The U.S. Men’s National Team will open its busy 2021 schedule with a friendly against a familiar Concacaf foe.
U.S. Soccer announced Tuesday that the USMNT will host Trinidad & Tobago on January 31st at Orlando City’s Exploria Stadium. The match will be played in front of 4,500 fans and can be watched live on Fox Sports 1, UniMas and TUDN.
“It’s nice after an intensive training camp to get to compete,” USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter said. “The guys have been working hard and we welcome the opportunity to play against a regional rival like Trinidad and Tobago.”
It will be the USMNT’s first match of a loaded schedule this calendar year which also features the Concacaf Nations League Final Four (June), Concacaf Gold Cup (July), and 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifying, which is slated to begin in September.
The USMNT is currently continuing its traditional January camp in Bradenton, Florida, which has seen mainly MLS-based players included due to European schedules in full swing.
It will be the 27th all-time meeting between the USMNT and Trinidad & Tobago, and the first since a 6-0 victory by the Americans at the 2019 Concacaf Gold Cup. On that day, Gyasi Zardes and Aaron Long each recorded braces while Christian Pulisic and Paul Arriola also got on the scoresheet.
This is slightly off topic but…the first time I ever went to a USMNT match was when we played T&T in a WCQ in Richmond VA in 1996. Goals from Dooley and Wynalda — we won 2-0. It was also the national team debut of Eddie Pope. Somehow my buddy and I ended up sitting in the T&T section. We had a blast.
Its good they found someone BUT TnT has not been practicing and are missing people. If we beat them up, what will that prove? GB likes to run up his stats against minnows
Don nelson Conspiracy theory much? Could it maybe be Covid which limited our selection of choices, hmmm. I know we were originally slated to Play Serbia.
Hopefully we get a repeat of the Gold Cup and not the 2017 WCQ game. Granted Omar isn’t in the USMNT Camp, but there are still plenty of players who are likely options to play Omar’s roll, and gift T&T a win.
Would have preferred Serbia or even Canada….but at least there will be a game.
we live in strange times but it’s a tad weird to start a camp building to a game and not have the fixture finalized. i was going to ask the other day because serbia hadn’t been officially announced even after the team was selected and off to camp.
I was thinking the same thing
What happened to Serbia?
Serbia was domestic under 21’s team and USSF said; “NO!” for that price.
US is mostly domestic U23s and they said no for that price. =p
fwiw this will not be an international date and several TnT guys play abroad in europe and even asia so i will be curious what we get beyond MLS/USL/TT pro (“domestic”). maybe the idea is TnT is odds on to emerge from their group and go into the qualifying second round. maybe they forgot how GC went.
I think the idea was they were available on short notice, much like El Salvador. Had to be a country that didn’t have a problem with its citizens visiting Florida in the middle of Covid.