T&T So­ca War­riors coach Dwight Yorke says his team’s match against Bermu­da on Oc­to­ber 10 in Hamil­ton, Bermu­da, is a must-win match if they are to stay in con­tention to qual­i­fy for a sec­ond FI­FA World Cup ap­pear­ance.

The 53-year-old was speak­ing af­ter his team suf­fered a 2-0 loss away to Ja­maica in their sec­ond Con­ca­caf Group B Fi­nal Round World Cup qual­i­fi­er at the Ja­maica Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, In­de­pen­dence Park, Kingston, on Tues­day to re­main third in the four-team pool with one point from two match­es af­ter a goal­less draw in their open­er ver­sus Cu­ra­cao on Fri­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

With the win, Ja­maicans, who blanked Bermu­da 4-0 away from home on Fri­day last, im­proved to six points from two match­es to lead the group, two points ahead of Cu­ra­cao, who edged Bermu­da 3-2 in Tues­day night’s oth­er match.

With on­ly two match­es gone, Yorke and his team now find them­selves hav­ing to win all four re­main­ing match­es to have a chance to qual­i­fy for next year’s 48-team FI­FA World Cup to be joint­ly host­ed by the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

In ad­di­tion to Bermu­da (Oc­to­ber 10), T&T al­so plays away to Cu­ra­cao on Oc­to­ber 14 be­fore host­ing Ja­maica on No­vem­ber 13 and Bermu­da five days lat­er in their fi­nal two match­es.

At the end of the round-robin se­ries, the win­ner of each group will qual­i­fy di­rect­ly for the FI­FA World Cup 2026, while the two best sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers from Groups A, B and C will ad­vance to the FI­FA In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Play­off, sched­uled for March 2026, for a chance to se­cure a World Cup spot. For the first time in his­to­ry, the Con­ca­caf re­gion could be rep­re­sent­ed by as many as eight teams in a men’s FI­FA World Cup.

And speak­ing af­ter the loss to the Reg­gae Boyz, which ex­tend­ed his team’s win­less run to six match­es, an up­beat Yorke said his team still has 12 points to play for.

In terms of how things stand in the group af­ter two match­es, the T&T coach said, “I don’t think Ja­maica will be think­ing that they’re in the clear as yet.

“They’ve got Cu­raçao, and I know they beat Bermu­da, but Cu­raçao is a very good team, and they will find that out when they play against them.

“I think Cu­raçao will get a lot of en­cour­age­ment. They’re play­ing for their own op­por­tu­ni­ty as well. They won 3-2. So they’ve got every­thing to play for, so that game will be a re­al nip and tuck.

Con­cern­ing his own squad, Yorke said, “We’ve got to make sure that when we come to­geth­er again that we take care of the games in front of us.”

“That’s all we can con­cen­trate on. We can’t change the dy­nam­ics of the re­sults now, but what we can con­trol is what’s in front of us, and, of course, we play Bermu­da next.

“They’re com­ing off two de­feats, and I would say, look­ing at it from our point of view, that it’s a must-win game to get us back in­to the thick of things. But it’s cer­tain­ly not over.”

The op­ti­mistic T&T coach added, “There are a lot of points to be played. We know how quick­ly foot­ball changes; you’ve seen it tonight.”

“We felt that we should have got­ten some­thing from the game, but we didn’t.”

“But we’ve got to keep go­ing. With the per­for­mance that we put in the first two games, I think we don’t de­serve to lose any of those games, but yet we got one point, and you can’t say much for that.”

“As much as we think we dom­i­nate Ja­maica, we dom­i­nate the game at home; we just haven’t con­vert­ed in that fi­nal third. We seem to be lack­ing a lit­tle bit, and we need to be a lit­tle bit more clin­i­cal in those ar­eas, es­pe­cial­ly when we are dom­i­nat­ing teams like we have.”

De­spite the de­feat, Yorke said the pos­i­tive he will take away from the game was that he al­ways felt that they have good in­ten­tion and they are show­ing that.”

“The pos­i­tive is that we played well, we dom­i­nate Ja­maica, we dom­i­nate Cu­raçao, and yet we still on­ly got one point. I felt that the play­ers’ in­struc­tion was just mak­ing these lit­tle blun­ders and let­ting teams in, so re­al­ly caus­ing us those lit­tle prob­lems.

“Teams are not re­al­ly cre­at­ing chances to beat us. We’re ac­tu­al­ly gift­ing these teams, and I think it’s an area that we just have to be bet­ter in.”

“We’re show­ing at times that we can re­al­ly be re­silient, but when you gift teams the head start like we have giv­en Ja­maica tonight (Tues­day), it’s a lit­tle bit of a blow. But, out­side of those chances, you look at Ja­maica; they haven’t re­al­ly got a chance on goal.”

“We re­al­ly have gift­ed them two goals. There are a lot of pos­i­tives in there for us, and there’s a lot of en­cour­age­ment.”

“We’ve just got to keep go­ing. We’ve got to con­tin­ue to be­lieve. We’re show­ing that we’re a good team. We just need to make sure and get that lit­tle luck go­ing in our favour when it mat­ters.”

Asked if his team can get back in­to con­tention to qual­i­fy out of the group, Yorke said he has been in foot­ball long enough and knows how quick­ly things can change, like if Cu­ra­cao is to get a point against Ja­maica or Ja­maica los­es that game.”

“But, as I said, we can’t re­al­ly wor­ry about what’s hap­pen­ing. We know that the next game in front of us against Bermu­da is a cru­cial one, and that’s our main aim at the mo­ment.”

“We know we’re play­ing catch-up at the mo­ment, but I’ve been in foot­ball long enough to know that it’s nev­er over un­til it’s re­al­ly over.”

“So, I’ve got to make sure to keep the boys pos­i­tive. We will re­flect back on the two games in terms of how we play.

“We just need to tidy up a few things, but, over­all, the per­for­mance – I’m sure every­one who’s looked at both those games, T&T, should not be in the po­si­tion that we’re in, but we are. “It is what it is, and we need to dust our­selves down. We need to re­group again and look for­ward to the Bermu­da away game next time,” end­ed Yorke.