Trinidad and Tobago's Men and Women teams will face off with teams from the rest of Concacaf and the Caribbean in their respective groups for the 2010 Central American and Caribbean games which were determined at the draw on Friday in New York.
The T&T Men's team which will be an Under 21 team, according to the tournament rules, is currently preparing under head coach Zoran Vranes and will face off with Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Belize in Group A. The Women meantime, which will field as a senior team will meet Mexico, Guatemala and Guyana which they defeated 3-0 in the qualifiers earlier this month.
El Salvador, which had qualified for both of the men's and women's tournaments, was disqualified and not included in the draw due to its suspension by FIFA over governmental interference in the affairs of the country's soccer federation, Concacaf.com stated.
Vranes said he was hopeful of a strong showing by T&T.
"Well we have been preparing for this since last year and we expect to have a good team going to Puerto Rico. Of course there will be several players from the Under 20 World Cup and this should be a plus for us and of course we will have a few other players who have been brought into the team.
I expect it to be a challenging tournament for us but I am positive about our chances to go there and perform well enough to attain some degree of success," Vranes told TTFF Media.
Women's head coach Jamaal Shabazz was equally optimistic.
"I think we can definitely go there and give a good account of ourselves. We may be missing a couple players from the team that played in the qualifiers last week but our team should be in an even better shape now after playing these three matches.
To play Guyana again is good for us because while they were our toughest opponent in the qualifiers we showed that we could overcome them and I am excited to see how we will perform at the CAC Games," Shabazz said.
The match calendar will be announced jointly by the Central American and Caribbean Sports Organization (CASCO) [Organizacion Deportivo Centroamericana y el Caribe - (ODECABE)] and the local organizers at a later date for the July 17-August 1 games.
This will be the third time Puerto Rico has staged the CAC Games, the last time in 1993. The men's tournament will be staged as an under-21 event, in keeping with the Olympic nature of the games, while the women's tournament will be open to full national teams.
CAC Games
MEN
Group A
Costa Rica
Belize
Trinidad & Tobago
Puerto Rico
Group B
Mexico
Panama
Jamaica
St. Vincent & the Grenadines
WOMEN
Group A
Costa Rica
Haiti
Nicaragua
Puerto Rico
Group B
Mexico
Trinidad & Tobago
Guatemala
Guyana