The climb of T&T’s football back to the top of the Caribbean region has begun in earnest.
Coach Angus Eve is hoping to build on the team’s recent defeat of regional giant, Jamaica, who is ranked 64th on the FIFA ranking compared to T&T’s 104th, when they take on the Bahamas on Friday in Nassau and then Nicaragua on Monday at the Dwight Yorke Stadium in Bacolet, Tobago, as the CONCACAF Nations League nears its end.
The end result will be a promotion for the team that wins Group C, as well as automatic qualification for the CONCACAF Gold Cup in the United States next year.
At a virtual press briefing Tuesday, Eve admitted that it has been a difficult road for him and his players who have been challenged by injuries and other personal issues, but he noted at the team’s live-in camp in Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale that his players are focused on the task ahead.
“It is well documented now that there have been a lot of late pull-outs due to injuries, no fault of the players. Some players also have personal issues, but the camp has been going really well and the players here are firmly focused on the goal and objective, which is to take T&T football back to the Gold Cup proper and hopefully, to put us in a better place in the ‘A’ section of the Nations League, so we can have better opposition and better competition to play against in the future and be able to expose our players to that high level of football,” Eve said.
On Friday, the Bahamians will include five players that didn’t play in the first match against T&T which they lost 1-0 at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo, Port-of-Spain.
Eve said: “They basically took us out of the World Cup and then we beat them 1-0 at home. They are a very plucky group, they have a lot of pride in their country, so they fight a lot. They brought in five new players that we can see from the roster they didn’t have before, so we are doing our due diligence on them just as they are doing on us.”
He believes the key to a successful result against them will be to be consistent in their play, professional in their play, not to take anybody lightly, and treat the games as two finals.
“That’s what we’re going to put into the minds of the players,” Eve said.
The Soca Warriors were without midfielder Kevin Molino and speedy striker Levi Garcia for the Jamaica encounters, which the Warriors won 1-0 in the first match before playing to a goalless tie in the second. In their absence, Eve has called up Marsaskala FC striker Rundell Winchester, who is said to have the ability to operate as a flanker and a number nine as well as Halifax Wanderer’s midfielder Andre Rampersad, who Eve described as a modern-day midfielder, possessing the ability of a number eight, who could play box-to-box, has a good engine and is very decent on the ball.
Eve admitted that both players were constantly monitored while they were with their respective teams.
Eve said with players possessing different abilities, his team will be built based on the strengths of the players.
“We played in Jamaica without these guys and as I said, we have full faith in all of the players we have on the roster. Molino is a different type of player than the ones we have and Levi is a different type of player than we have, so the player that we have will determine how the team plays.
“I can’t have a philosophy without having the type of players that I would want to have in a particular team so we would play to the strength of the players that we have.”
Eve, a former national midfielder himself, said from the Jamaican matches, he was pleased with the performances of the all-local players which have now raised the level his team will need to play at now.
T&T is second in Group C, having lost to the Nicaraguans in their first game of the League 2-0 in Managua in June, however, Eve said his team will be different to the one that represented us then.
