T&T se­nior men’s team will join host na­tion Thai­land at the King’s Cup 2022 in Chi­ang Mai province, Thai­land from Sep­tem­ber 22-25.

It will be an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue the process of get­ting the best team to rep­re­sent T&T in the fu­ture, na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve has said.

His team is com­ing off a 2-1 loss to cur­rent Group C lead­ers Nicaragua, a 1-0 tri­umph over the Ba­hamas, as well as two vic­to­ries over St Vin­cent and the Grenadines 2-0 and 4-1. They are sec­ond on the stand­ings with nine points, need­ing to be the top team to ad­vance out of the group. Lead­ers Nicaragua is on 10 points. Both teams have two more match­es to play, in­clud­ing a clash against each oth­er in March.

The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion from the Thai­land FA this week to play in the four-na­tion tour­na­ment, which al­so in­cludes Malaysia and Tajik­istan. Match­es will be played on Sep­tem­ber 22 and 25, with­in the FI­FA Win­dow and a draw will take place to de­ter­mine the fix­tures.

A re­lease from the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion says it will be the third vis­it for the T&T team to Thai­land for in­ter­na­tion­al friend­lies. The team vis­it­ed back in 2004 and 2018, where they lost to the hosts 3-2 and 1-0, re­spec­tive­ly. Cur­rent head coach Eve was the cap­tain of the 2004 squad un­der then head coach Bertille St Clair.

“In the last King’s Cup held in 2019, the Cu­ra­cao team was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate with the Viet­namese and In­di­an teams. In that tour­na­ment, Cu­ra­cao won the cham­pi­onship with a vic­to­ry over the Viet­namese team in the fi­nal,” the re­lease said.

In a re­sponse to the fix­tures, Eve said: “This is a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to get two in­ter­na­tion­al fix­tures away from home dur­ing the FI­FA Win­dow. Again, this is a con­tin­u­a­tion of our process to­wards get­ting the best pos­si­ble team for the fu­ture, which in­cludes not just the Gold Cup 2023 and the next phase of Na­tions League match­es, but al­so the 2026 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

“We are com­ing off a good run in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League with three con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ries and we will be look­ing to build on this in these up­com­ing match­es dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber win­dow. I’d like to say thank you to the Thai­land FA for reach­ing out to us to of­fer this in­vi­ta­tion and to the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and the TTFA for ac­cept­ing and con­firm­ing all arrange­ments to en­sure we are ac­tive in this up­com­ing FI­FA Win­dow.”