WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al foot­ball coach Dwight Yorke is fo­cused on com­ing out of the group stage of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, which will be held in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da from June 14 to Ju­ly 6.

And he be­lieves he may have some new play­ers who may spring some sur­pris­es.

Yorke’s So­ca War­riors have been drawn in Group D along­side the host Unit­ed States, Haiti, and Sau­di Ara­bia and will open their cam­paign against the host on June 15 at the Pay Pal Park in San Jose from 6 pm.

Yorke, speak­ing at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence for the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup yes­ter­day, said his fo­cus now is on the Unit­ed States as their first game, not­ing that the group is a high-pro­file one, which the host leads and will be sure to pro­vide a chal­lenge.

Yorke’s So­ca War­riors last pro­gressed from the group stage in 2000, and the for­mer na­tion­al strik­er, now turned coach, is hop­ing to im­prove on that fin­ish.

“We have played in this com­pe­ti­tion sev­er­al times, and we haven’t done great un­til the last time when we got out of the group stage in 2000, so that’s some­thing we will try to im­prove on. Ul­ti­mate­ly, it’s to gain some ex­pe­ri­ence.”

“We have two im­por­tant games com­ing up in the World Cup Qual­i­fiers to make sure that we ad­vance in­to the knock­out stage of the qual­i­fiers. So we’ve got some work to do. Lis­ten, we want to ad­vance just as much as any oth­er team in the group, and we know that be­ing in such a pres­ti­gious group – it’s a high-pro­file group with Amer­i­ca be­ing the host – we know what they’re go­ing to bring to the ta­ble,” Yorke ex­plained.

De­spite this, the for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er, who has cre­at­ed ex­cite­ment about a World Cup qual­i­fy­ing berth among fans, said some young play­ers can cause jaws to drop at the Gold Cup. “I think there is a new regime of play­ers that may sur­prise some peo­ple when we come to­geth­er, but the main aim is to progress through that group stage,” Yorke said.

Yorke’s 60-man squad for the Gold Cup com­pris­es three un­capped play­ers in the De­fence Force duo of Isa­iah Lea­cock and Ri­val­do Cory­at, as well as 22-year-old Dante Sealey, who plays in the MLS for CF Mon­tre­al.

Ear­li­er, he brushed aside con­cerns of Haiti at the Gold Cup, say­ing, “We haven’t played Haiti in some time, but we will do our due dili­gence, our work, and when it’s game time, when the team is gath­ered ful­ly... At the mo­ment we are not, and un­til that mo­ment comes, then we will fo­cus on the op­po­si­tion that we’re go­ing to be fac­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to Yorke, “What we’re do­ing is try­ing to check and fig­ure out the dan­ger that Haiti will cre­ate, but ob­vi­ous­ly, we will get to see them be­fore we meet them, so we will have a clear­er un­der­stand­ing. But it’s too ear­ly to iron out what we think of Haiti un­til we see their new for­ma­tion and what they play and their style of play.”