WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Sports Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

T&T has con­firmed a meet­ing with Cana­da for the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League Play-In, which gets go­ing on March 24, 2024, with a dou­ble­head­er at the Toy­ota Sta­di­um in Frisco, Texas, USA.

In the first game, the So­ca War­riors and Cana­da will square off, with CON­CA­CAF’s fifth-ranked Cos­ta Ri­ca tak­ing on Hon­duras.

Should the So­ca War­riors beat the Cana­di­ans, they will be as­sured of a spot in the Co­pa Amer­i­ca next year.

The CNL Play-In pair­ings have been de­ter­mined based on the CON­CA­CAF Men’s Rank­ings pub­lished af­ter No­vem­ber’s FI­FA Match Win­dow, with the high­est-ranked team fac­ing the low­est-ranked team (1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3, ac­cord­ing to a CON­CA­CAF re­lease.

This be­came pos­si­ble af­ter the So­ca War­riors went down to the USA 4-2 on ag­gre­gate, and the Cana­di­ans, de­spite a string of glow­ing World Cup per­for­mances in Qatar, could not get the bet­ter of Ja­maicans in their two match­es, fin­ish­ing 4-4 on ag­gre­gate.

The Reg­gae Boyz pro­gressed to the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League ‘A’ semi­fi­nals by the away-goal rule, hav­ing lost the first game 2-1 at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um In­de­pen­dence Park in Kingston, Ja­maica, be­fore win­ning 3-2 at Ex­hi­bi­tion Place in Toron­to, On­tario, Cana­da.

Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve ex­pressed con­fi­dence in his team af­ter Mon­day’s im­pres­sive 2-1 vic­to­ry over the USA in front of the home crowd at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. Eve in his post-match com­ments, said the re­sults were fan­tas­tic and showed where they were at in their de­vel­op­ment stage.

“We saw a lot of young play­ers come out there and re­al­ly show their worth tonight. We gave them the be­lief, we gave them the trust, and this will on­ly auger well for us in the fu­ture. This is a mas­sive win for us, I think we played some re­al­ly good foot­ball,” he said.

“We moved the ball around, we cre­at­ed a lot of chances, and on an­oth­er day, we might have scored the four goals we need­ed to take the game a lit­tle bit longer. It goes a long way in build­ing the con­fi­dence of the team,” Eve said.

Cana­da turns out to be the high­est-ranked los­ing quar­ter-fi­nal­ist at fourth in CON­CA­CAF and 45th in the world, with T&T be­ing 11th in CON­CA­CAF and 99th in the world. Be­tween them, there were 11 meet­ings, for which the War­riors have had two wins, as many drawn re­sults, and sev­en loss­es to their name.