WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Sports Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve has as­sured the pub­lic that it will see a dif­fer­ent per­for­mance from his charges tonight at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo when the So­ca War­riors take on the USA in game two of the quar­ter­fi­nals of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League ‘A’ Di­vi­sion match at 8 pm.

The Amer­i­cans hold a 3-0 ag­gre­gate ad­van­tage af­ter game one in Austin, Texas last Thurs­day, scor­ing three times in the last ten min­utes of the game against a ten-man So­ca War­riors team.

In that game, Eve em­ployed a de­fen­sive strat­e­gy, with strik­er Mal­colm Shaw be­ing the lone at­tack­er in the team, as he sought to get at least a point in the en­counter. How­ev­er, it was a phase that Eve and his troops which com­prised main­ly of young play­ers, had to en­dure, there­by prepar­ing them for a bet­ter per­for­mance in tonight re­turn match.

At a press con­fer­ence at the Sta­di­um yes­ter­day, the War­riors coach, with­out giv­ing away ex­act­ly what his ap­proach would be, said it will be a more pos­i­tive dis­play in front of their home crowd, as they would be com­ing to win the match.

He said, “This is a good lo­ca­tion for us to be in be­cause no­body ex­pect­ed us to be in the quar­ter­fi­nal of the Na­tions League, so we are so ex­cit­ed to be here, we just want to go out and rep­re­sent our coun­try well. We want to project a lot of pride and de­ter­mi­na­tion when we go to these games. These are the games that we want to play, es­pe­cial­ly in the re­build­ing stage where we are at now. We want to ex­pose young play­ers and give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain con­tracts on the out­side, which is our pri­ma­ry goal as we con­tin­ue to de­vel­op Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball.”

He added, “Usu­al­ly, when you’re away from home, you tend to play in a cer­tain man­ner and when you’re at home, you play in a dif­fer­ent man­ner, so in the game to­day, you will see what we want to do. We will be a bit more pos­i­tive, most def­i­nite­ly, be­cause we want to win the game, so we will do every­thing in our pow­er to play the way we want to play to ac­tu­al­ly get the re­sult in the game.”

“Some­times you have to play bad foot­ball to get re­sults, and when I say bad foot­ball I mean foot­ball that is not beau­ti­ful to the eye, but be­cause we’re in a re­build­ing stage with An­dre Ray­mond and these young guys, the game that we just played it would al­low them to feel a bit more com­fort­able on the park, and feel a bit more com­fort­able in the en­vi­ron­ment, hav­ing played the num­ber one team in the CON­CA­CAF re­gion and the 10th-ranked team in the world. So they now know that they can play and com­pete, so I think we’re go­ing to see a dif­fer­ent game (to­mor­row) to­day,” Eve ex­plained.

Eve was forced to make some changes to his line up with the sus­pend­ed Noah Pow­der and Ne­veal Hack­shaw be­ing re­placed by mid­field­er Du­ane Muck­ette and Kevin God­dard, and goal­keep­er Jabari St Hillaire com­ing in for Rushon Sandy.

Mid­field­er An­dre Ram­per­sad al­so told the me­dia that play­ing away they did not get the re­sults they were hop­ing for but it will be dif­fer­ent play­ing in front of their home fans.

Both the War­riors and the USA teams worked out yes­ter­day at the sta­di­um. Eve’s War­riors will have to beat the USA by four clear goals to qual­i­fy for the Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cup as well as the fi­nal of the Na­tions League. Oth­er­wise, they will progress to the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League Play-In to be de­cid­ed in March next year.