Trinidad and To­ba­go qual­i­fied for the 2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup at a can­ter beat­ing Cu­ba 4-0 at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Tues­day (march 25).

"It's cause for a bit of cel­e­bra­tion we haven't done the dou­ble over Cu­ba for quite some time," se­nior men's head coach Dwight Yorke said af­ter the vic­to­ry. "Go­ing for­ward now, we have qual­i­fied for a ma­jor tour­na­ment like the Gold Cup we have a small mat­ter to deal with St Kitts (and Nevis) on the 6th of June and Cos­ta Ri­ca on the 10th. So we have some work to do."

Yorke's sec­ond com­pet­i­tive out­ing be­gan with the se­nior na­tion­al men in a pret­ty sol­id po­si­tion.

T&T's first win in Cu­ba in 17 years cour­tesy of maid­en goals from Isa­iah Lee and Stef­fen Yeates saw the So­ca War­riors re­turn to the "Home of Foot­ball" with a 2-1 ad­van­tage, and need­ing just a draw to ad­vance to their 18th Con­ca­caf Gold Cup.

Be­fore the match, Yorke said his staff did their best to keep the team fo­cused on the next 90 min­utes, the per­for­mance was ev­i­dence his group got the mes­sage.

The last time the teams met in T&T, the home side brushed the Cubans aside 3-1 to main­tain their Con­ca­caf Na­tion's League A sta­tus. This time around would prove a more com­pre­hen­sive show­ing.

With just one change to his line­up, Kevin Moli­no in with the arm­band for Yeates, Yorke sought a con­trolled ag­gres­sive per­for­mance from his squad, their job was made that much eas­i­er just three min­utes in­to the sec­ond leg.

Ro­mario Tor­res earned a straight red card for a studs-up tack­le on An­dre Ram­per­sad in full view of Mex­i­can ref­er­ee Ce­sar Ramos.

"From a tac­ti­cal point of view we felt that if we be­came re­silient and hard to beat these play­ers would be­come des­per­ate," Yorke point­ed out in the post-match, the boon of an ear­ly red card gave them more op­tions.

"Tac­ti­cal­ly when a team goes down to ten men we tend to make the field re­al­ly big," de­spite mo­ments when the team fell short of that part of the plan he un­der­stood.

"We are a work in progress," Yorke said. "Some of these play­ers have on­ly been here ten days, it's not go­ing to be per­fect, but we con­tin­ue to build."

Yorke's "So­ca War­riors" had a good look in soon af­ter, but Alvin Jones saw his ef­fort from an in­di­rect free-kick saved.

The break­through came in the 22nd minute, just like in San­ti­a­go, Tyrese Spicer proved the cat­a­lyst.

The 2024 MLS Su­per Draft's num­ber one pick pro­vid­ed the sec­ond as­sist of the tie, find­ing Lee with a low cen­tre for his sec­ond goal of the home and away fix­ture.

Lee got his third in­ter­na­tion­al goal in the 37th, a gift re­al­ly, as Cuban cap­tain Yosel Piedra gave it away un­der pres­sure and he scored in­to an open net 2-0 at the half.

In the sec­ond half, the on­slaught con­tin­ued al­most un­abat­ed.

Moli­no ben­e­fit­ted from Spicer's in­dus­try, fol­low­ing up a blocked shot af­ter the Toron­to FC play­er weaved his way through three play­ers to tap in the third and his 24th in­ter­na­tion­al goal in the 51st.

Short­ly af­ter that, with space open­ing up around the area Daniel Phillips saw a dri­ve from dis­tance, crash out off the cross­bar as a Cu­ba held on for dear life.

The younger se­nior men; Re­al Gill, Nathaniel James and Dan­taye Gilbert were in­tro­duced at dif­fer­ent in­ter­vals in the sec­ond half and brought an in­fu­sion of en­er­gy as the game wore on. How­ev­er, the trio couldn't make the best of a pletho­ra of half chances.

That was un­til the 84th when James slot­ted a bril­liant through pass from Daniel Phillips to make it 4-0.

The 6-1 ag­gre­gate win was a state­ment from a young team and a rel­a­tive­ly young head coach.

For his part, Yorke said he was pleased with his team's ap­pli­ca­tion to the task, keep­ing the clean sheet and scor­ing and win­ning with rel­a­tive ease.

He point­ed to slop­pi­ness in pos­ses­sion as one of the key ar­eas to ad­dress on the train­ing pitch but chose not to be too crit­i­cal in the af­ter­glow of a sol­id show­ing.

Yorke again re­newed his call for a na­tion­al move­ment be­hind the team.

"I think sup­port is cru­cial for us in terms of get­ting there."

Yorke added: "Foot­ball is the num­ber one sport in the world and we want T&T foot­ball to be the num­ber one sport in this coun­try and that is part of my job.

"We can't do it on our own, tremen­dous turnout (tonight) and long may it con­tin­ue."

T&T's pro­gres­sion to the 2025 Con­ca­caf Gold Cup is the first ma­jor suc­cess of the Dwight Yorke era and served as a rein­tro­duc­tion to the lat­est 2006 World Cup hero to hold the reins of the se­nior men's na­tion­al team in pur­suit of a re­turn to the qua­dren­ni­al.

Yes­ter­day's re­sults

T&T 4 (Isa­iah Lee 22nd, 37th, Kevin Moli­no 51st, Nathaniel James 84th) vs Cu­ba 0