De­spite the mi­nor hic­cup of play­ers not re­ceiv­ing their lug­gage in the US yes­ter­day, coach An­gus Eve and his So­ca War­riors are ea­ger to cor­rect their wrongs against the USA, when the teams meet to­day in the first of two quar­ter­fi­nal match­es in Di­vi­sion A’ of the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League in Austin, Texas.

The match is sched­uled to be played at 10 pm at the Q2 Sta­di­um be­fore an ex­pect­ed full house. How­ev­er, both the War­riors and the US have their own beef to set­tle go­ing in­to the en­counter.

Eve’s charges are anx­ious to over­turn the em­bar­rass­ment of a 6-0 drub­bing by the Amer­i­cans in the last Con­ca­caf Gold Cup at home, how­ev­er, the USA, for all its tri­umphs over the men in red, white and black, which in­cludes a 1-0 purg­er in 1989 that re­sult­ed in a riv­er of tears at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, are still heart­bro­ken by a 2-1 loss to the War­riors that pre­vent­ed them from qual­i­fy­ing for the 2018 World Cup.

Eve told the me­dia his charges have said the 6-0 hu­mil­i­a­tion to the US will nev­er hap­pen to them again.

The War­riors set­tled down to se­ri­ous prepa­ra­tion, some two weeks ago, and are to­tal­ly aware of the plans of the US team ac­cord­ing to Eve.

He said: “We knew that they were go­ing to bring us in­to an at­mos­phere like this be­cause they al­ways do that to us. The good thing is that a lot of our play­ers play in the US, a lot of our play­ers play in Eu­rope. Al­so, we know of the in­ten­si­ty and the ri­val­ry, al­though it is very lop­sided in favour of the US side, it is still a ri­val­ry be­cause they are very sore be­cause of what hap­pened to them in 2017.

“They can’t re­live that, and al­so they had some is­sues in the last World Cup, with play­ers, coach­es and fam­i­ly mem­bers and stuff like that, so they have some­thing to put right al­so. And we know it al­so, we’re feel­ing the pain still from that 6-0 drub­bing we got from them in the Gold Cup, so we want to cor­rect that al­so.

“We have pride and we want to come out there and put our best foot for­ward for our coun­try. We know it’s go­ing to be a mam­moth task, but we want to go out and re­al­ly com­pete with them this se­ries,” Eve ex­plained fur­ther.

The USA, in ad­di­tion to their ad­van­tage in the stats be­tween the teams, is al­so ranked 10th in the world, which would be an ide­al test for a na­tion that has been on the mend. Eve made it pub­lic his team has been in the process of re­build­ing, yet ad­mit­ted that the pace of their progress has been tremen­dous, judg­ing from their abil­i­ty to get in­to the Na­tions League ‘A’ di­vi­sion and stay there.

In fact, their sec­ond-place fin­ish in Group A came as a ma­jor sur­prise af­ter an un­beat­en run for the open­ing three match­es against Cu­ra­cao, El Sal­vador and Guatemala. Eve said they would have to do some­thing spe­cial for the match­es.

“I think the guys are fit and fit from the stand­point of body fit­ness, but as I said be­fore they will be stretched for match fit­ness and we have to be tac­ti­cal­ly aware and tac­ti­cal­ly as­tute in cut­ting down the mileage they run in the game,” said Eve.

“So we will have to do some dif­fer­ent stuff in the match, but at the end of the day, we’re here to play. We’re here to com­pete, we know what hap­pened to us at the Gold Cup, so the boys are re­al­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, so that is not to hap­pen to us again. The stats are over­whelm­ing­ly against us in the se­ries against the Amer­i­cans, but as I said be­fore, we’re mo­ti­vat­ed and we want to go out there and work very hard.”

The chal­lenge will be greater should they ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals of the tour­na­ment. Eve said it would do a whole lot of good for the coun­try, with a place in the Co­pa Amer­i­ca al­so at stake with a semi­fi­nal berth.

“It’s the first time the coun­try is fac­ing this sit­u­a­tion to be fair. We’ve nev­er been in the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Na­tions League be­fore, so that’s un­char­tered wa­ters for us. Al­so, we’re play­ing the 10th-ranked team in the world and we’re way down the peck­ing or­der. But we’re in the re­build­ing stage and we’re build­ing faster than we ex­pect­ed be­cause we are in the A.

“We’ve main­tained our po­si­tion in the ‘A’ so any­thing we get now, any­thing we have to play for we’re go­ing to play with our hearts. Any­thing we get now is go­ing to be a bonus for us, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play in the Co­pa is go­ing to be a mas­sive bonus for us. So we’re not tak­ing these games light­ly, we’re go­ing to put our best foot for­ward.”

TEAMS

T&T

Goal­keep­ers: Den­zil Smith (De­fence Force), Christo­pher Biggette (Den­zil Smith), Rushon Sandy (Yava­pai Col­lege/USA).

De­fend­ers: Aubrey David (CS Cartagines/Cos­ta Ri­ca), Jesse Williams (Cen­tral Val­ley Fuego/USA), Shan­non Gomez (San An­to­nio FC/USA), Justin Gar­cia (De­fence Force), Ross Rus­sell Jr (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), Alvin Jones (Tiger Tanks Club San­do), An­dre Ray­mond (Vi­lar de Perdizes/Por­tu­gal).

Mid­field­ers: Michael Poon-Angeron (AC Port-of-Spain), Daniel Phillips (St John­stone FC/Scot­land), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (Oak­land Roots/USA), Noah Pow­der (North Col­orado Hail­storm/USA), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFC Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Kris­ti­am Lee-Him (IFK Es­kil­stu­na/Swe­den), Kaile Au­vray (Mount Pleas­ant/Ja­maica).

For­wards: Re­on Moore (De­fence Force), Mal­colm Shaw (Atleti­co Ot­tawa/Cana­da), Re­al Gill (Tiger Tanks Club San­do), Levi Gar­cia (AEK Athens/Greece), Natah­niel James (Mount Pleas­ant/Ja­maica), Ryan Telfer (Mi­a­mi FC/USA).

USA

Goal­keep­ers: Ethan Hor­vath (Not­ting­ham For­est), Gaga Sloni­na (Eu­pen), Matt Turn­er (Not­ting­ham For­est).

De­fend­ers: Cameron Carter-Vick­ers (Celtic), Sergiño Dest (PSV Eind­hoven), Kristof­fer Lund (Paler­mo), Tim Ream (Ful­ham), Chris Richards (Crys­tal Palace), An­tonee Robin­son (Ful­ham), Miles Robin­son (At­lanta Unit­ed), Joe Scal­ly (Mönchenglad­bach).

Mid­field­ers: Pax­ten Aaron­son (Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt), Lu­ca de la Torre (Celta Vi­go), Lennard Mal­oney (Hei­den­heim), We­st­on McKen­nie (Ju­ven­tus), Yunus Musah (AC Mi­lan), Gio Rey­na (Borus­sia Dort­mund), Ma­lik Till­man (PSV Eind­hoven).

For­wards: Bren­den Aaron­son (Union Berlin), Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun (Mona­co), Kevin Pare­des (Wolfs­burg), Ri­car­do Pepi (PSV Eind­hoven), Alex Zen­de­jas (Club Ámer­i­ca).