T&T’s se­nior men’s head coach An­gus Eve will have on­ly to­day’s prac­tice ses­sion to work on a game plan for a clash with the Unit­ed States in the re­turn leg of Di­vi­sion A of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nal match at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo to­mor­row at 8 pm.

Fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s 3-0 loss in Austin, Texas, the So­ca War­riors will train at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, at 4.30 pm

Eve, who hailed the team’s per­for­mance af­ter de­fend­er Noah Pow­der was red-card­ed in 37th-minute and kept the USA at bay for 81 min­utes be­fore the first goal was scored, has made three changes to the T&T squad with mid­field­ers Du­ane Muck­ette and Kevon God­dard com­ing in for the sus­pend­ed Pow­der and de­fend­er Ne­veal Hack­shaw who is al­so out on two yel­low cards. Al­so, goal­keep­er Jabari St Hillaire comes back in­to the squad in place of Rushon Sandy.

Eve will fo­cus on strength­en­ing his de­fence since he no longer has the valu­able and ex­pe­ri­enced ser­vices of Pow­der and Hack­shaw which paves the way for the likes of Ross Rus­sell Jr of La Hor­quet­ta Rangers and Jesse Williams, who plays for USL League 1 club Cen­tral Val­ley Fuego.

Mean­while, for­mer T&T for­ward Stern John, this coun­try’s lead­ing goalscor­er in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball said the coun­try’s Men’s team de­serves cred­it for their res­olute dis­play against the Unit­ed States de­spite the 3-0 re­sult.

John, coach of St Lu­cia, saw his team draw 0-0 with St Kitts/Nevis in Con­ca­caf Na­tions League B ac­tion Thurs­day and lat­er watched the T&T match on tele­vi­sion.

John said, “The team de­serves a lot of cred­it for the way they held them­selves to­geth­er for such a long pe­ri­od in the match. To go that dis­tance with ten men for 50-plus min­utes away to a US team dec­o­rat­ed with qual­i­ty play­ers as they pos­sess now was no easy thing to do. That takes a lot more than luck” John told the me­dia.

John made sev­en ap­pear­ances against the US in his 150 match­es at se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el dur­ing which he scored 70 goals for T&T.

“No dis­re­spect to our play­ers. We are grow­ing but when you com­pare the two squads and as­sess the cal­i­bre of clubs the US play­ers are play­ing with and the lev­el of the leagues, and then you watch our ros­ter, you have to ad­mit that it’s go­ing to be a chal­lenge.”

“But I thought we ac­quit­ted our­selves well and had it not been for one bad de­ci­sion by a play­er that forces you to go a man down then we might have been able to grind out a re­sult. And then even with ten men on the park, we didn’t con­cede un­til the 81st.”

“Now we have to keep that same en­er­gy and be­lief when we play them at home. We can­not lose our dis­ci­pline be­cause they will pun­ish you,” John said.

For­mer Na­tion­al team mid­field­er Den­sill Theobald, who had the as­sist on An­gus Eve’s goal in the 2-1 de­feat to the US in a World Cup qual­i­fi­er at the Queen’s Park Oval in 2005, said he was far from up­set on Thurs­day night.

“Hon­est­ly, I slept com­fort­ably af­ter the game, and why? Be­cause I felt the boys gave such a grit­ty per­for­mance. They played with con­vic­tion. That’s what we want ... to see them fight and show that 100 per cent com­mit­ment on the pitch and we saw that from them. It was un­for­tu­nate to con­cede two goals on de­flec­tions but that’s the game some­times.”

“Usu­al­ly af­ter a 3-0 loss, one would tend to be very dis­ap­point­ed and up­set with the man­ner of the per­for­mance but this time it was dif­fer­ent. There was noth­ing to feel ug­ly or shamed about.”

“We al­most com­plet­ed a re­mark­able fight with a re­sult but it was sure­ly go­ing to be hard to hold them off with ten men for that long. Den­zil was ex­cel­lent, An­dre Ray­mond and Shan­non Gomez were so sol­id and An­dre Ram­per­sad was a light for us in the mid­dle with his com­po­sure and fight. Mal­colm Shaw did a hell of a job for us as well. The ef­fort was some­thing we must com­mend,” Theobald said.

“I would even go as far to say that had we pulled off a draw, this would have ranked right up there with the World Cup draw against Swe­den. This is con­sid­er­ing dif­fer­ent fac­tors now in terms of the na­ture of this match and the way the US team is set up as a top-ten na­tion in world foot­ball. And we are still go­ing through a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od in our foot­ball in gen­er­al terms along with the fact that we played with ten men,” Theobald added.

Ear­ly Bird Tick­ets for Mon­day’s match are sold out. Tick­ets now cost $150 (Cov­ered) and $80 (Un­cov­ered). Kids 12 and un­der are free. Tick­ets are avail­able at all Haa­gen-Dazs out­lets, Fan Club Trinci­ty Mall, Fan Zone (Movi­eTowne PoS and Price Plaza), On­line at Eboxtick­ets.com, and the Sta­di­um on Mon­day.