Travel logistics snags T&T home game - International friendly shifted to Belize City

The Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) yesterday advised that the friendly international between the national men’s team and Belize scheduled for next Friday at the Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva, will now be played in Belize City on March 23.

This follows discussions between officials of the TTFF and the Belize FF in Chicago on Wednesday. The reason for the change is logistical challenges associated with travel arrangements for Belize.

TTFF president Raymond Tim Kee expressed his disappointment over the inability of the game to be staged in T&T but agreed to have T&T fly to Belize City to play a day later. There was no other available opponent of worth available to travel to T&T to play around the same date. Following the game, the T&T squad will travel to Lima to face Peru on March 26. 

Tim Kee was in Chicago along with senior team co-head coach Hutson Charles and team manager William Wallace on Wednesday where officials of the twelve nations at the Concacaf Gold Cup held meetings and a workshop was staged in relation to the tournament.

The TTFF president expressed his satisfaction with T&T’s grouping which includes matches against Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras in July. 

He also took the opportunity to reveal that in spite of the disappointment of the initially scheduled game against Belize being shifted, there was another pair of friendly internationals approaching that would be beneficial to T&T’s preparation for the Gold Cup. T&T will travel to Bucharest to face Romania’s senior team in a friendly international on June 4 and also Estonia in that country on June 7.

Romania are currently in 31 on the FIFA rankings.

“Let me say that we at the federation feel a sense of disappointment over the fact that next Friday’s match against Belize will no longer be played on home soil and this came about because of circumstances that were beyond our control,” Tim Kee told TTFF Media. “But in saying that we felt it was necessary to ensure that the opportunity was still there for our men’s senior team to be able to play an international game because we could not afford to miss out on an international FIFA date. This is, of course, all part of the programme for our team’s build up to the Gold Cup and we wanted to ensure that this would not be a setback to the team’s preparations.”

The team will resume training at the Ato Boldon Stadium on Monday with the inclusion of some of the overseas-based players for the Belize and Peru matches.

​