By Rawle Toney in New York (compliments of Let’s Bet Sports)

IN 48 hours Guyana’s senior Men’s National team, Golden Jaguars, will embark on their journey of competing in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, opening up the confederation’s flagship tournament against defending champions USA, at Allianz Field, in Minnesota.

Guyana are drawn in Group D of the tournament alongside USA, Panama and Trinidad & Tobago. While the other teams are no strangers to the competition, for the Golden Jaguars, it will be their first time participating.

Following their game one June 18 against the USA, Guyana will travel to Cleveland where they will take on Panama at the FirstEnergy Stadium and will later tackle Regional rivals Trinidad & Tobago on June 26, in Kansas City at the Children’s Mercy Park. It was a long time coming for Guyana, given the fact that the Golden Jaguars, under coach Wayne Dover and Jamaal Shabazz, came close several times, to qualifying for the Gold Cup, as recently as the last tournament when their 4-2 heartbreaking defeat to Jamaica at home (Leonora) proved to be the game that kept them away.

In the lead-up to this historic clash against USA, Guyana faced fellow Gold Cup debutants Bermuda and fell 0-1 then faced Haiti in Costa Rica and lost 1-3..

As a matter of fact, in their last 10 matches played, dating back to 2017, Golden Jaguars were victorious three times and have one draw (1-1) which came against Trinidad & Tobago. The USA, since their 2-1 loss to Soca Warriors in 2017 which kept them out of the last FIFA World Cup, they featured 18 times in international competition, winning six, drawing two, picking up six losses, including their recent back-to-back defeat against Venezuela (3-0) and Jamaica (1-0).

Panama, on the other hand, have not won any of their 15 outings since beating Trinidad &Tobago 1-0 in a friendly in 2018.

The Panamanians made their maiden qualification for the FIFA World Cup last year but didn’t win any of the three games played against Belgium (3-0), England (6-1) and Tunisia (2-1). They played to a 2-2 draw against South Korea and 1-1 against Brazil this year.

For Trinidad and Tobago, since being responsible for the Red, White and Blue not reaching the World Cup,, played nine times over the past year but only tasted victory once (2-1), against United Arab Emirates).

Guyana arrived in Minneapolis over the weekend, as coach Michael Johnson, according to a release from the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) said, “We don’t have the big names like the Christian Pulisic worth $52M but we have got a real, tightly knit group together and I think that you will always go further together.”

“The team can’t do it on their own. We need the fans to get behind us. We need the fans as an extra voice; we need the fans sending positive messages whether it’s via social media, the radio or newspapers. You need to know that you are not out there on your own, because we are massively the underdogs. But it gives you great pride, it gives you great resilience when you know you are fighting for a cause and for your fans whom we need to stand united behind the team and get us over this line.“

According to Johnson, “Nobody has given us a chance of scoring a goal or winning a game. I’ve heard that you would not get a point. I’ve heard some of the media talking that it’s a great chance for USA to kick-start their bad run of form, but we are 100% positive in the way we would be approaching our matches.”