T&T’s Un­der-17 foot­ballers are set to face Pe­ru in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es ahead of the Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fiers, which be­gin on Feb­ru­ary 3.

​The young na­tion­al foot­ball team has been drawn in­to Group A along­side Mex­i­co, Bar­ba­dos, Dutch Sint Maarten, and French Saint Maarten. They will open their cam­paign against Bar­ba­dos. The tour­na­ment, which serves as the re­gion’s qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion for the 2026 FI­FA U-17 World Cup, fea­tures 38 teams di­vid­ed in­to eight groups.

​As­sis­tant coach Nevick De­noon has been tasked with sharp­en­ing the team’s at­tack­ing and goal-scor­ing. The squad is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Pe­ru on Jan­u­ary 26, with the first friend­ly sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 28 and the sec­ond on Jan­u­ary 30. The trav­el­ling unit was re­cent­ly trimmed to 25 play­ers from an ini­tial pool of some 50 lo­cal and over­seas-based hope­fuls.

​De­noon not­ed that the staff can now piv­ot to­ward tac­ti­cal co­he­sion af­ter nav­i­gat­ing a mas­sive ini­tial play­er pool. A for­mer na­tion­al play­er who is re­gard­ed as one of the bet­ter goalscor­ers to rep­re­sent the red, white, and black, De­noon told the me­dia that while the team played sev­er­al lo­cal prac­tice match­es, the score­lines were sec­ondary to the eval­u­a­tion process.

“We've played a num­ber of prac­tice match­es al­ready,” De­noon said. "We've played against the Prison Ser­vices twice. We've played Cale­do­nia, Civic Cen­tre, and you know, a num­ber of games played al­ready, but the re­sults do not mat­ter be­cause what's hap­pen­ing is that the num­ber of play­ers they have played. Some­times they played well, and then the coach would change the whole side and bring on a dif­fer­ent side.”

​De­spite the progress, De­noon re­mained can­did about the chal­lenges of team se­lec­tion. He said, “We have no team yet.” The team was cut to 25 from what num­ber? From about 50-some­thing, I dare say in 60, be­cause up to yes­ter­day, a new play­er came again. When you wait to build a team, even though they might have play­ers who have been con­sis­tent, there are play­ers who are now com­ing in, and es­pe­cial­ly be­fore this, they can't even phys­i­cal­ly be ready ei­ther, so that's an­oth­er is­sue by it­self.”

​The team held its first two train­ing ses­sions on Mon­day and yes­ter­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va. Af­ter a rest day to­day, they will re­sume prepa­ra­tions to­mor­row and Fri­day be­fore fac­ing Goal City in a prac­tice match at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma, on Sat­ur­day.

​Ad­dress­ing his con­cerns re­gard­ing the cur­rent state of the ros­ter, De­noon ex­pressed a need for high­er in­ten­si­ty.

“I am con­cerned with re­spect to form­ing the team. Right now, I don't think I'm yet com­fort­able with re­spect to be­ing in a team. We have enough play­ers to form a team, but we're not form­ing. Be­cause some of the play­ers were so mediocre. The en­vi­ron­ment with for­eign­ers com­ing in, some of the guys had no touch­es, but I don't think they were pre­pared for the in­ten­si­ty of the work that was go­ing on there," said De­noon.

“Some of them, I don't think, are bet­ter than the play­ers that we have here. Well, maybe one or two, but most of the oth­er play­ers, I think. Plus, most of them may not have been play­ing reg­u­lar­ly from where they came from."

Fol­low­ing the group stage, on­ly the eight group win­ners will ad­vance to the FI­FA U-17 World Cup.