Trinidad and Tobago Under 17 head coach Anton Corneal spent the last few days in Jamaica inspecting the facilities there as this country gets ready to contest the final round of CONCACAF qualification for a spot in the FIFA Under 17 World Championship in Korea in August.
Corneal, who has been preparing the local squad, is expected to return today as the team prepares to go in a live-in camp in their run up to arrival in Kingston on April 25.
The team, which has played Honduras and Mexico in warm up matches over the past two months, will open its final round campaign against Costa Rica on April 28, USA (April 20), Canada (May 4) and Jamaica on May 6. The top three teams from the group will join Haiti and Honduras from Group B as the region’s five representatives at the World Championship.
“We have paced our preparations and it’s a matter now of going into the final stretch and getting set for the matches. It’s four matches and we know that all the teams will be well prepared and ready to snap up one of the three spots. We obviously will not take any of them for granted but we will also have it on our minds that we can get the right results against these teams to take us through,” Corneal told TTFF Media.
Instrumental playmaker Leston Paul knows well that he will need to be at the top of his game in the four-match series. Paul, named the TTFF’s Young “Player of the Year” 2006 is hoping that he and his teammates can rise to the challenge.
“So far I think our preparations have gone well. We had the chance to playa against a couple international teams and we have trained very hard at home. Now it’s up to us to go out there and play to win,” Paul told TTFF Media after collecting the award on Sunday at the TTFF’s closing ceremony at Crowne Plaza, Port of Spain.
He feels that the accolade could lead him to bigger things.
“It’s good to get an award like this at this time. I know it says something but I will have to go and prove it. This tournament is really the important one for us because we want to qualify badly and move on from here. I have my career ahead of me and the other boys have a lot of football to look forward to. We know that if we do well in this competition it could be a big step for us,” added the Mayaro-born midfielder.
“I have been working hard on my fitness because the time off with the injury had me out for about three months. But now I’m feeling normal again and the entire squad is just trying to be patient and wait for our chance to take on the other teams,” he added.
Meantime, one of T&T’s opponents, Canada, is coming off a training camp in Mexico where they lost 2-1 to Mexico, 2-0 to Club America and 2-1 to Cruz Azul. They will go into a camp in Sunrise, Florida before heading over to Jamaica.
“We have played well in every game, however playing well should also include capitalizing on our chances,” said Canada’s Trinidadian-born coach Stephen Hart. “The Cruz Azul game was typical of our play as of late. We should have won the game by five goals, instead we lost. On the positive side we are creating chances.”
The Jamaica group is expected to have some intense action. In Group A action earlier this month, more than 45,000 passionate and committed fans were on hand to witness the first of two CONCACAF Qualification groups for the FIFA U-17 World Cup in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.
This excellent turnout is a testament to the unprecedented levels of excitement, importance and popularity of Under-17 football in the CONCACAF region. Attendances grew with each of the three match dates and an amazing 27,080 animated fans packed the Estadio Tiburcio Carias Andino for the third and final day of group play where all four teams still had everything to play for. Hopefully similar or the same can take place in Kingston and be echoed over in Port of Spain.