Trinidad and Tobago’s National Under 17 footballers are scheduled back in the country at 2pm on Monday and will resume preparations towards their final round CONCACAF qualification towards the FIFA Under 17 World Championship in Korea.
This comes after a narrow 2-1 loss to Honduras’ National Under 17 team at the National Stadium there on Saturday. It was the second consecutive loss for T&T against the Central Americans but reports indicated that T&T’s game showed some improvements and they conceded their second goal five minutes from full time. The first goal was off a corner while the second came on a rebound after an initial block by goalie and captain Jesse Fullerton
Head coach Anton Corneal went into the match with one change from the prior 3-0 loss, bringing in Kevin Molino for Chike Sullivan. But again T&T paid for not making better uses of their chances on goal, according to Corneal, but were able to have the opposition on the defensive for longer periods than the previous encounter
Honduras went ahead in the first half through Roger Rojas but T&T rallied back and got a deserved equalizer in the 77th minute through Daniel Joseph.
The play started at the back and was played into the middle of the park before Joseph collected down the line and beat his man as he cut into the penalty box before hitting home on the near post.
The goal brought T&T back into the game but they conceded down the stretch when Carlos Castellanos struck to give the hosts the win.
“This game showed us that we are able to play with these teams because at this level we always tend to think that it’s very difficult to compete with them and that is a mentality that we need to change,” Corneal told TTFF Media after the match. “Of course the best way to do that is to get winning results and this is our goal.
“Again as I said before we are at a phase right now which does not have us entirely match ready and once we get there I think we can get the kind of results we are looking for. We threw away chances again that could have made the situations different in the match but we handled the dead ball situation better in this game than last Wednesday. We dealt better particularly with their free kicks and corners. We also played the ball for longer periods and forced them to do more when we had possession. This obviously caused them to rethink their game which meant too that we had a lot more options other than just having to try and win the ball back when they came forward.
“We will time our preparations and hopefully get in right in the time for the tournament,” Corneal concluded.
T&T opens their final round campaign against Costa Rica on April 28 in Kingston, Jamaica and then subsequently faces United States, Canada and Jamaica. The top three teams from the five-team group will progress to the FIFA Under 17 World Championship.
T&T will next face Mexico’s National Under 17s in two warm up matches in Trinidad on March 4 and 6.
T&T starting eleven - Jesse Fullerton, Sheldon Bateau, Ryan O’Neil, Robert Primus, Aubrey David, Kevin Molino, Leston Paul, Chad De Freitas, Michael Lewis, Daniel Joseph and Stephan Knox