WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke and his charges will at­tempt to close the gap on their Ja­maican coun­ter­parts to­day from 2:30 pm when the teams square off in the Uni­ty Cup at Brent­ford FC’s Gtech Com­mu­ni­ty Sta­di­um in West Lon­don.

The clash of the two Caribbean gi­ants will be the first of two semi­fi­nal match­es and will be fol­lowed by an­oth­er be­tween African heavy­weights Nige­ria and Ghana. The two win­ners will then square off on May 31 in the fi­nal.

Though Yorke said his fo­cus is the com­ing two FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers against St Kitts/Nevis on June 6 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo and four days lat­er against Cos­ta Ri­ca in Cos­ta Ri­ca with a place in the fi­nal round of the qual­i­fiers at stake, he told the me­dia yes­ter­day he is here to com­pete.

With just about six months since tak­ing the So­ca War­riors job from his for­mer col­league An­gus Eve, Yorke as­sured, “We are here to com­pete. We know that Ja­maica is a very good team, so we’re try­ing to get our width on them in terms of how close we can get to Ja­maica. It would give us an idea of where we’ve come and where we’re look­ing to go.”

“We have var­i­ous sys­tems that I like to play, but it de­pends on the peo­ple we have on the day. But one thing is for sure: it will be two teams try­ing to play en­ter­tain­ing foot­ball. As we say, at­tack­ing or play­ing on the front foot, it’s in our DNA to play that way. We have a lot of re­spect for Ja­maica, and we know that they’re ahead of us, and we’re try­ing to close the gap,” Yorke ex­plained.

His first taste against the Ja­maicans as a coach was a 1-0 loss in Feb­ru­ary in Mon­tego Bay. And in his sec­ond in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against the Reg­gae Boyz, Yorke’s charges scored first but were held 1-1. De­spite his star­dom in the EPL for As­ton Vil­la and lat­er Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, among oth­er teams as a play­er, Yorke ac­knowl­edged he is still prob­a­bly in the get­ting-to-know-the-play­ers stage, much like his op­po­site num­ber, Steve Mc­Claren, who took over the reins of the Reg­gae Boyz last year.

“Since I took the job, and Steve is prob­a­bly the same in tak­ing the job in Ja­maica, since we took the job, we’re still in that get-to-know-the-play­ers and ‘the sys­tem’ and get to in­tro­duce your phi­los­o­phy as we play. And yes, al­though re­sults seem to mat­ter, we had a big­ger vi­sion and a big­ger idea of what we’re try­ing to ac­com­plish, and hav­ing played those two games against Ja­maica, we in­di­cate where we are in terms of dif­fer­ences, in terms of the stan­dard of play.”

Yorke picked a star-stud­ded team with three un­capped play­ers, not­ing that the match­es at the Uni­ty Cup will serve as much-need­ed match prac­tice. “I am very ex­cit­ed for the Uni­ty Cup. It’s not some­thing that we par­tic­i­pate in quite of­ten, and it’s some­thing that we try to en­cour­age, cer­tain­ly to al­low some of the lo­cal play­ers to come out to Eng­land to play at a won­der­ful sta­di­um like the GTECH sta­di­um. Many of them would not have the ex­pe­ri­ence, as well as the un­der­stand­ing of what it takes and hav­ing a vi­sion of what pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball is like, so it’s a good eye-open­er for my play­ers, the younger play­ers who haven’t been to this lev­el as yet.”

TT SQUAD

GOAL­KEEP­ERS:

Mar­vin Phillip, Jabari St Hillaire

DE­FEND­ERS:

Shel­don Bateau, Justin Gar­cia, Ja­mal Jack, Alvin Jones, Jesse Williams, An­dre Ray­mond, Je­lani Pe­ters, Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton

MID­FIELD­ERS:

Kevin Moli­no, Daniel Phillips, Jo­evin Jones, Noah Pow­der, Du­ane Muck­ette, John-Paul Rochford, Dan­taye Gilbert, Kris­t­ian Lee-Him, Rio Car­dines, Kai­him Thomas

FOR­WARDS:

Isa­iah Lea­cock, Re­on Moore, Isa­iah Lee, Brent Sam

JA­MAICA SQUAD

GOAL­KEEP­ERS:

Shaquan Davis, Ben­jamin Williams, Ta­fari Cham­bers

DE­FEND­ERS:

Richard King, Ma­son Hol­gate, Dex­ter Lem­bik­isa, Kyle Ming, Amari Bell, Greg Leigh, Stephen Young

MID­FIELD­ERS:

Isaac Hay­den, Kasey Palmer, Bran­don Cov­er, Jon Rus­sell, Daniel Green

FOR­WARDS:

Dwayne Atkin­son, Re­nal­do Cephas, Warn­er Brown, Ru­marn Bur­rell, Ka­heim Dixon, Javon East