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Fri, Mar

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Trinidad and Tobago’s National Under 17 footballers, preparing to contest the final round of the CONCACAF World Under 17 qualifiers in April, will face Mexico’s National Under 17 team at Fatima College Grounds, Mucurapo on March 4 from 4pm.


The Junior “Soca Warriors” who will compete among five countries for one of three places in the Korea 2007 World Under 17 Championship, will not have the chance to play their first friendly in one of the Stadiums here because all are closed for maintenance work. And on that same day, the only one available – the Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva has been previously booked for a Digicel event.

Fortunately  for the youngsters who will compete against hosts Jamaica, Costa Rica, United States and Canada in the final round, they will get to play the second warm up against the Mexicans at the Ato Boldon Stadium from 6pm on March 6. And unfortunately, the newly laid artificial turf at the Marvin Lee Stadium which comes under the FIFA Goal Project for the TTFF will not be fully ready for international football by those dates.

The T&T U17s, under coach Anton Corneal and captained by US-College based goalkeeper Jessie Fullerton are coming off a two-match tour to Honduras where they lost 0-3 and 1-2 to the Honduran national Under 17 team.

They continue to train locally and coach Corneal is anticipating the challenge from the Mexicans.

“This should be a very good test for us because we know the Mexicans always give you a good run,” Corneal told TTFF Media on Monday. “We are continuing our preparations following a program obviously which we intend to see have us ready to take on the other four teams starting at the end of April. We were not at a stage which would have had us fully match ready when we went to Honduras but obviously we did not hold off on playing the matches because any match especially against the Central Americans is useful to a team that is preparing for a tournament,” Corneal added.