Gold Cup Qualifiers 2025: Golden Jaguars boast ‘mixture of experience and youth’

Guyana’s senior men’s national football team, the Golden Jaguars, will this Friday embark on the first of two games that would lead to securing a spot in the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Playing their home fixture against Guatemala in Barbados, the Golden Jaguars jetted off to the Land of the Flying Fish last Sunday, and got their preparation going the following day.
Interim Head Coach Wayne Dover, noting that the 24-man squad comprises a mixture of experience and youth, and that spirits are high in the camp, has said, “The team that we selected for the matchup against Guatemala has been composed with experience and youths, and we have spent time plays and performances. Hence, we arrived with this squad for these two games to come.”
Dover added, “Well, the team spirit is high. The guys are very confident in themselves. We’re trying to motivate them also to be as confident as they should be, and fear no one. We all know that the field is flat, the ball is round, it’s 11 vs 11, and that gives us a good chance to win football games like any other country.”

As the Golden Jaguars seek to use this week to again acquaint themselves with the conditions that obtain in Barbados, Dover divulged what some of their training sessions would entail.
“We want to concentrate every day on defensive organization, to stop the flow of goals being scored against us; and in doing so, we’ll want to build the confidence in the players by informing them how good they are, and for them to believe in themselves and give themselves a good chance to get these results that is important for the forward movements of the team,” he explained.
He also highlighted improving goal-scoring opportunities among a few necessities for obtaining a positive result when he
opined, “A few of the key areas is for us to get closer to the ball once we’re out of possession. Stay compact, play collective as a team, defend collective as a team, win our one-on-one battles; and in doing so, in the transition, given the fact that we’re a team, we play quickly to break their line of press, get behind them to score our chances, and I hope that we can improve on our goalscoring,” he detailed.
“We saw, the last time when we played them, we create tons of chances and only take one. This time around, we also spent time working on our finishing, so that when we create those chances, we can convert and come out with a positive result,” he said.
The Golden Jaguars will take on Guatemala on Friday from 21:00hrs, after which they will move to Guatemala to take on the hosts on Tuesday, March 25.
The squad reads: Goalkeepers: Quillan Roberts, Kai McKenzie-Lyle and Akel Clarke; Defenders: Liam Gordon, Romaine Brackenridge, Leo Lovell, Jalen Jones, Colin Nelson, Reiss Greenidge, Jeremy Garrett and Curtez Kellman; Midfielders: Elliot Bonds, Nathan Moriah-Welch, Maliq Cadogan, Stephen Duke-McKenna, Nathan Ferguson and Daniel Wilson; and Forwards: Omari Glasgow, Kelsey Benjamin, Osaze De Rosario, Enoch George, Liam Butts, Morgan Ferrier and Isaiah Jones.