T&T So­ca War­riors will be aim­ing to be the first team to seal a spot in the quar­ter­fi­nals of this year’s 16-team Con­ca­caf Gold Cup when they clash with Caribbean ri­val, Ja­maica in their sec­ond Group A match at City Park Sta­di­um, Saint Louis, Mis­souri, USA from 7.30 pm Wednes­day night.

Two hours lat­er, de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and host USA en­ter­tains St Kitts and Nevis at the same venue.

Win­ners of their open­er against an­oth­er Caribbean na­tion, St Kitts and Nevis 3-0 on Sun­day to stretch their un­beat­en run in 2013 to sev­en match­es, the An­gus Eve-coached So­ca War­riors will start the match as lead­ers of their four-team pool with three points, two ahead of the Ja­maicans, and de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and host USA, who bat­tled to a 1-1 draw in the tour­na­ment open­er on Sat­ur­day at Sol­dier Field, Chica­go.

T&T will al­so go in­to the match, the first meet­ing be­tween both coun­tries in the tour­na­ment his­to­ry, un­beat­en against the Reg­gae Boyz in their last two match­es, hav­ing se­cured a 1-0 win back on March 11, and a 0-0 draw three days lat­er, in two friend­ly match­es played in Ja­maica ear­li­er this year.

That re­newed a se­ries that hasn’t been played of­ten in re­cent years, with the last meet­ing in an of­fi­cial match com­ing near­ly a decade ago when Ja­maica beat T&T in a shootout af­ter a score­less draw in the 2014 Caribbean Cup fi­nal in Kingston.

Speak­ing at the pre-match press con­fer­ence, T&T coach said he has stud­ied the Ja­maicans and as part of the prepa­ra­tion for the match as the in­ten­si­ty in train­ing was re­al­ly good and his play­ers are look­ing for­ward to the en­counter.

“We want to win the game. We came in­to the tour­na­ment with the mind­set that we want to go on­to the sec­ond phase of this tour­na­ment, which is com­ing out of the group.

“So the strat­e­gy that we have in mind would be about try­ing to win the game."

The 51-year-old T&T coach not­ed that win for T&T to book a sec­ond-round spot, say­ing, “It will be huge for us to qual­i­fy out of this group be­cause it’s no se­cret the prob­lems we had in our foot­ball be­ing nor­malised by FI­FA and all that kind of stuff."

He added, “Now we are get­ting our foot­ball back on track and we had a league for the first time in three years which was a huge suc­cess, and there are play­ers in this squad who came out of that league and we con­tin­ue to build.

“We have qual­i­fied for back-to-back Gold Cups, so I think we are back on the right track and this is an­oth­er step in the right di­rec­tion, but the end game for us is to qual­i­fy for the World Cup in 2026 in our re­gion, and we want to put our best foot for­ward and try to be there in the end.”

For 11-Gold Cup par­tic­i­pants T&T, coach Eve is ex­pect­ed to have his full squad to choose from as they look to build on the win over the Sug­ar Boyz, the biggest in tour­na­ment his­to­ry with strikes from Alvin Jones, USA-born Ajani For­tune, and an own-goal from Jameel Ible.

The Reg­gae Boyz coached by Ice­land’s Heimir Hall­grims­son have qual­i­fied to the Gold Cup 13-times, how­ev­er, they are cur­rent­ly on an 11-match win­less run with their last win com­ing against Suri­name by a 3-1 mar­gin on June 7 last year in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League.

Asked his thoughts on the Ja­maican team which fea­tures a host of Eng­lish-based play­ers, com­pared to one he faced a few months back, Eve said, “They had about nine for­eign-based play­ers, but on­ly about five of them are in these team along with play­ers like Michail An­to­nio, De­marai Gray and to our cred­it we had a most­ly lo­cal­ly-based team, so we didn’t have the guys that we now have al­so, warned Eve."

Af­ter tonight’s match­es, Ja­maica clos­es group play against St Kitts and Nevis, while T&T will square off with the USA on Sun­day (Ju­ly 2).

Squads

T&T:

Goal­keep­ers: Den­zil Smith (W Con­nec­tion), Nick­las Fren­derup (Ran­heim IL/Nor­way), Mar­vin Phillip (AC Port of Spain).

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

Mid­field­ers:Mo­lik Khan (Min­neso­ta Unit­ed/USA), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (Oak­land Roots SC/USA), Ajani For­tune (At­lanta Unit­ed/USA), Luke Singh (Atleti­co Ot­tawa/Cana­da), Kaïlé Au­vray (Sport­ing KC Acad­e­my/USA), Re­al Gill (Club San­do), Ryan Telfer (Mi­a­mi FC/USA), Kevin Moli­no (Colum­bus Crew/USA),

For­wards:

Levi Gar­cia (AEK Athens FC/Greece), Kadeem Corbin (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), Mal­colm Shaw (Atleti­co Ot­tawa/Cana­da).

Ja­maica squad:

Goal­keep­ers: An­dre Blake (Philadel­phia Union), Ja­mali Waite (Pitts­burgh River­hounds), Co­ni­ah Boyce-Clarke (Read­ing)

De­fend­ers: Amari’i Bell (Lu­ton Town), Ethan Pin­nock (Brent­ford), Di’shon Bernard, Adri­an Mari­ap­pa (Sal­ford City), Dex­ter Lem­bik­isa (Wolves), Damion Lowe (Philadel­phia Union), Javain Brown (Van­cou­ver White­caps), Ke­mar Lawrence (Min­neso­ta Unit­ed)

Mid­field­ers: Kevon Lam­bert (Phoenix Ris­ing, (Jonathan Rus­sell (Barns­ley), Joel Lat­i­beaudiere (Swansea), Bob­by Reid (Ful­ham), Daniel John­son (Pre­ston North End), Ka­heem Par­ris (Dy­namo Kyiv)

For­wards: Michail An­to­nio (West Ham), Shamar Nichol­son (Spar­tak Moscow), Leon Bai­ley (As­ton Vil­la), Cory Burke (New York Red Bulls), Du­juan Richards (Phoenix Acad­e­my), De­marai Gray (Ever­ton)