Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve has an­nounced a 23-man team that will chal­lenge Cana­da in the CON­CA­CAF Play-In in Frisco, Texas, USA on March 24 for the right to ce­ment a place in the Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cup in June, an ex­pe­ri­ence he feels will im­pact T&T's foot­ball great­ly.

The team sees the re­turn of AEK Athens's speedy strik­er Levi Gar­cia, as well as Ju­dah Gar­cia, who has been un­avail­able due to in­juries.

Eve said at a press con­fer­ence to an­nounce the team at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day, that he is very op­ti­mistic Gar­cia (Levi), who scored a won­der goal for his team at the week­end, could re­main fit and ready to rep­re­sent his coun­try for the com­ing match.

Eve's se­lec­tion process was ham­pered by in­juries to a few key play­ers such as Ajani For­tune, who has been strug­gling with a few nig­gling in­juries, while al­so fight­ing for a place on his team At­lanta Unit­ed, Mi­a­mi FC's Ryan Telfer who has a her­nia in­jury that has put him out of foot­ball for three weeks, and de­fend­er Ka­reem Moses (FF Jaro, Fin­land) had an op­er­a­tion on his knee about a week ago.

Both the in­clu­sion of Levi and Ju­dah ap­pears to be the so­lu­tion to the strik­ing prob­lem Eve said he had been grap­pling with. He said ex­pects Gar­cia (Ju­dah) to score goals from the mid­field as he has done in the past.

Eve con­sid­ered one of the coun­try's most suc­cess­ful coach­es in re­cent times, told the me­dia he want­ed to pick play­ers who can play mul­ti­ple po­si­tions in the event they need to make changes dur­ing the match, which ac­cord­ing to Eve, holds tremen­dous ben­e­fit to the coun­try.

"We know how im­por­tant the game is, the staff and the play­ers know how im­por­tant the game is to us. This would be one of the most pres­ti­gious tour­na­ments if we could go on and get the vic­to­ry to go on to play against the cal­i­bre of play­ers in that tour­na­ment. It would put us on a dif­fer­ent lev­el and on a dif­fer­ent map, even if the peo­ple com­ing to see dif­fer­ent play­ers, they would still see us, and that would open up a lot of doors for our play­ers and our foot­ball, and go one step fur­ther to where we want T&T foot­ball to be again, which is to be com­pet­ing at the high­est lev­el," Eve ex­plained.

"We need to de­fend well, it will be a David against Go­liath match when you look at the play­ers they have - Cyle Lar­in up front, David Ju­nior Hoi­lett up front, Al­fon­so Davies on the left, and Tajon Buchanan on the right. You see these play­ers play­ing at top Leagues.

"So it's top play­ers that they have and we have to be as­tute de­fen­sive­ly but al­so of­fen­sive­ly we have to ex­press our­selves so that we can come away with a vic­to­ry," Eve said.

Mean­while, Eve has sought the ad­vice of for­mer na­tion­al coach Ever­ald 'Gal­ly' Cum­mings ahead of the match. He said Gal­ly, the coach of the fa­mous Strike Squad of 1989 which came with­in a point of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, called him this morn­ing and they rem­i­nisced.

"I tend to al­ways go back to the peo­ple who have been there and done it, so I have con­ver­sa­tions with Stephen Hart, with Den­nis Lawrence, so we have good peo­ple here and if you lean on them some­times you get some good in­for­ma­tion.

"I spoke to Gal­ly and got a sense of what he could have done dif­fer­ent­ly back then which could prob­a­bly help me go­ing in­to this game."

Mean­while, Eve al­so sends con­do­lences to the coun­try's most pop­u­lar nutsman Kei­th 'Jum­bo' Mar­tin, who died yes­ter­day. The coach de­scribed Jum­bo as one of the best 12th-men that they ever had, say­ing he is al­ways at hand to show his sup­port.

The play­ers will leave lo­cal shores on Mon­day (March 18) and will be joined by the oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers in the US.

T&T 23-man squad

Christo­pher Biggette, Aubrey David, Ross Rus­sell Jr, Jesse Williams, Robert Primus, An­dre Ray­mond, Noah Pow­der, Daniel Phillips, Nathaniel James, Re­al Gill, Levi Gar­cia, Kevon God­dard, Re­on Moore, Shan­non Gomez, Ne­veal Hack­shaw, Alvin Jones, Justin Gar­cia, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Ajani For­tune, Kaile Au­vray, Adri­an Fon­cette, Den­zil Smith, Ju­dah Gar­cia.