There will be no ex­cus­es on Fri­day.

T&T’s So­ca War­riors coach Dwight Yorke gave this as­sur­ance when his charges take on Cu­ba in the first of two CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup qual­i­fy­ing match­es, start­ing on Fri­day at 4 pm in Cu­ba. The teams will then re­new their ri­val­ry at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, on March 25 for the right to qual­i­fy for this year’s CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup to be held in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da be­tween June 14 and Ju­ly 6.

Yorke as­sured there would be no ex­cus­es, al­though his squad was slashed by three key play­ers mere days be­fore the open­ing en­counter. At a vir­tu­al press brief­ing yes­ter­day, Yorke re­vealed that speedy Spar­tak Moscow T&T sign­ing Levi Gar­cia was ruled out due to in­jury, De­fence Force mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no is un­avail­able and de­fend­er Ja­mal Jack, who plays for KFK Kopavogur in Ice­land, did not get his visa in time for the match.

“It’s a bit of a mishap un­for­tu­nate­ly for Ja­mal and us be­cause we see him as a key mem­ber of the team, but un­for­tu­nate­ly for what­ev­er rea­son, his pass­port is not here in time. Levi Gar­cia, that’s a huge blow as we all know how im­por­tant Levi is to this team as well,” Yorke said.

“We’ve got in­for­ma­tion from their side and their doc­tors and med­ical peo­ple that he sus­tained a slight in­jury which again we had our med­ical peo­ple checked and that seems to be the case. So, it’s un­for­tu­nate that he is not here with us ei­ther. And then we have Moli­no with un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances. Don’t re­al­ly want to com­ment too much more on that, but those are the three play­ers who are not with us.”

With the omis­sion of the three play­ers, Yorke has been left with a bare 23 play­ers, whom he said are well ca­pa­ble of get­ting the re­sult against the Cubans. The T&T team last got a win and a draw against the Cubans for the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League un­der then-coach Derek King who took over as in­ter­im coach for An­gus Eve.

Yorke told the me­dia the loss of the three play­ers would open doors for oth­er play­ers to step up, not­ing that his team needs to be com­pet­i­tive to not get a re­sult.

“We’ve got to go in and com­pete; it’s as sim­ple as that. If we don’t go in and com­pete in every as­pect of the game, then we’re go­ing to make the game ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult. It’s al­ready a dif­fi­cult game as it is on their home turf. The ini­tia­tive is in their sta­di­um to come at us, so we’ve got to be re­silient, we’ve got to be de­ter­mined, we have to have the right at­ti­tude, the right mind­set, and of course, we have to have the right struc­ture and bal­ance on the team. All these things are re­quired if you are to go in­to some­one’s back­yard and get a re­sult.”

Ac­cord­ing to Yorke, “We know the chal­lenges, we know the pitch­es, we know the cir­cum­stances in Cu­ba, and we know that we’re away from home, so it’s al­ways go­ing to be dif­fi­cult. The play­ers are ful­ly aware of that; some of them have had the ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing there be­fore, and some have not been there be­fore, so with all of that, there won’t be any ex­cus­es. There won’t be any ex­cus­es from our end in terms of how we ap­proach the game, so if we can match them in those de­part­ments in terms of abil­i­ty, what my play­ers are ca­pa­ble of do­ing and what I’ve seen over the last few months of work­ing along­side them. We just have to show dis­ci­pline in cer­tain ar­eas of the pitch, and if we can do that, I think we will set our­selves up re­al­ly well,” Yorke ex­plained.

He not­ed fur­ther, “There’s no doubt these three play­ers are huge play­ers go­ing for­ward, but they’re not here, and we have to deal with that; it’s just part and par­cel of the game. We ex­pect play­ers to stand up and be count­ed in these cir­cum­stances when play­ers are out due to in­juries, as we’ve seen with Levi.”

“Play­ers have to stand up, so when some­one is out, it opens doors for oth­er play­ers to step in, so I’m ex­pect­ing play­ers like Jo­evin Jones, as a se­nior play­er, to lead the team with his ex­pe­ri­ence, his clev­er­ness, and his in­tel­li­gence as a play­er, and we’ve got his broth­er in there as well. We al­so have some young play­ers that T&T haven’t seen play, but over­all I am very hap­py with the squad we have to com­pete against Cu­ba, and I strong­ly be­lieve that my squad and the play­ers who are go­ing to be on dis­play are not on­ly go­ing to bring suc­cess to our team but al­so show the ex­pe­ri­ence that we have among our group as well.”

On March 10 last year, the two teams played to a 2-2 tie in San­ti­a­go, Cu­ba, be­fore a 3-1 vic­to­ry at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um on March 14 that earned the So­ca War­riors a record of 13 wins, nine loss­es and five drawn ac­counts in a to­tal of 27 match­es.

Yorke told the me­dia that while the Cubans have a strong team, he is con­fi­dent they can pre­vail over them.

“Cu­ba has got some good play­ers, and there are no two ways about that. They’re like­ly to cause us some prob­lems, but noth­ing too ma­jor to be con­cerned about. We will just have to stick to our game plan. We know that Cu­ba is go­ing to throw every­thing at us be­cause we’re away from home; that’s them try­ing to win the win in their back­yard. So, we’ve got to make sure from a men­tal stand­point to be re­silient, cer­tain­ly in the first 20-25 min­utes, al­though there are pe­ri­ods that will swing in our favour, and we hope that when those mo­ments turn in our favour, we cap­i­talise.”

“We’re go­ing to re­spect Cu­ba, they’re a very good team, they’ve got the threat, cer­tain­ly in the at­tack­ing ar­eas but de­fen­sive­ly we feel that there may be gaps in there that we can ex­ploit, but over­all, we’ve got to play a re­al­ly sol­id game, a dis­ci­plined game, a pa­tient one in be­tween, but hope­ful­ly with the abil­i­ty we have go­ing for­ward, we can ex­pose them in their de­fence.”

“We’ve got to play a lit­tle bit strate­gi­cal­ly, a lit­tle bit pa­tient­ly, and not as ex­cit­ing­ly as some peo­ple ex­pect it to be be­cause we have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion we’re play­ing away from home, al­though we went in there and got a draw. We’ve just got to play in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball the way it is sup­posed to be played,” Yorke con­clud­ed.