De­fend­er Om­ri Baird, 21, and mid­field­er Joash Baird, 19, (no re­la­tion) are among three new­com­ers named in the fi­nal 12-mem­ber squad by T&T men beach soc­cer coach, for­mer Barcelona and Span­ish star Ramiro Amarelle for the CON­CA­CAF Beach Soc­cer Cham­pi­onships which kicks off in Cos­ta Ri­ca, from May 17-23.

In ad­di­tion to the Bairds, for­ward Aki­no­la Gre­go­ry, 24, is the oth­er new face in the squad named by the 43-year-old Amarelle.

The oth­er mem­bers of the team in­clude goal­keep­ers Jabari Gray and Zane Cok­er, de­fend­ers Jesse Bai­ley, Shal­lun Bobb, Ryan Au­gus­tine, piv­ot pair Lemuel Lyons and tal­is­man Kevon “Show Time” Wood­ley as well as strik­ers Ha­keem King and David Mc Dougall, all mem­bers of the team at the 2019 Cham­pi­onship, who were edged out by even­tu­al tour­na­ment cham­pi­on Mex­i­co, 5-4 in the quar­ter­fi­nals.

The play­ers miss­ing out on the fi­nal 12 se­lec­tion were 2019 team mem­bers Shane Hospedales and Nathaniel Brown, Levi Fer­nan­dez, Tevin Gill and Im­manuel Rus­sell.

How­ev­er, the five play­ers could still be in line for se­lec­tion in ac­cor­dance with the com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions, changes to the fi­nal ros­ters will on­ly be al­lowed in the event of force ma­jeure or in­jury. Any changes made must be be­fore each team’s first group stage match. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, such re­place­ments must be ap­proved by Con­ca­caf.

The Con­ca­caf tour­na­ment takes place at the Com­ple­jo De­porti­vo FEDE­FUT­BOL Plycem in Ala­juela, Cos­ta Ri­ca and T&T opens its cam­paign ver­sus the host coun­try on May 17 be­fore fac­ing USA, a day lat­er and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands in their fi­nal match on May 19 in Group C.

Group A com­pris­es de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Guade­loupe and Be­lize while Group B con­sists of 2019 run­ners-up El Sal­vador, Ba­hamas, Guatemala and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Af­ter round-robin play, the top two fin­ish­ers in each group and the two best third-place teams will ad­vance to the knock­out stage. The knock­out stage will be­gin with the quar­ter­fi­nal match­es on May 21, fol­lowed by the semi­fi­nals on May 22.

 In ad­di­tion to qual­i­fy­ing for the com­pe­ti­tion’s fi­nal on May 23, the two semi­fi­nal win­ners will earn a spot in the FI­FA Beach Soc­cer World Cup in Moscow Rus­sia from Au­gust 19-29.

The na­tion­al team is cur­rent­ly in Paraguay where they are ex­pect­ed to com­plete their sixth and fi­nal warm-up match against that coun­try as part of their train­ing camp.

So far in Paraguay, the 17-man T&T squad which is based at the Olympic Ho­tel have suf­fered four de­feats in as many match­es, 7-2 in their open­er on May 4, 5-2 on May 6, 7-4 on May 8 and 3-2 on Tues­day (May 11).

They were ex­pect­ed to play an­oth­er friend­ly en­counter on Wednes­day (May 12) be­fore Thurs­day's (May 13) fi­nal warm-up.

 Speak­ing last week­end af­ter the third match, both Amarelle and goal­keep­er Cok­er ad­mit­ted to see­ing progress in the team's prepa­ra­tions in Asun­cion.

Amarelle, who is al­so a FI­FA in­struc­tor and ad­vi­sor and holds a UE­FA Pro Li­cense coach­ing badge, said: "We are con­tin­u­ing grow­ing and im­prov­ing and we re­duced the num­ber of mis­takes a lot, and we al­so did good things on the of­fen­sive as­pect.

“We had good con­nec­tions with the play­ers with re­la­tions al­so some in­di­vid­ual skill and I think our per­for­mance is im­prov­ing and is grow­ing.”

Look­ing ahead to the rest of the camp, the T&T coach said there were still some as­pects of the team’s game he need­ed to work on.

“We know we al­so have to work with the head and we will try to con­tin­ue on this way and we are hap­py and wish to con­tin­ue on this way for the next cou­ple of weeks."

Cok­er, one of the most ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers in the T&T squad, echoed the views of his coach.

Cok­er added, “I think that play­ing against a high rank­ing team like Paraguay who is ranked num­ber eight in the world and now com­ing off of their Beach Soc­cer League is good.

“We haven’t played a match for like the last 18 months which was the end of 2019, so if you want to look at it from that as­pect I think that the team is re­al­ly build­ing and com­ing to­geth­er now and bring­ing it to­geth­er.

“We have been train­ing for the past cou­ple of months and we are pro­gress­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly. I mean it's amaz­ing to be here as Paraguay is a fit team, they are run­ning and they have a full con­tin­gent and they are not eas­ing us up at all.

“And this is some­thing I like and I pre­fer with the South Amer­i­can teams be­cause in Con­ca­caf we are a lit­tle more laid back and with this ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­po­sure it is re­al­ly good for us tak­ing it back for our World Cup qual­i­fiers."

Mov­ing for­ward, Cok­er said: "From this match, I would take away that we were a lit­tle more fo­cused and more team-ori­ent­ed and these things car­ry us a long way. The broth­er­hood and co­he­sive­ness with­in the camp over the past two days has been amaz­ing and from there I think we will build from strength to strength go­ing in­to the qual­i­fiers.”

T&T has reached the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Con­ca­caf event three times, in 2015, 2017 and 2019, with a best-ever fin­ish of fifth place in 2015, via a 4-3 win over Guatemala.

Tour­na­ment Groups:

Group A: Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Guade­loupe, Be­lize

Group B: El Sal­vador, Ba­hamas, Guatemala, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

Group C: USA, Cos­ta Ri­ca, T&T, Turks and Caicos Is­lands

Match sched­ule

Group Stage:

May 17: PAN-GLP, BAH-GUA, TCA-USA, BLZ-MEX, DOM-SLV, CRC-TRI

May 18: PAN-BLZ, BAH-DOM, USA-TRI, MEX-GLP, SLV-GUA, CRC-TCA

May 19: GLP-BLZ, GUA-DOM, TRI-TCA, MEX-PAN, SLV-BAH, USA-CRC

Quar­ter­fi­nals:

May 21: 1A vs 3B/3C (Match 19), 1B vs 3A/3C (Match 20), 1C vs 2B (Match 21), 2A vs 2C (Match 22)

May 22: Semi­fi­nals

May 23: 3rd Place and Fi­nal