Trinidad and Tobago will seek their first win for the year when they face off with Estonia in a friendly international at the A Le Cog Arena in Tallinn from 8 pm (1 pm T&T time) on Friday.
With defenders Aubrey David of Caledonia AIA and North East Stars' Kareem Moses joining the squad for the second of two friendly international in Europe, the "Soca Warriors" will go into the match without Port Vale midfielder Chris Birchall who was forced to withdraw from the trip to Tallinn, having to return home in England after his son fell ill and was taken to hospital.
Skipper Densill Theobald and company are mindful that a strong performance and preferably a winning result will go a long way as the team continues its build up for the Concacaf Gold Cup which they kick off against El Salvador in New Jersey on July 8.
T&T have not scored since their win over Martinique from penalty kicks in the Caribbean Cup semi-final in December and have gone five games with one draw and four losses, conceding ten goals dating back to a loss to Cuba in Antigua.
"It's important for us to put in a strong performance and shake off the loss to Romania. It was not the right result for us even though I thought the performance was not reflected in the scoreline.
"Romania were a good team and the exercise proved to very good for us. We have to improve our record at the moment," Theobald told TTFF Media after the team trained at the match venue in Tallinn on Thursday.
"We know a little bit about Estonia and their style. They are physically strong and they adopt a more direct style in their game. We will give it our best shot because the guys know it's important that we dig deep especially with the Gold Cup right around the corner."
Notts County midfielder Andre Boucaud is just as hopeful that T&T can lift their game against Estonia which lost 2-0 to Belarus in Tallinn on Monday.
"I think we've got to get over the Romania loss. We had some good moments in the game and I really think the scoreline is a bad reflection of the game. But we lost and now we've got to lift our heads and move on from that.
"There's no other way to do that other than putting a good showing against Estonia and hopefully pull of a good victory," Boucaud said.
The mood was not much of a bad one following the 80-minute training session on Thursday as the sound of Blaxx's Leh Go and Machel Montano's Possessed filled the stadium corridors and main entrance coming from the T&T dressing room as the players refreshed themselves after the training session.
"Generally the trip has been a good one. We will take this into the game on Friday and try to entertain the fans here and show what we're capable of.
"A lot of the people in Romania and Estonia know about our appearance in Germany in 2006 and so we've got to show something special on the pitch as well," Theobald said.
English-born defender Justin Hoyte will come up against a familiar face in former Middlesbrough teammate Tarmo Kink who is in the Estonia squad and expected to start in their midfield.
"I've played with him at Middlesbrough and he's a pretty decent player. It would be great to come up against him tomorrow. I'm hoping we can step up and get a good performance and just as good a result against them," Hoyte said.
Estonia, ranked 89th by Fifa last won against Andorra 2-0 in a World Cup qualifier in March. They have six points and are currently second from the bottom of the six-team group which is led by the Netherlands on 18 points.
They have Chicago Fire midfielder Joel Lindpere and other players based in Norway, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Hungary, Russia, China in their squad for Friday's encounter.
The conditions in Tallinn have been relatively good since the T&T team arrived on Wednesday night with temperatures ranging between 25-27 degrees Celsius. It is said due to the white nights phenomena, the summer sunsets in Estonia happen around 11 pm, sunrises as early as 4 am and it never really gets dark, just dim. Estonia lies along the Baltic Sea, just below Finland and has a population of 1.34 million.
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