event, with more par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions (16 up from 12 in 2017), more host coun­tries (three, in­clud­ing first-time match­es in Cos­ta Ri­ca and Ja­maica, and more sta­di­ums (17 up from 14 in 2017, eight of which are in con­tention to be­come a 2026 FI­FA World Cup venue).

The 15th edi­tion of the con­ti­nen­tal cham­pi­onship will kick off on Sat­ur­day, June 15 at the Rose Bowl in Pasade­na, with Cana­da and Mar­tinique mark­ing the start of Group A ac­tion. The sec­ond match of the day will fea­ture a matchup be­tween sev­en-time Gold Cup cham­pi­ons Mex­i­co and Cu­ba.

As part of this ex­pand­ed for­mat of the tour­na­ment, Group B will de­but in the tour­na­ment on Sun­day, June 16, in Cos­ta Ri­ca’s Es­ta­dio Na­cional, mark­ing the first time the tour­na­ment is played in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Cos­ta Ri­ca and Nicaragua will face-off in Group B’s evening match, while Haiti and Bermu­da will open the day’s dou­ble­head­er.

In Group C, the seed­ed na­tion, Hon­duras, will trav­el to Kingston, Ja­maica, to take on the Reg­gae Boyz, mark­ing the first time the tour­na­ment is played in the Caribbean, while Cu­raçao and El Sal­vador bat­tle for ear­ly group dom­i­nance.

Group D, led by man­ag­er Gregg Berhal­ter’s Unit­ed States will be­gin their ti­tle de­fense in Min­neso­ta’s Al­lianz Field against Guyana, who will be mak­ing their Gold Cup de­but, while Pana­ma take on Trinidad and To­ba­go in what is sure to be a tight­ly con­test­ed match to round out the day and the first full round of Group Stage matchups.

In the Knock­out rounds, Hous­ton’s NRG Sta­di­um and Philadel­phia’s Lin­coln Fi­nan­cial Field will host two Quar­ter­fi­nal match­es each, on June 29 and 30 re­spec­tive­ly. The win­ning teams will move on to State Farm Sta­di­um in Phoenix and Nis­san Sta­di­um in Nashville for the Semi­fi­nals. The grand fi­nal is sched­uled to be played on Ju­ly 7, in Chica­go’s icon­ic Sol­dier Field.

The 2019 CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup is spon­sored by All­state In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny, Ca­mare­na Tequi­la, Cerveza Mod­e­lo, Nike, Sco­tia­bank, Sprint, and Toy­ota. The tour­na­ment will be broad­cast na­tion­al­ly on the Uni­vi­sion and FOX fam­i­ly of net­works and trans­mit­ted on ra­dio in Span­ish by Fút­bol de Primera Ra­dio Net­work and broad­cast by tele­vi­sion part­ners in over 180 coun­tries around the world.