Wal­ter Al­ibey

T&T foot­ball coach Tom Saint­fi­et is un­der pres­sure as the T&T se­nior foot­ball team must record vic­to­ry against Haiti to­day by two clear goals in its cru­cial Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Con­ca­caf Gold Cup play-off match at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va from 5pm.

Nev­er­the­less, coach Saint­fi­et re­mains op­ti­mistic that his team has the tal­ent and skill to de­liv­er the re­sult that is need­ed to ad­vance to the next qual­i­fy­ing stage from this play-off se­ries.

A sea of red is ex­pect­ed to spur on the team un­der the Bel­gian coach as it go in search of a vic­to­ry by two clear goals if T&T is to ad­vance as the top team from the three-team se­ries.

The team trained on Fri­day and the play­ers took the field again yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo to fine tune.

On Fri­day night the Haitians gave the home team a life-line by beat­ing Suri­name 4-2 at the Cou­va venue, a re­sult that came two days af­ter the Suri­namese shocked Saint­fi­et's men with a 2-1 vic­to­ry in ex­tra-time.

Ac­cord­ing to Saint­fi­et yes­ter­day, "At the mo­ment we know that a 2-0 or a 3-1 re­sult will get us through. It will be a dif­fi­cult task against a good Hait­ian team but not an im­pos­si­ble one for us. They are ranked 59th in the world which is high­er than us. We need every­one to sup­port the team to­mor­row. We need the fans there in big num­bers and push­ing the team on."

In as­sess­ing Haiti's vic­to­ry, Saint­fi­et said, "The two goals from Suri­name last night were good for us. Haiti has a good squad and with some young play­ers al­so. Their play­mak­er Se­bastien Thuriere, the num­ber 15, played in Bangladesh and he is a very good play­er. But we don't want to think too much about the op­po­si­tion and what they can do but we have to be more con­cerned with our game and what we must do to fin­ish on top of the group."

The T&T team has been weak­ened by the loss of four key play­ers to in­jury- strik­er Cor­nell Glen, Ty­rone Charles, Hughton Hec­tor and Car­lyle Mitchell which leaves Saint­fi­et with a headache as to what his start­ing team or the for­ma­tion will look like this af­ter­noon.

He is in­stead com­fort­ed by the fact that the play­ers are aware of the mag­ni­tude of the match, say­ing "The play­ers know what is need­ed. We as a team know what is need­ed and we will go in­to the game giv­ing it our all to ac­com­plish this."

The win­ner of the tour­na­ment will be de­ter­mined by most points, goal dif­fer­encem, most wins, most wins in reg­u­la­tion time, most goals scored in reg­u­la­tion time, goals scored away from a des­ig­nat­ed home game count dou­ble be­tween the teams con­cerned and draw­ing of lots.

T&T last de­feat­ed Haiti in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­counter in 2015 in Fort Laud­erdale,USA 1-0 through Willis Plaza's strike, but the Haitians got the bet­ter of the So­ca War­riors last year, whip­ping them by a sim­i­lar mar­gin (1-0) in a qual­i­fi­er for the 2016 Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cen­te­nario in Pana­ma City.