Nigel Si­mon

The So­ca War­riors will con­tin­ue their prepa­ra­tions for the Dig­i­cel Caribbean Cup Sec­ond Round qual­i­fiers with two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es next month ver­sus Pana­ma and Be­lize. This was con­firmed by na­tion­al team man­ag­er, David Muham­mad in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. The So­ca War­riors will be away to Pana­ma on Tues­day Sep­tem­ber 7 and will meet Be­lize three days lat­er as they con­tin­ue their build-up to the DCC Sec­ond Round qual­i­fy­ing group se­ries in T&T from No­vem­ber, 2-6. Muham­mad not­ed that a match against Guyana which was card­ed for Au­gust 28 in George­town was post­poned.

Muham­mad said that he does not ex­pect coach Lat­apy to re­call the Eu­ro­pean-based play­ers even though they are like­ly to fall with­in Fi­fa in­ter­na­tion­al days. "More than like­ly the coach (Lat­apy) will con­tin­ue with us­ing the core of lo­cal­ly-based pro­fes­sion­als be­cause we are us­ing the match­es as prepa­ra­tions for the Dig­i­cel Caribbean Cup where we in­tend the use the lo­cal guys," stat­ed Muham­mad. Over the last month, T&T has played two friend­lies against re­gion­al op­po­nents, a 4-1 win over An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and a 3-1 loss to Ja­maica. Mean­while the lo­cal­ly-based na­tion­al play­ers will con­tin­ue to train on Mon­days and Tues­days at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um.