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Guyana forward Tyrel Ondaan (right) presses Trinidad and Tobago defender Aubrey David during an exhibition match at the Hasely Crawford Stadium on 29 March 2022. (Copyright Daniel Prentice/ Wired868)
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T&T Soca Warriors and coach Angus Eve face a possible second-round winner-take-all clash with the Guyana “Golden Jaguars’ coach by former T&T coach Jamaal Shabazz for a place in the main draw of the 2023 Concacaf Gold Cup, which will also offer six places to the Copa America.

This was determined following Concacaf’s release of the details regarding the 2023 Gold Cup draw, including the event’s hosts, pots, and seeded nations.

The live draw, scheduled to take place on April 14, 2023, at SoFi Stadium, in Inglewood, California, will start at noon PT/local time (3:00 pm ET) and will be hosted by TUDN sportscaster Valeria Marin, Fox Sports Lead Soccer Analyst and US Men’s National Team legend Alexi Lalas and ESPN play-by-play commentator Fernando Palomo.

Concacaf President and FIFA Vice President, Victor Montagliani, will participate in the event, alongside the teams’ head coaches and important guests. All will be available for interviews at the event’s arrival red carpet and post-draw mixed zone.

The 17th edition of the Gold Cup is scheduled to take place between June 16 - July 16, 2023, with the Final at SoFi Stadium, on Sunday, July 16, which will crown Concacaf’s best men’s national team and will conclude two months of elite football in the region that also include the 2023 Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League Final and 2022/23 Concacaf Nations League Finals.

But before the Soca Warriors can step foot on the Concacaf Gold Cup group stage they will have to get through two rounds of preliminary qualification matches after failing to qualify directly from their four-team Concacaf Nations League B Group C round-robin home-and-away series.

T&T went into its final match at the Dwight Yorke Stadium, Bacolet, Tobago needing a win against group leaders Nicaragua to secure the top spot in the group, and automatic qualification to the Gold Cup.

However, Eve’s men could only muster a 1-1 draw to end with 13 points, one behind Nicaragua to miss out on being among the 12 automatic qualifiers.

Following the conclusion of the second edition of the Concacaf Nations League (CNL) which served as the qualifier for the 2023 Gold Cup, the 12 teams who secured a berth in the 2023 Gold Cup Group Stage, joining Asian Champions and guest nation, Qatar were League A group winners: Canada, Mexico, Panama, and USA along with League A runners-up Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Jamaica along with the League B group winning quartet of Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, and Nicaragua.

The 12 other teams to qualify for the Gold Cup preliminary qualifiers were League A third-place finishers, Curaçao, Grenada, Martinique, and Suriname along with League B second-place finishers French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guyana, and T&T and League C group winners Puerto Rico, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lucia, and Sint Maarten.

And in the 2023 Gold Cup preliminary draw which was carried out using a single-blind system and one pot and based on the Concacaf rankings as of March 31, 2023, the teams participating in the prelims were seeded into a Round One matchup or placed in Pot One, as follows Round One matchups (six highest-ranked teams): T&T (#1), Martinique (#2), Curaçao (#3), French Guiana (#4), Suriname (#5), and Guyana (#6) who will be drawn against one of the teams from Pot One (Six lowest ranked teams) were Guadeloupe, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lucia, Grenada, Puerto Rico, and Sint Maarten.

The draw then determined that the T&T match against one of the teams from Pot One will meet the winner of the Guyana match (#1 vs #6) while #2 meets #5, and #3 comes up against #6 to give the three qualifiers for the 2023 Gold Cup Group Stage Draw which will be carried out using a double-blind system, involving eight pots.

T&T has qualified for the Gold Cup main draw 11 out 16 times with its best showing coming in 2000 under coach Bertille St Clair when they were edged out by Canada 1-0 in their semifinal while they topped their main draw group comprising Mexico, Cuba and Guatemala in 2015 under Stephen Hart before losing 6-5 on penalty-kicks to Panama in the quarterfinals after a 1-1 draw.

T&T was also beaten 1-0 by Mexico in the quarterfinals in 2013, the only other time they have managed to qualify out of their round-robin pool.

Two years ago, with Eve at the helm for just under a month, T&T also had to go through a preliminary stage and hammered Montserrat 6-1 before getting the better of French Guiana 8-7 in sudden-death penalty-kicks after a 1-1 draw to reach the main draw where they drew goalless with Mexico, went under to El Salvador 2-0 and drew 1-1 with Guatemala in Group C.