T&T So­ca War­riors coach Dwight Yorke said he was pleased with his team’s im­proved per­for­mance against Cos­ta Ri­ca in their 2-1 loss in their 2026 Sec­ond Round FI­FA Con­ca­caf World Cup Group B qual­i­fi­er at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional in San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca, on Tues­day night.

De­spite the loss, the So­ca War­riors qual­i­fied for the third and fi­nal round of the Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fiers as the sec­ond-placed fin­ish­ers in the five-team pool with sev­en points from four match­es, the same as Grena­da but ahead on goal dif­fer­ence, while Cos­ta Ri­ca end­ed in the top spot with a max­i­mum of 12 points.

As the top two fin­ish­ers from Group B, Cos­ta Ri­ca and T&T, which end­ed Tues­day’s match with ten men af­ter de­fend­er Alvin Jones was shown a sec­ond yel­low card in the 78th minute, joined ten oth­er teams in the 12-draw to­day to de­ter­mine the three groups of four teams which will com­pete on a home-and-away round-robin ba­sis from Sep­tem­ber to No­vem­ber. The three group win­ners will qual­i­fy for next year’s FI­FA World Cup, which will be joint­ly host­ed by the USA, Cana­da, and Mex­i­co.

The ten oth­er teams in to­day’s draw will be Group A (Hon­duras, Bermu­da); Group B (Cos­ta Ri­ca, T&T); Group C (Cu­ra­cao, Haiti); Group D (Pana­ma, Nicaragua); Group E (Ja­maica, Guatemala) and Group F (Suri­name, El Sal­vador).

In ad­di­tion to the three group win­ners who qual­i­fy for the FI­FA World Cup di­rect­ly, the two best-ranked run­ners-up from the three groups will al­so have a chance to qual­i­fy for the World Cup via the in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-offs, where they will be joined by one team each from AFC, CAF, CON­MEBOL and OFC in the in­ter-con­fed­er­a­tion play-offs.

The teams will be ranked ac­cord­ing to the FI­FA Men’s World Rank­ing, with the four low­est-ranked teams play­ing in two sin­gle-elim­i­na­tion match­es.

The win­ners will meet the two high­est-ranked teams in an­oth­er set of sin­gle-elim­i­na­tion match­es, with the win­ners of these match­es qual­i­fy­ing for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup.

Speak­ing af­ter his team’s gut­sy 2-1 loss to the Ticos, Yorke, 53, re­flect­ing on the match, said, “I think it’s an im­prove­ment from where we were in the last game that we played, and I’m pleased with my play­ers; they worked them­selves to the ground.”

The T&T coach and for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er, in ex­plain­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties in play­ing in San Jose, added, “We're hav­ing to come in­to a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion here in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

“We know what Cos­ta Ri­ca has to of­fer, and we felt we need­ed to work ex­treme­ly hard, and even though the first half didn’t go par­tic­u­lar­ly great for us, at times we switched off when Cos­ta Ri­ca were on top of us at the time and con­ced­ed a goal when I felt in the mo­ments of the game we were on top of Cos­ta Ri­ca,” added Yorke, who took over the na­tion­al team last No­vem­ber af­ter the fir­ing of an­oth­er for­mer na­tion­al play­er, An­gus Eve.

“So, the de­feat was a bit of a blow, but I like the re­sponse, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the sec­ond half, and I think a lot of cred­it has gone out to my play­ers. We showed an­oth­er side of the team that prob­a­bly wasn’t there ear­li­er on, but I’m de­light­ed even though we have lost the game. Sure, we would have liked the re­sult to be a bit bet­ter, but we are de­light­ed, of course, in ad­vanc­ing to the next round of World Cup qual­i­fy­ing.

Quizzed as to what it means to him per­son­al­ly to tran­si­tion from a na­tion­al play­er with many in­ter­na­tion­al ac­co­lades to the coach of his na­tion­al team, the To­ba­go-born Yorke, who al­so rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the FI­FA World Youth (Un­der-20 World Cup) Cham­pi­onship lev­el and has won three of nine match­es along with five de­feats since tak­ing charge of the na­tion­al team, ad­mit­ted it was a great ho­n­our and priv­i­lege for him to be giv­en the po­si­tion.

He added, “The grat­i­tude has gone out every­where since I have come back, and the peo­ple and the fans of T&T have re­al­ly em­braced the fact that I was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead the team in the World Cup cam­paign and, of course, the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup that we are now go­ing to.”

“But, tonight (Tues­day), was about par­tic­u­lar­ly qual­i­fy­ing for the knock­out stage of the Con­ca­caf World Cup qual­i­fiers, and we know that we were com­ing in­to a very dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stance against a very good Cos­ta Ri­ca team.”

“Over the years, the his­to­ry be­tween Cos­ta Ri­ca and T&T games has been very tight, and so we ex­pect­ed it to be a dif­fi­cult game. Of course, we would have liked to win the game, but our main con­cern at the end of the day was to make sure that we got to the next round of the World Cup qual­i­fiers, so as much as it’s not the re­sult we would have hoped for, we are de­light­ed to be ad­vanc­ing in the World Cup cam­paign.

With re­spect to the match, Yorke not­ed that based on the first-half per­for­mance of his team, he need­ed to make some changes for the sec­ond half.

He said, “I think we need­ed to change a lit­tle bit from a tac­ti­cal point of view from the first half; it wasn’t quite smooth in the tran­si­tion. We got a re­al­ly good first 20 min­utes in the game, and we felt we got our foothold in the game, but then again, once Cos­ta Ri­ca scored, we seemed to have lost a bit of con­fi­dence and a lit­tle bit of guid­ance at the time.”

But, cer­tain­ly, in the sec­ond half we need­ed to make some tac­ti­cal changes, which we were able to do, and then we re­al­ly tried to push Cos­ta Ri­ca back to­wards their goal, and, of course, once we did that, we got the goal from that.”

The So­ca War­riors now turn their at­ten­tion to the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, where they meet host USA on Sun­day, June 15, at San Jose Earth­quakes Sta­di­um in San Jose from 6 pm in Group D, fol­lowed by match­es against Haiti at Shell En­er­gy Sta­di­um, Hous­ton, on Thurs­day, June 19, from 6.45 pm, be­fore end­ing their group cam­paign against Sau­di Ara­bia on Sun­day, June 22, at Al­le­giant Sta­di­um in Par­adise from 7 pm in their round-ro­bi n group as­sign­ments.

Fi­nal Sec­ond Round Con­ca­caf

World Cup Group B stand­ings

Pos*Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*GD*Pts

1.Cos­ta Ri­ca*4*4*0*0*17*1*16*12

2.T&T*4*2*1*1*16*7*9*7

3.Grena­da*4*2*1*1*11*7*4*7

4. St Kitts & Nevis*4*1*0*3*5*13*-8*3

5. Ba­hamas*4*0*0*4*1*22*-21*0

Third Round Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers Match Dates

Match­day 1 & 2: Sep­tem­ber, 1-9

Match­day 3 & 4: Oc­to­ber, 6-14

Match­day 5 & 6: No­vem­ber, 10-18