NIGEL SI­MON

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

T&T So­ca War­riors coach Dwight Yorke will be hop­ing for a pos­i­tive start from his play­ers when they come up against host USA in their Group D open­er of the 2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup at San Jose Earth­quakes Sta­di­um in San Jose to­day from 6 pm.

The oth­er teams in the group, Haiti and guest par­tic­i­pants Sau­di Ara­bia, meet in the sec­ond match at Snap­drag­on Sta­di­um, San Diego, from 8.15 pm.

Go­ing in­to the match, the So­ca War­riors will be with­out the ser­vices of in-form winger Levi Winger of Spar­tak Moscow, who was ex­cused for the en­counter due to his im­pend­ing wed­ding nup­tials to­day in his na­tive T&T.

In Gar­cia’s (L) ab­sence, Yorke is ex­pect­ed to choose from the trio of Isa­iah Lee (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), Dante Sealy (CF Mon­tre­al/USA), and Isa­iah Lea­cock (De­fence Force) to lead the at­tack, while de­fend­er Justin ‘Shig­gy’ Gar­cia of T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League Tier I cham­pi­ons De­fence Force has been draugh­t­ed in­to the squad for the in­jured Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham of Ja­maica’s Mon­tego Bay Unit­ed.

How­ev­er, de­fend­er Alvin Jones, who was red card­ed against Cos­ta Ri­ca in his team’s 2-1 loss to Cos­ta Ri­ca in San Jose in their Con­ca­caf Sec­ond Round World Cup qual­i­fi­er in which Gar­cia (L) scored for T&T, will be avail­able but will miss this coun­try’s next World Cup qual­i­fi­er in Sep­tem­ber at home to Cu­ra­cao.

Based on their head-to-head meet­ing, the USA, which has won 22 of 31 match­es against the So­ca War­riors, will start as favourites.

How­ev­er, the So­ca War­riors, who are com­ing off a 2-1 loss to Cos­ta Ri­ca in their Sec­ond Round Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fi­er on Tues­day last but still ad­vanced to the Fi­nal Round where they will face Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Haiti in Group B, will take con­fi­dence in that in their last meet­ing with the USA on home soil on No­vem­ber 16, 2023, they came out 2-1 win­ners in their sec­ond-leg Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nal at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, to end a four-match los­ing skid and a 4-2 ag­gre­gate loss.

But ear­li­er that same year, the Amer­i­cans al­so thumped the So­ca War­riors 6-0 in their Con­ca­caf Gold Cup group meet­ing, the same re­sult as in 2019.

In their three oth­er Gold Cup meet­ings, the USA, which has par­tic­i­pat­ed in all 17 edi­tions of the com­pe­ti­tion, record­ed a 2-0 win in June 2007, a 3-2 win in Jan­u­ary 1998 and a 2-1 win in June 1991.

Last March, the So­ca War­riors qual­i­fied for their 13th Gold Cup ap­pear­ance by de­feat­ing Cu­ba 6-1 on ag­gre­gate in the pre­lim­i­nary round with a 2-1 win in the first leg at Es­ta­dio An­to­nio Maceo in San­ti­a­go de Cu­ba backed up by a 4-0 win at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va to hand coach Dwight Yorke a win in his first match on home soil.

This was af­ter a 3-1 loss away to Sau­di Ara­bia last No­vem­ber in Yorke’s first match since tak­ing over from An­gus Eve, which was fol­lowed by a 1-0 loss to Ja­maica and a 1-1 draw in two friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­als in Kingston.

Pri­or to re­sum­ing their World Cup qual­i­fiers last week, which re­sult­ed in a 6-2 win over St Kitts & Nevis and the loss away to Cos­ta Ri­ca. T&T al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Afro-Caribbean Uni­ty Cup in Eng­land, where they were edged out by Ja­maica in the semi­fi­nals be­fore a 4-0 loss to Ghana in the third-place match.

T&T’s best ever fin­ish at a Gold Cup came in the 2000 edi­tion as the third-place team, with the next best fin­ish­ers be­ing quar­ter­fi­nals ap­pear­ances in 2013 (sixth) and 2015 (fifth) un­der Stephen Hart.

Since then, the So­ca War­riors have failed to get out of the group stages in 2019 (14th), 2021 (12th) and 2023 (13th), while they did not qual­i­fy in 2017.

Speak­ing ahead of his team’s open­er against the Amer­i­cans, the 53-year-old Yorke ad­mit­ted that the Gold Cup is a ma­jor tour­na­ment for T&T and not­ed the team has not pro­gressed out of the group stage for a while and this time around they will try and do that.

He added, “We have some chal­lenges ahead of us to face, and Amer­i­ca is prob­a­bly as big a chal­lenge as we will have, and we have to make sure we get ready and pre­pare for that par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge.”

About the ab­sence of Levi Gar­cia, Yorke said, “We are and de­light­ed that he is get­ting mar­ried and we will all be giv­ing him 100 per cent sup­port. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we would have liked it to be on an­oth­er day, but ob­vi­ous­ly it was arranged way in ad­vance and we ac­cept that and it pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for some­one else to step in­to Levi’s (Gar­cia) shoes and show what they are ca­pa­ble off and al­so show the depth in our squad as well.”

The USA, sev­en-time Gold Cup win­ners, en­ters the con­test on a low af­ter four straight de­feats in 2025, a 1-0 loss to Pana­ma and 2-1 to Cana­da in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, as well as friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al de­feats last week against Türkiye 2-1 on Sat­ur­day and get­ting run over by Switzer­land 4-0 on Tues­day, and will be hop­ing to get back on track.

In ad­di­tion, they will need to do so with star at­tack­er Chris­t­ian Pulisic, who is sit­ting out in or­der to rest fol­low­ing a long sea­son with AC Mi­lan, along with We­st­on McKen­nie, Tim Weah, An­tonee “Je­di” Robin­son, Sergino Dest, Gio Rey­na, Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun, goal­keep­er Za­ck Stef­fen and Ri­car­do Pepi, and have forced team man­ag­er Mauri­cio Pochet­ti­no to call in a green ros­ter – one that av­er­ages 16 caps – with even more lim­it­ed ex­pe­ri­ence in of­fi­cial com­pe­ti­tion, and the best chance for Yorke’s men to pull off a stun­ner.