Amid an at­mos­phere that will be set for cel­e­bra­tions of all kinds at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo this evening, the coun­try’s se­nior men’s foot­ball team will be the toast. The de­pen­dence on a much-need­ed win to re­vive a slim yet pos­si­ble World Cup cam­paign against T&T’s mean­est ri­val, Ja­maica, stands as the lone ob­jec­tive, with World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion the end re­sult.

Na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke is pre­dict­ing a tac­ti­cal af­fair be­tween the teams on Thurs­day night at 8pm. Ja­maica’s Reg­gae Boyz have en­joyed the bet­ter of the meet­ings be­tween the teams, in­clud­ing a 2-0 tri­umph in the first meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber; how­ev­er, Yorke be­lieves that sta­tis­tics will amount to noth­ing on the field tonight, as both teams fo­cus on three points. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, while the Ja­maicans will con­tin­ue their cam­paign even with a loss, the home team can­not af­ford to lose.

The for­mer Man­ches­ter Unit­ed strik­er got the sup­port of his for­mer team­mates of the fa­mous 1989 ‘Strike Squad’, in­clu­sive of ex-de­fend­er Bri­an Williams as well as Brent San­cho, as he fine-tunes his tac­ti­cal strat­e­gy for to­day. “Lis­ten, I think that there’s a lot of his­to­ry be­tween the two coun­tries over many years since my play­ing days. Even now as a coach, the his­to­ry be­tween these two teams goes a very long way back. How­ev­er, I don’t re­al­ly want to look back too much on the his­to­ry; I look for­ward to the present. Since my time in cer­tain­ly tak­ing the job, we have met Ja­maica on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. One of the things that I have tried to eval­u­ate when I’ve tak­en the job is the gap be­tween the two coun­tries, the two teams.”

Yorke said, “But we’ve got to be very aware of Ja­maica and the Ja­maican threat. They’re ca­pa­ble of hurt­ing you. They have qual­i­ty play­ers in the wide ar­eas that we are cer­tain­ly aware of. So all of that, and foot­ball has be­come a lit­tle bit more tac­ti­cal as well. So we have to be tac­ti­cal­ly aware of their dan­ger. But ul­ti­mate­ly, we have to, you know, win the game, and we have to be ag­gres­sive in many re­spects, both in and out of po­si­tion. And so the play­ers are aware of what we are re­quest­ing from them. We had a few days in terms of work­ing on strat­e­gy and how we want to play their pe­ri­od in the game, de­pend­ing on the state of the game, and how we can man­age that.”

He said, “And there ap­peared a game where we have to re­al­ly go at them as well. So you will see through­out the 90-plus min­utes a lit­tle bit of cat and mouse and a lit­tle bit of tac­ti­cal ma­noeu­vres. But cer­tain­ly the in­ten­tion is to win the game.”

With just five points from four match­es that re­flect a win, two drawn ac­counts, and a loss, Yorke has again called for his team to con­vert the chances they cre­ate, lament­ing that it is the area where the team lacks the most.

Yorke added, “I think when you look at our pat­tern of play, our struc­ture, and our sys­tem, it seems to work. The one area that you have iden­ti­fied is an area that we need to im­prove, and I think there is no se­cret to it. I think we have cre­at­ed nu­mer­ous amounts of chances; we just haven’t been able to con­vert them. And at this lev­el, at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, even a half chance is piv­otal or vi­tal. And for us, we haven’t been able to cap­i­talise on it.”

“But the en­cour­age­ment, I have to say, has been there. It’s there for every­one to see. Cer­tain­ly, look­ing from the out­side, it’s a bit frus­trat­ing for us be­cause we’ve done every­thing from a tac­ti­cal point of view. And cer­tain­ly, the way we want to con­trol the games, we’ve been able to do that,” said Yorke.

The Ja­maicans are on nine points, while Cu­raçao, who are sec­ond in the group, are on eight, both fac­ing the ad­van­tage of claim­ing the top spot in the group that will earn them au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cup in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, and Mex­i­co, if on­ly they can top the group.

The T&T foot­ballers will be re­quired to win both their match­es, which will take them to 11 points; how­ev­er, their ad­vance­ment from the group will be de­pen­dent on sup­port from both Cu­raçao and Bermu­da. Tonight, they will be with­out the ser­vices of at­tack­ing de­fend­er Rio Car­dines and mid­field­er Mo­lik Khan, but Yorke has roped in strik­er Roald Mitchell for the New York New Jer­sey Red Bulls.

Mitchell said he is hap­py to have joined the team, and he hopes he will be able to solve the team’s goal-scor­ing is­sue.

T&T TEAM

GOAL­KEEP­ERS: Den­zil Smith, Mar­vin Phillip, Jabari Brice

MID­FIELD­ERS

Lin­dell Sween, Daniel David, Nathaniel James, Noah Pow­der, Re­al Gill, Stef­fen Yeates, Tyrese Spicer, Wayne Fred­er­ick II, Kevin Moli­no, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Daniel Phillips, Kaile Au­vray

FOR­WARDS

Roald Mitchell, Levi Gar­cia, Dante Sealy, Eyan Telfer

DE­FEND­ERS

Justin Gar­cia, An­dre Ray­mond, Ko­bi Hen­ry, Deron Payne, Isa­iah Gar­cia, Jer­rin Jack­ie, Josi­ah Trim­ming­ham

JA­MAICA TEAM

GOAL­KEEP­ERS

An­dre Bak­er, Jah­mali Waite, Ta­fari Cham­bers

DE­FEND­ERS

Joel Lat­i­beaudiere, Ethan Pin­nock, Richard King, Dex­ter Lem­bik­isa, Gre­go­ry Leigh, Dami­an Lowe, Ri­co Hen­ry,Ma­son Hol­gate, Ian Fray

MID­FIELD­ERS

Isaac Hay­den, Bob­by Reid, Jonathan Rus­sell, Karoy An­der­son, Jahshaun An­glin

FOR­WARDS

Bai­ley-Tye Cadamar­teri, Shamar Nichol­son, Ru­marn Bur­rell, De­marai Gray, Ka­heim Dixon, Re­nal­do Cephas, Tyreece Camp­bell, Warn­er Brown, Du­juan Richards