T&T’s So­ca War­riors will face Ja­maica in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es here in ear­ly March ahead of the key Cana­da game in the Unit­ed States.

Those match­es will be used to se­lect the na­tion­al team to take on the Cana­di­ans for a place in the Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cup lat­er this year.

Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve, at the start of prepa­ra­tion for the Co­pa qual­i­fi­er, as well as prepa­ra­tion for the FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fiers to start lat­er this year, told the me­dia Thurs­day morn­ing that the friend­ly match­es are be­ing rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed, fol­low­ing the lo­cal team’s trip to Ja­maica last year.

The coach was on his third day of a live-in camp at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma in which a cadre of reg­u­lar play­ers from the lo­cal League were be­ing looked at for the first time this year, as well as new call-ups, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Among those at the train­ing ses­sion were Ger­man-born strik­er Keenon Er­futh and for­ward Den­mark’s Marc Gan­gia both at­tempt­ing to solve Eve’s prob­lems in the strik­ing de­part­ment.

Eve, hav­ing re­ceived an ex­ten­sion on his con­tract, said: “In the num­ber nine area, we have been us­ing Re­on Moore who is nat­u­ral­ly a winger but he has done ex­cel­lent for us up there, you know the trou­ble with that po­si­tion with not hav­ing Levi Gar­cia con­sis­tent­ly and some of the oth­er strik­ers who are not in form at the point in time.

“So these two young guys, one his mom is a Trinida­di­an - the Ger­man one, and the oth­er his dad is the Trinida­di­an. We have been li­ais­ing with them for months now, as well as oth­er play­ers, and they were free enough to come down here for us to view them, and al­so give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play in a match, so we can see what they are ca­pa­ble of, be­cause as you know, we are try­ing to fill that po­si­tion,” Eve stat­ed fur­ther.

Soon af­ter, Gan­gia said he hopes to bring good play with tech­nique and as­sis­tance, as well as goals to the na­tion­al team. He plays for Dalum IF in the Dan­ish League.

He has vis­it­ed T&T about five times be­fore to vis­it his fa­ther’s rel­a­tives. How­ev­er, he ex­plained that his biggest chal­lenge will be the hot weath­er com­pared to back in Den­mark, which on­ly means that he will have to make the tran­si­tion if he has to play in the red, white, and black of T&T.

Gan­gia’s first ap­pear­ance for the team will be to­day in two warm-up match­es with the coun­try’s Un­der-20 team this morn­ing, and then lat­er this af­ter­noon when they square off against Tiger Tanks Club San­do, both match­es at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um.

Eve’s con­cerns though ex­ceed to­day’s match­es. Against Cana­da, he said he is ex­pect­ing a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion to when they faced the Unit­ed States, say­ing: “Like the US team, the Cana­di­an team is built up the same way, a lot of Eu­ro­pean-based play­ers, some play­ing in the MLS, some play­ing back home, but most of the play­ers play in Eu­rope and they’re play­ing with good teams.

“Cyle Lar­in is with Mal­lor­ca in Spain so I will keep watch­ing him, Jonathan David is in France play­ing in the top di­vi­sion, and was the top goalscor­er a cou­ple of years ago, so the guys are do­ing re­al­ly, re­al­ly well.

“Tajon Buchanan just signed for In­ter Mi­lan and that’s no easy feat, and we all know Alphon­so Davies and what he can do, so it’s a good team, a good squad of play­ers.

“ They were beat­en by a good squad of play­ers, by Ja­maica, but we think we can go in there, we think that we can com­pete with any­one right now, and we want to show that we can go out on the park and com­pete with any team.

Eve added: “Against Cana­da, we just have to be tac­ti­cal­ly aware. A coach can on­ly give in­struc­tions, but if play­ers go out there they have to have the mind­set to play the po­si­tion and play the role that the coach gives them, to the best of their abil­i­ty.

“Be­cause for 90 min­utes, a coach can nev­er tell a play­er every­thing, every minute and every sec­ond what to do, so the play­ers are very im­por­tant. We want to in­crease their tac­ti­cal aware­ness and their foot­ball in­tel­li­gence so that they will make the right de­ci­sions when they are on the pitch.”