CONCACAF Gold Cup Prelims: Everything to play for as Golden Jags face Guadeloupe today

Guyana’s senior men’s national football team, the Golden Jaguars, will today lock horns with Guadeloupe’s Les Gwada Boys for a chance to compete in their second-ever CONCACAF Gold Cup group stage.
Following a thrilling victory over Grenada on Saturday last, the Golden Jags are now one win away from sealing a spot in Group D of the Gold Cup’s main draw.
Without a doubt, a victory today for the national team would mean a lot to the players and the nation, as described by the team’s Assistant Coach, Wayne Dover after their opening win against the Spice Boys.

Dover reasoned, “Well, I think this means a lot for the group and the country by extension, because we have been knocking on the door for the last two years to get into the final stage of the Gold Cup and we take one step closer. We gotta ensure we keep our foot on the ground; ensure we keep the guys them on earth so that we could go back to the second game, get a victory and go through to the second stage of the CONCACAF Gold Cup.”
Guadeloupe, in their first qualifier match last Friday, defeated Antigua and Barbuda 4-0. While the Gwada Boys were intended to face Trinidad and Tobago in that match, the twin-island republic were promoted to the main draw after Nicaragua were disqualified for fielding an ineligible player during the Nations League.
Probed about how he saw their opponents and today’s must-win game against Guadeloupe, Dover shared that he expected a tough game.
Dover said, “The fact that Trinidad is not in this phase of the tournament and Guadeloupe prevailed over Antigua, it’s not going to be an easy game, because we as a Caribbean nation played Guadeloupe before and had some very serious battle over two legs of football.

“So, we’re expecting a tough game, but we’ll do our homework and ensure that we come out to fight again tonight and win that game.”
The Assistant Coach went on to expound on the areas the Golden Jaguars would have been focusing on: “No doubt, we want to improve on our goal scoring, because I think that is something that plagued us for the last couple of games, we haven’t scored a lot of goals and tonight (Saturday) we had a few chances that we did not convert and you know, the next couple of days we’ll try to see how best we could visit our finishing drills so that we can improve on our goal scoring going forward.”
If Guyana emerge successful this evening, they will be drawn into Group D of the Gold Cup group stage, alongside Canada, Guatemala, and Cuba. The national team would begin the group stage play against Nations League Play-offs runners-up Canada on Tuesday, June 27 at the BMO Field in Toronto. Next, they would oppose Cuba on Saturday, July 1, at the Shell Energy Stadium in Texas after which they would take on Guatemala on Tuesday, July 4 at the Red Bull Arena in New Jersey.
Guyana would need a top-two finish in that Group in order to move on to the Gold Cup quarter-finals for the first time in the team’s history.
Kick-off time for the must-win game against Guadeloupe is set for 16:30h this afternoon. (Jemima Holmes)