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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Three Points: T&T targets victory in World Cup qualifier

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20160329

Three points will again be the or­der of the day when T&T's So­ca War­riors face St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in their sec­ond World Cup qual­i­fy­ing meet­ing in five day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um from 7pm.

The War­riors will be aim­ing for a marked im­proved in their dis­play but more im­por­tant­ly will know that any­thing but three points could in­crease their chal­lenge of mak­ing it in­to the fi­nal qual­i­fy­ing round when the two fi­nal se­mi-fi­nal phase match­es come around in Sep­tem­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to head coach Stephen Hart, his play­ers are ful­ly aware of the sce­nario as it re­lates to their po­si­tion at the mo­ment and what the re­quire­ments will be­come by the time they face Guatemala in Port of Spain and then trav­el to face the USA in a few months time.

"Oh yes, for sure every­one is quite aware of the po­si­tion we are in at this time," Hart said fol­low­ing a morn­ing ses­sion at the Hase­ly Craw­ford yes­ter­day.

"We have this game to fo­cus on and there is a strong pur­pose head­ing in­to it which is to not just play well but to en­sure we gath­er the three points. We do not in­tend to get in­to a false sense of be­liev­ing any­thing is achieved be­fore we ac­tu­al­ly take care of busi­ness," Hart said.

Cur­rent­ly T&T top the group with sev­en points, close­ly fol­lowed by Guatemala (six points) with the USA (four) and St Vin­cent in the bot­tom place with­out a point. The top two teams will qual­i­fy for the fi­nal round in 2017.The mood in the T&T camp re­mains an up­beat one com­ing off the spir­it­ed 3-2 vic­to­ry at Arnos Vale on Fri­day.

"The spir­it is fan­tas­tic. There is good com­pe­ti­tion among the play­ers and then there is a bit of ban­ter and some jokes fly­ing around but when it's time to be se­ri­ous they have trained very well.

"I think the words I said is that we ap­proached the wrong game with the wrong at­ti­tude which is very dif­fer­ent. These play­ers have a fan­tas­tic at­ti­tude. They work well, they have good ca­ma­raderie but some­times we switch of men­tal­ly and that's what I meant. You have to go in­to the game in the same way as if you were play­ing the US or Mex­i­co. You have to ap­proach games in a very pro­fes­sion­al man­ner," Hart added.

The squad is in­jury free head­ing in­to the match but Hart did not count out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of changes to his line up.

"I think we might have to make a few ad­just­ments just or keep us fresh but the nu­cle­us of the squad will re­main. I watched the game twice and re­al­ly when I watched it back a sec­ond time, we didn't do as bad­ly as I thought. We just didn't take our chances and just some­times we were a bit dis­or­gan­ised in terms of de­fend­ing the ball," Hart said. "And it would be nice to see a good crowd and it's im­por­tant that we have that push for the next three games," Hart added.

In the last World Cup qual­i­fy­ing meet­ing be­tween the two teams at the Hase­ly Craw­ford it took sec­ond half goals from Hec­tor Sam and An­gus Eve to erase a 1-0 deficit in the fi­nal se­mi-fi­nal round game in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Ger­many 2006.Gates open at 4pm and the match kicks off at 7pm.

Tick­ets will be on sale at the game venue from 10 am. The Unit­ed States will host Guatemala in the group's oth­er en­counter in Colum­bus to­day.


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