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New Na­tion­al Un­der-17 and 20 Women's foot­ball coach Richard Hood is al­ready pre­dict­ing dif­fi­cult roads ahead for his teams, es­pe­cial­ly his U-20 play­ers who will have to tan­gle with the gi­ants of the CON­CA­CAF re­gion USA, Mex­i­co and Cana­da, as well as emerg­ing pow­er­house Haiti for one of just two spots from the North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and the Caribbean Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tions tour­na­ment next month.

Hood in his first of­fi­cial meet­ing with the me­dia on Fri­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va re­vealed that both Pana­ma and Cos­ta Ri­ca have been award­ed the right to host the fi­nal round of the CON­CA­CAF World Cup qual­i­fiers, which means on­ly two teams will progress from next month's tour­na­ment in San­to Domin­go, Domin­go Re­pub­lic.

The So­ca Princess­es have been drawn in a group with Pana­ma, Haiti and the Cay­man Is­lands, need­ing to be among the top three teams, since Pana­ma will earn au­to­mat­ic ad­vance­ment be­cause of be­ing the host of the fi­nal round.

Hood said he is an­tic­i­pat­ing that his girls will come out of the group phase, but they will have to see what they can do in the knock-out stage.

How­ev­er, Hood who was part of the Women's pro­gramme back in 2010, has re­ceived some much-need­ed help from the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, which has agreed to send the U-20 team on a camp ahead of the tour­na­ment in San­to Domin­go it­self from Feb­ru­ary 11, where the team will play three match­es against the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic U-20 team, a club team, and an­oth­er against a boys team, Hood said.

The So­ca Princess­es will then go in­to ac­tion on Feb­ru­ary 23 against the Pana­ma­ni­ans.

A month lat­er, the U-17s will spring in­to ac­tion in their qual­i­fiers in March at a date and venue to be de­ter­mined.


SOURCE: T&T Guardian