Derby County winger Nathaniel Mendez-Laing has received a call-up to the Guatemala international squad for their upcoming 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup campaign.
Mendez-Laing, 31, is set to represent Guatemala once he has collected his passport and ID upon arrival in the country over the weekend. Once this process has been completed, he is expected to be available for selection.
He qualifies to play for Guatemala through his grandmother and also his mother, who were both born in the Central American country.
The Gold Cup is the international men's football championship of the North, Central American and Caribbean region, hosted by CONCACAF, and the 2023 tournament will be hosted in the United States of America and Canada.
Guatemala are in Group D of the competition alongside joint-hosts Canada, plus Cuba and one of Curacao, Saint Kitts and Nevis, French Guiana or Sint Maarten from the preliminary round.
They will face Cuba first up on 27th June in Fort Lauderdale, followed by Canada on 1st July in Houston and then the winners of the preliminary round in New Jersey on 4th July. Should Guatemala progress to the knock-out stages, the Quarter Finals will take place on 8th/9th July, followed by the Semi-Finals on 12th July and the Final on 16th July.
Mendez-Laing, who made 51 appearances for Derby in the 2022/23 season and scored eight times, will miss the start of pre-season training with Paul Warne’s squad but he will join up with the Rams’ squad once his international commitments have concluded.
The most recent player from Derby to feature in the Gold Cup was winger Simon Dawkins in the summer of 2015 with Jamaica.
