Nigel Si­mon

T&T's So­ca Princess­es, boost­ed by their his­toric 2-1 win over Chile in their Group A open­er in the Fi­fa Un­der-17 Women's World Cup on Sun­day, will be seek­ing more glo­ry when they tack­le Nige­ria tonight. The So­ca Princess­es, who be­came the first na­tion­al team to win a match at a Fi­fa World Cup Fi­nal, take on Nige­ria at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, from 7 pm, in a clash of first day win­ners. The Nige­ri­ans stunned de­fend­ing cham­pi­on, Ko­rea DPR 3-2 al­so on Sun­day. A win for ei­ther team will guar­an­tee a first ever place in the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the 16-team tour­na­ment with a match left to play to com­plete round-robin group play. Nige­ria, which com­pet­ed in the in­au­gur­al event in New Zealand two years ago, did not get past the group stage then, but the West Africans are now a win away from a sec­ond round spot. Three hours ear­li­er at Mara­bel­la, Ko­rea DPR will hope to get its ti­tle de­fence back on track when it plays Chile.

The lo­cal women were warm­ly re­ceived as they did a morn­ing jog through Port of Spain, yes­ter­day. The run start­ed at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, up Fred­er­ick Street, across Queen Street, and down Sackville Street be­fore end­ing at the Wa­ter­front. Look­ing ahead to to­day's clash, T&T's Nor­we­gian-born coach, Even Pellerud, speak­ing at a press brief­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, yes­ter­day, said he knows the ex­pec­ta­tions of his team are now high­er fol­low­ing Sun­day's win. "Win­ning cre­ates ex­pec­ta­tions and hope­ful­ly an­oth­er full venue to­mor­row (to­day) will pro­vide more mo­ti­va­tion for the team." Asked if his team was com­fort­able play­ing at the Mara­bel­la venue, Pellerud said he does not ex­pect the change of venue to hurt his team. "We have been there a few times dur­ing the last 15 months play­ing prac­tice match­es. We know the venue very well as a lot of the girls are al­so from south Trinidad and it's a venue with which we are com­fort­able and be­cause of that we will put on an­oth­er good per­for­mance."

So­ca Princess­es coach, Even Pellerud and de­fend­er Patrice Vin­cent, speak to the me­dia dur­ing a press brief­ing held at the Rio Claro Room, Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, ahead of to­day's Group A match with Nige­ria at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la from 7 pm. Pho­to: An­tho­ny Har­ris.

Re­flect­ing on the team's win over Chile, Pellerud said he was sur­prised that the play­ers had not shown a lot of ex­cite­ment. "They were very busi­nesslike af­ter the match. In the past we have had the ex­pe­ri­ence of win­ning and hav­ing a let down in our next game. But the ex­cite­ment lev­el is very low be­cause they have learnt from that and un­der­stand that our job is not fin­ished as yet." So­ca Princess­es left-back Patrice Vin­cent en­dorsed coach Pellerud's state­ment. "We are very fo­cused on the job at hand. We know the im­por­tance of this match be­cause we want to get to the sec­ond round and a win against Nige­ria will do that for us. This is a big match for us which will help de­ter­mine where we go." Vin­cent added that her team-mates were look­ing for­ward to the Nige­ria match. "We have faced teams liked them (Nige­ria) be­fore and I be­lieve we have done our home­work and will be ready for what­ev­er they throw at us," point­ed out Vin­cent.

Niger­ian coach Pe­ter Dede­vbo was al­so con­fi­dent of his team's chances and boast­ed that the So­ca Princess­es would pose no threat to his play­ers. Dede­vbo said af­ter watch­ing T&T's match, he did not see any de­part­ment of their game to wor­ry his team. He con­ced­ed that home dis­ad­van­tage might be the on­ly con­cern. "We have no in­juries and all our play­ers are avail­able so we will be ready as well," end­ed Dede­vbo, who will re­ly on strik­ers Fran­cis­ca Or­de­ga and Hgozi Obo­ki to get his team past the lo­cal squad. Ko­rea DPR came in­to the com­pe­ti­tion as favourites, hav­ing claimed the first U-17 crown in 2008. Af­ter los­ing a tense en­counter to Nige­ria, coach Ri Song Gun said his team was now un­der ex­tra pres­sure to get a win. "No play­er or team likes to lose so we now have to put on a much bet­ter per­for­mance than we did in the first match and get a win," stat­ed Gun. Chilean coach Ron­nie Radonich was al­so keen for his play­ers to re­bound with a pos­i­tive re­sult to stay in con­tention for a quar­ter­fi­nal spot. "We must win if we want to con­tin­ue in the com­pe­ti­tion."