T&T So­ca War­riors coach An­gus Eve salut­ed the ef­fort of his play­ers de­spite a 3-0 loss to USA in their CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nal first-leg at at Q2 Sta­di­um in Austin, Texas on Thurs­day night.

Fol­low­ing a red card to mid­field­er Noah Pow­der in the 37th minute by Ja­maican ref­er­ee Os­hane Na­tion, T&T man­aged to hold the USA at bay un­til the 82nd minute when Ri­car­do Pepi opened the scor­ing fol­lowed by strikes from An­tonee Robin­son in the 86th, and Gio­van­ni Rey­na in the 89th to give their team a sol­id cush­ion ahead of Mon­day’s sec­ond-leg match in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing af­ter the loss, Eve, cred­it­ed his team for the whole-heart­ed ef­fort dis­played but al­so not­ed that Pow­der’s first-half red card af­fect­ed his game plan.

He said, “To get a red card in the 37th minute and un­til about the 81st minute be­fore we get any of the goals I thought it was a tremen­dous ef­fort by the guys.

Re­flect­ing on the match Eve said, “I thought we were in the game un­til we got the red card, and even when we got the red card we still ac­quit­ted our­selves very well.

Hav­ing left his more po­tent play­ers in Levi Gar­cia, Kaile Au­vray, Nathaniel James, and Re­on Moore on the bench as he fo­cused on a more de­fen­sive ap­proach to the match, Eve said it was all part of the team’s tac­tics with changes ex­pect­ed to be made in the sec­ond half, but those had to be shelved af­ter Pow­der’s ex­pul­sion.

He stat­ed, “It (red card) forced us to change a lot of things that we want­ed to do in the sec­ond half but at the end of the day I think it’s no dis­re­spect for what we did here.”

Ex­pand­ing on what his plans for the match were, the for­mer T&T cap­tain and Un­der-20 World Cup winger, Eve ex­plained, “The red card to­tal­ly changed our ap­proach, In the sec­ond half we want­ed to put on more ex­pres­sive play­ers and more at­tack­ing type play­ers.

“That was our idea to keep the game close first-half and then al­low the Nathaniel James, Re­al Gill, and these types of guys to come on and ex­press them­selves with Levi Gar­cia, and un­for­tu­nate­ly the red card to­tal­ly changed what we want­ed and had to to do, and it was an ex­er­cise in dam­age man­age­ment at the end of the day and cred­it to the guys. You know 85 or maybe a lit­tle bit more per­cent of our guys are not in sea­son. They are not play­ing any foot­ball so I thought the ef­fort was tremen­dous.”

Speak­ing on his plans for AEK Athens dan­ger­man Gar­cia who missed T&T’s four CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League Group A match­es due to in­jury was missed al­most a month of com­pe­ti­tion for club and coun­try, Eve said, “Levi had had a very tough time of it re­cent­ly.”

The T&T coach added, “If you re­mem­ber he was out for a cou­ple of months, and he on­ly played like three games in this past week go­ing up to Sun­day. So, we and the peo­ple at his club de­cid­ed to play him for 30 months and that was the idea, and maybe go­ing two up front was the idea to do in the sec­ond half, but un­for­tu­nate­ly the red card, you know it to­tal­ly changed the plans but we still had him on the pitch and you saw glimpses of what he can bring if he had a lit­tle more help go­ing for­ward.”

Look­ing ahead to the re­turn-leg match at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo where the team will need to win by four clear goals to ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals, Eve said he will be play­ing to win.

“We want to win, we want to go out on a pos­i­tive if we have to, and we want to go and try to win the game, and give our­selves a chance be­cause as I said this is first-half, and the oth­er part of it (in Trinidad) will be sec­ond-half, and once we can give our­selves a fight­ing chance and go out there and try and play a lit­tle bit more ex­pan­sive foot­ball be­cause we will be home.”

He said, “Hope­ful­ly, the crowd will come out and hope­ful­ly they would see what the boys did, and I don’t think there’s any shame in what hap­pened against the type of op­po­si­tion we played and hav­ing to deal with some, you know ques­tion­able calls.”

He point­ed out, “There was a penal­ty call that wasn’t a penal­ty, and there was a red card that I think was high­ly dis­put­ed by me be­cause I thought that Pow­der ac­tu­al­ly won the ball in­stead of a foul, but you know, that’s how it goes some­times in the game, and we have to roll with the punch­es.”

Eve, T&T’s most-capped play­er with 117 ap­pear­ances at se­nior lev­el said, “It was al­ways go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult task, and los­ing a play­er in the 37th minute and have to play that long pe­ri­od of time down a man, against op­po­si­tion like this. So for me, I think it was a great per­for­mance by the play­ers and I think un­for­tu­nate­ly it’s two de­flect­ed goals that we get. Den­zil (Smith) was ex­cel­lent and you saw young Ray­mond (An­dre), so there are so many pos­i­tives for me to take out of this game be­cause we are see­ing a lot of play­ers who could stand up to play­ers who are play­ing at that high lev­el in the US, and as I said again our play­ers are not ac­tu­al­ly in sea­son, so I thought it was tremen­dous.”

Mean­while, Noah Pow­der is not in the Squad for Mon­day’s match due to the red card and Ne­veal Hack­shaw is al­so out on two yel­low cards.

Com­ing in­to the 23-man Squad are Du­ane Muck­ette and Kevon God­dard while goal­keep­er Jabari St Hillaire comes in for Rushon Sandy.

T&T reached the quar­ter­fi­nals hav­ing fin­ished sec­ond in the six-team Group A qual­i­fiers with nine points, with a 5-3 loss to Cu­ra­cao in their fi­nal match on Oc­to­ber 17, their on­ly blem­ish.

Pana­ma al­so won its CNL match for the sec­ond straight time in Cos­ta Ri­ca with a 3-0 vic­to­ry in their quar­ter­fi­nal first leg at the Es­ta­dio Sapris­sa in San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca, and will host the sec­ond-leg match on Mon­day, No­vem­ber 22 from 10 pm at the Es­ta­dio Rom­mel Fer­nan­dez, Pana­ma City

In the two oth­er CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nals, Cana­da faced Ja­maica, and Mex­i­co bat­tled Hon­duras on Fri­day night with their sec­ond-leg match­es card­ed for Tues­day, No­vem­ber 21.

At the end of the four home-and-away se­ries, the four win­ners will not on­ly ad­vance to the Na­tions League fi­nal four in March next year but al­so will clinch their spots in next sum­mer’s Co­pa Amer­i­ca, the em­i­nent South Amer­i­can com­pe­ti­tion, which will be held at venues in the USA.

The four los­ing quar­ter­fi­nal­ists will still have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for Co­pa Amer­i­ca 2024 via a sin­gle-match di­rect elim­i­na­tion play-in, where they will play for the two re­main­ing slots award­ed to CON­CA­CAF na­tions for the Co­pa Amer­i­ca which will fea­ture 10 CON­MEBOL na­tions and six CON­CA­CAF na­tions.