Soca Warriors at home for play-in second-leg

Senior Multimedia Reporter

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The Trinidad and Tobago Soca Warriors will play away to Antigua and Barbuda in their Concacaf Gold Cup play-in home-and-away series first-leg match.

The first-leg encounter will take place at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in North Sound, Antigua, on November 12, from 7 pm, before the Soca Warriors host the second leg at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo on November 16, from 8 pm.

In the other play-in series involving League A and League C teams, Aruba hosts Martinique on November 12; Saint Martin is at home to El Salvador on November 13; and Montserrat is also at home to Nicaragua on November 13.

Martinique will then host Aruba on November 16, while El Salvador and Nicaragua are at home to Saint Martin and Montserrat, respectively, on November 17.

The match-up for the under-fire T&T coach Derek King, the match-up against Antigua and Barbuda, is a good one on paper, as the Soca Warriors, who are winless in their last 12 matches, enjoy a huge advantage in head-to-head meetings with ten wins and two defeats in their 12 matches, having scored 39 goals to 12 conceded and will be confident of getting past their Caribbean rivals.

The last meeting between T&T and Antigua and Barbuda came in 2014 in the Caribbean Cup second round qualifiers, in which T&T won 1-0 thanks to a Kevin Molino strike, with Antigua and Barbuda’s last win coming two years earlier, 2-0, also in the Caribbean Cup.

The biggest win for T&T in the clash with Antigua and Barbuda was an 11-1 drubbing back in November 1972 in Concacaf Championship Qualification, while Antigua and Barbuda’s largest win over T&T was a 2-0 triumph in Gold Cup qualification in 2013.

T&T was confined to the Concacaf Gold Cup play-in series after ending second from the bottom in their six-team Concacaf Nations League League A Group A pool with one point from four matches, one more than Nicaragua.

Curacao, under the guidance of former Holland coach Dick Advocaat, topped the group with ten points to advance to the CNL League A quarterfinal as group winners and will face

Panama in the CNL Nations League quarterfinal with Canada meeting Guatemala; the USA facing Haiti and Mexico against Jamaica in the other match-ups.

This is after Guatemala topped Group B ahead of fellow quarterfinalists’ Jamaica on goal difference, after both teams ended with seven points.

Suriname also ended its campaign with seven points in the third spot, followed by Martinique and El Salvador, both with four points, and demoted to League B for the 2027 season, along with T&T and Nicaragua.

At the end of the four home-and-away play-in series between League A and League C teams, the four winners will qualify for the Gold Cup prelims.

For the CNL League A quarterfinals, the four winners will advance directly to the Gold Cup group stage, while the four losing quarterfinalists head to the March 2027 preliminaries.

They will be joined by the teams that finish third and fourth in their respective League A group stage (Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Suriname, and Honduras), while four group winners from League B will qualify straight to the Gold Cup, while the top two second-place finishers across the groups advance directly to the Gold Cup prelims, which takes place in March 2027 and will feature 14 teams competing in two-legged playoffs to secure the remaining seven berths in the Gold Cup main tournament.