T&T's un­der-17 men's team com­plet­ed its four-match tour of Cos­ta Ri­ca on Tues­day, with a 4-3 vic­to­ry over Sapris­sa's un­der-20 team at the Dur­man Ground.The team, un­der head coach Shawn Coop­er, re­turned home on Wednes­day and will con­tin­ue prepa­ra­tions for the Con­ca­caf fi­nal round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion, in Pana­ma City, Pana­ma, in April to­wards the Fi­fa Un­der-17 World Cup, in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, in Sep­tem­ber.

For­ward Akeem Gar­cia, who al­so played for the T&T U-20 team last year, struck a dou­ble in the 64th and 77th min­utes af­ter W Con­nec­tion's Matthew Woo Ling put T&T 1-0 ahead in the 40th minute. Sapris­sa tied the scores at one apiece a minute lat­er be­fore Weah Adams of Rox­bor­ough Lak­ers put T&T 2-1 ahead in the 43rd minute.

Sapris­sa came back twice to even­tu­al­ly lev­el the scores at 3-3 in the 72nd minute be­fore Gar­cia con­vert­ed the win­ner 13 min­utes from time.Coop­er was sat­is­fied with the win to close off the tour which saw T&T lose 3-0 to the Cos­ta Ri­can U-17 team, and 3-2 to Ala­jue­lense's U-20 team. T&T opened the se­ries with a 0-0 draw with the same Ala­jue­lense U-20 team, the U-20 league cham­pi­on of Cos­ta Ri­ca. The tour it­self was arranged by TTFF tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal and sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Sport.

"Gen­er­al­ly, the tour was a good one and valu­able to us at this stage of our prepa­ra­tions for the fi­nal round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion in Pana­ma, in April," Coop­er said."Con­sid­er­ing the fact that we are not yet in­to the fi­nal phase of our prepa­ra­tion, I think the play­ers adapt­ed well to the con­di­tions and com­pet­ed well in every game against teams that have latin fla­vor, which we ex­pect to be up against in the com­pe­ti­tion.

"We used the trip not on­ly to get the nec­es­sary match prac­tice but al­so to fo­cus on strength and con­di­tion­ing. We con­ced­ed some soft goals and I thought that re­sult­ed be­cause of the quick tran­si­tion from de­fense in­to at­tack by the op­po­nents, who were a bit more ex­pe­ri­enced and co­he­sive as a team. But we are get­ting there and I ex­pect to have the fi­nal squad ready by the mid­dle of March," Coop­er added.

Coop­er not­ed that he will be in­tro­duc­ing a new goal­keep­er in­to the squad in Jo­han Welch of Hous­ton Dy­namo's Acad­e­my team and US-born strik­er Nathan Gill who is a mem­ber of the Unit­ed States U-16/U-18 De­vel­op­ment Acad­e­my soc­cer pro­gram. Gill was in­vit­ed to join the T&T team for the Caribbean open­ing round last year but de­clined the of­fer be­cause of a pri­or com­mit­ment made to the TUFTS Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine TAHSS sum­mer in­tern­ship. He has, how­ev­er, con­tact­ed Coop­er and will join the team in train­ing in T&T lat­er this month.