T&T U-17s go for better result vs Honduras on Saturday.
By: Shaun Fuentes (TTFF).[/size]
Trinidad and Tobago’s National Under 17 footballers will be hoping to complete their three-match tour of Honduras with a winning result on Saturday when they face that country’s National Under 17 team for the second time in a week after losing their first friendly 3-0 at the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa on Wednesday.
The team, captained by Jesse Fullerton, who started in goal, conceded two first half goals and then a third after the break against the Hondurans who like T&T are preparing to contest the final round of the CONCACAF Under 17 qualifying competition towards the FIFA Under 17 World Championship in Korea. T&T faces Costa Rica, Jamaica, United States and Canada from April 28 – May 6 while Honduras will hosts Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador from April 4-8.
T&T also played a training match on Thursday against the Reserves of Honduras Champion club Motagua, going down 2-0, conceding two second half goals against the hosts who used a team comprising mostly Under 23 players.
On Wednesday, head coach Anton Corneal used as much as 19 players during the match which was played before some 1,000 fans and he later admitted that the Hondurans were more match ready than the junior “Soca Warriors”. Apart from that though, T&T did manage to create quite a few goalscoring opportunities and had only themselves to blame for not converting. They squandered three chances inside the opening twenty minutes with two of those falling for Daniel Joseph and the other to Chad De Freitas. Striker Stephan Knox also had two close tries in the second half but the Hondurans were the ones who made good of their chances with Alfredo Mejia, Johnny Leveron and Freddy Sosa all finding the net in the second half.
Corneal was not too concerned with the losing result.
“It was a very useful exercise for us. I admit that they were more match ready than us because they are at that stage of their preparations where they are getting ready for their competition which starts before us. We are really still in an endurance phase in our program and I cannot change that at this time to force us to be fully match ready because we still have a couple months to go. That is when we want to be as best ready for our qualifying games,” Corneal told TTFF Media from Tegucigalpa.
“We were able to use 19 players in the match and that allowed us to see how well the players are fitting into their positions and carrying out the instructions given to them. Again, we had an abundance of scoring chances that we didn’t make use of and we will work on that which is where these games will be so handy for us. It was the same situation in the second game where we created numerous chances to score but suffered by not making use of them and then conceding against a team that is more match ready than we are,” Corneal added.
The Hondurans were also coming off a 3-3 draw with Costa Ric and Corneal further stated that he was not going to be alarmed at this stage. “We cannot keep up that intensity for two months which is why we are at this stage of our game right now. Our intention is to be at the right level in time for the important matches which obviously will be the qualifiers.”
Saturday’s game will kick off at 6pm TT time at the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa and the team returns home on Monday. They will continue preparations and look ahead to two friendlies at home against Mexico’s National Under 17 team on March 4 and 6.
T&T starting eleven vs Honduras – Jesse Fullerton, Sheldon Bateau, Ryan O’Neil, Robert Primus, Aubrey David, Chike Sullivan, Leston Paul, Chad De Freitas, Michael Lewis, Daniel Joseph, Stephan Knox.
