The trio of Levi Gar­cia, Rio Car­dines, and Ko­bi Hen­ry will play no role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­counter with An­tigua and Bar­bu­da at 7 pm on Fri­day night in the first of two Con­ca­caf Gold Cup Play-In match­es start­ing at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um in An­tigua.

They were all in­clud­ed in coach Derek King’s 28-man ros­ter for to­day’s match and an­oth­er on No­vem­ber 16 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo; how­ev­er, Gar­cia, the team’s reg­u­lar cap­tain, re­vealed he would not be avail­able for tonight but is ex­pect­ed to be avail­able for the T&T leg. Both Car­dines and Hen­ry got late re­calls by their re­spec­tive clubs yes­ter­day.

Car­dines, who picked up an in­jury when he last played dur­ing the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, was asked to skip both the coun­try’s match­es to con­tin­ue his re­cov­ery with the club, while Hen­ry has opt­ed out of the match­es, said a TTFA re­port.

Mean­while, Nathaniel ‘Nat­ty’ James makes a wel­come re­turn from in­jury and will be a key com­po­nent for King.

Vic­to­ry for T&T in the en­coun­ters will earn them the right to progress to the next phase of the qual­i­fiers.

King and his charges are the ar­chi­tects of their own dilem­ma tonight, af­ter be­ing top­pled from League ‘A’ of the Con­ca­caf Re­gion in­to League ‘B’ from a less-than-im­pres­sive se­ries of per­for­mances re­cent­ly. How­ev­er, James, who joined a fa­mil­iar group of play­ers for the match­es, such as Ryan Telfer, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Wayne Fred­er­ick II, and Dan­taye Gilbert, among oth­ers, said that al­though the home team will be em­pow­ered by their home ad­van­tage, his team has the tools to come away with a vic­to­ry.

“An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, they’re def­i­nite­ly go­ing to feel like they have the chance to win against us. They’re home, they’re go­ing to run, they’re go­ing to work, but we just have to be ready on the day. Who­ev­er wants it more will be the team that’s go­ing to come out on top,” James ex­plained.

“I think we have all the nec­es­sary tools to win the game, and I think we can def­i­nite­ly win the two games and en­ter the play­offs for the Gold Cup. I just think we need to con­tin­ue to re­main fo­cused.”

T&T will have very lit­tle rea­son to be con­cerned about their ri­vals, hav­ing dom­i­nat­ed them in the past. Two World Cup qual­i­fiers in 1972 sum­ma­rized the dom­i­nance over their coun­ter­parts, with the men in red, white, and black ham­mer­ing An­tigua/Bar­bu­da 11-1 be­fore a 2-1 tri­umph seal­ing their pas­sage through to the next round of the qual­i­fiers.

To date, the teams have met 13 times, with T&T win­ning 11 times and los­ing twice. In an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly, the T&T team went down to the An­tiguans 2-1 in Jan­u­ary 2005. Sev­en years lat­er, in a Con­ti­nen­tal Qual­i­fi­er in De­cem­ber 2012, the An­tiguans shut out T&T 2-0.

King’s men will be ea­ger to make up for their Na­tions League demise, de­spite be­ing with­out the ser­vices of their tal­is­man, Levi Gar­cia. King will have to work out the cir­cum­stances of his avail­abil­i­ty for the sec­ond match. Apart from Gar­cia, King’s team sees the re­turn of cen­tral mid­field­er Ali Kaz­im Nakhid, son of Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports David Nakhid, who rep­re­sents Al-It­ti­faq FC in the UAE First Di­vi­sion League, as well as strik­er Re­al Gill and mid­field­er Stef­fen Yeates, to name a few.

The team touched down in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da over the week­end and had its fi­nal ses­sion yes­ter­day. King, in an in­ter­view, said, “This is a very good op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to as­sert their au­thor­i­ty. What we saw as well is that the lo­cal-based play­ers now are much fit­ter. We worked for the last two weeks, and I think what we saw so far is a re­al­ly good sign for the lo­cal-based.”

“Good en­er­gy, good vibes, and they all know the im­por­tance be­cause I think this is a very good op­por­tu­ni­ty for the lo­cal-based play­ers. And ob­vi­ous­ly the will­ing­ness on our part to main­tain healthy re­la­tion­ships with play­ers like Ko­bi and Rio, who’ve asked to miss out on this win. We spoke to the Rio med­ical team. He’s still re­cov­er­ing.”

Quizzed on the qual­i­ty of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da team af­ter see­ing them train, Kings said, “An­tigua has a very good team. They are home; they are will­ing to come out and please their fans. One or two of their play­ers played in the USL, so they’re a team that will come out and give their all at home.”

“So it’s im­por­tant for us to be dis­ci­plined. I think we have to build on our last game. I think good ball pos­ses­sion is what we need. We have 23 play­ers here, a lot of play­ers who stepped up to the plate, stepped up to the call in the pre­vi­ous win­dow when oth­er guys were miss­ing.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go Squad

GOAL­KEEP­ERS

Jahiem Wick­ham, Teshorne Ra­goo, Den­zil Smith.

DE­FEND­ERS

Deron Payne, Ko­bi Hen­ry, Ja­heim Joseph, Ne­veal Hack­shaw, Kai­him Thomas, Justin Gar­cia, Rio Car­dines, Noah Pow­der, An­dre Ray­mond.

MID­FIELD­ERS

Luke Phillip, Mo­lik Khan, Ali Kaz­im Nakhid, Wayne Fred­er­ick II, Dan­taye Gilbert, Daniel David, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Re­al Gill, Stef­fen Yeates, Michel Poon-Angeron.

AT­TACK­ERS

Ryan Telfer, Nathaniel James, Kathon St. Hillaire, Sher­vonez Hamil­ton, Nicholas Dil­lon, Levi Gar­cia

Head Coach: Derek King