Head coach of Pe­ru Ser­gio Markar­i­an has opt­ed for a cau­tious ap­proach to to­day's in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly against T&T, a cru­cial match in both na­tions' prepa­ra­tion for ma­jor up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al fix­tures.

Markar­i­an, whose Pe­ru team cur­rent­ly sits sec­ond from bot­tom in the South Amer­i­can qual­i­fiers for the 2014 World Cup, has said his team will need a boost in con­fi­dence ahead of their chal­lenges.The Uruguayan-born head­man ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that nei­ther his staff nor the play­ers were fa­mil­iar with T&T as a unit. "We're not fa­mil­iar with T&T. (But) we were sur­prised to see the qual­i­ty play­ers in T&T (ros­ter).

"Some of these (play­ers) play in the best leagues in the world," said Markar­i­an.He added that the T&T team will give Pe­ru an al­ter­na­tive tac­ti­cal per­spec­tive, which is a qual­i­ty need­ed to be­come more ver­sa­tile in test­ing sit­u­a­tions.

Markar­i­an said he has al­so been im­pressed with the num­ber of play­ing fields and po­ten­tial grounds avail­able to the coun­try and the num­ber of chil­dren he has seen prac­tis­ing in the rur­al ar­eas."I've had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence many coun­tries in the world, and the num­ber of fields seen in small places is some­thing I've seen in Uruguay, Hol­land and (now) Trinidad."

"I've seen the lit­tle boys play­ing and jug­gling.""(With) all of that, I think that your coun­try has a good fu­ture in foot­ball."Pe­ru, ranked 34 in the FI­FA world rank­ings, will need to take pos­i­tive re­sults from its re­main­ing World Cup qual­i­fiers to cap­ture at least the half spot, which is avail­able to the team which fin­ish­es fifth in the re­gion.

T&T's chal­lenger brings a host of play­ers with in­ter­na­tion­al and club pedi­gree, in­clud­ing the likes of cap­tain Clau­dio Pizarro, who has scored 16 goals from 61 in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­ances. He al­so plays club foot­ball forG­er­man gi­ants Bay­ern Mu­nich. 'La Blan­quir­ro­ja' has al­so brought along skil­ful Corinthi­ans for­ward in Pao­lo Guer­rero, who has 19 goals from 44 match­es, along with pro­lif­ic Shalke winger Jef­fer­son Far­fan. A no­table ab­sen­tee for Pe­ru is Fiorenti­na (loaned to Genoa) winger Juan Manuel Var­gas, who, ac­cord­ing to Markar­i­an, is re­cu­per­at­ing from in­jury. (Gio)