WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Sports Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter start­ing 2023 ranked 104 in the FI­FA World rank­ings, T&T foot­ball un­der head coach An­gus Eve and his staff closed the year ranked 96 which by any mea­sure can be de­scribed as progress af­ter the men’s na­tion­al se­nior team broke in­to the top 100 for the first time since 2018.

T&T’s So­ca War­riors will en­ter 2024 with a slim but huge­ly pos­si­ble chance of seal­ing a place at the Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cup for the first time.

This his­toric mo­ment will hang on a vic­to­ry against world 48th-ranked Cana­da on March 24 at the Toy­ota Sta­di­um in Frisco, Texas, Unit­ed States, the first match of a dou­ble­head­er from 5 pm.

That match will be fol­lowed by Cos­ta Ri­ca against Hon­duras at 8.15 pm.

The quar­tet of Mex­i­co, Ja­maica, Pana­ma, and the Unit­ed States ad­vanced to the Na­tions League semi­fi­nals af­ter pro­gress­ing on ag­gre­gate in a home-and-away se­ries match­es ear­li­er this year.

The So­ca War­riors and ei­ther Cos­ta Ri­ca or Hon­duras will now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to join them at the Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cup with wins on March 24.

Ear­li­er this year, the So­ca War­riors en­dured pe­ri­ods of joy and dis­ap­point­ment un­der coach An­gus Eve, who was both crit­i­cized at times and ap­plaud­ed on the oth­er for ei­ther the team’s re­sult or its strat­e­gy or play, and maybe right­ly so.

The em­bat­tled coach showed his worth since tak­ing over from Ter­ry Fen­wick in 2021 by guid­ing his team to the sec­ond po­si­tion in Group A of League ‘A’, cour­tesy of wins against Cu­ra­cao 1-0 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Sep­tem­ber 7: El Sal­vador 3-2 at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional Jorge Magi­co Gon­za­lez on Sep­tem­ber 10: and Guatemala 3-2 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Oc­to­ber 13.

How­ev­er, Cu­ra­cao snapped their un­beat­en record on Oc­to­ber 17, with a 5-3 tri­umph at the Ergi­lo Ha­to Sta­di­um in Cu­ra­cao, a re­sult that rel­e­gat­ed the So­ca War­riors to sec­ond in the group with nine points, while Pana­ma as­sumed the top po­si­tion with 10 points with three wins and a tie.

The So­ca War­riors’ run­ner-up spot in the group saw them pull the might of the USA in a home-and-away se­ries for the chance at a semi­fi­nal place, amidst pre­dic­tions of heavy loss­es in the two games on No­vem­ber 16 and 20.

Eve’s de­ci­sion to em­ploy an all-out de­fen­sive ap­proach in the first match did not pro­vide the re­sults he in­tend­ed to have, how­ev­er, it did pro­vide ad­mi­ra­tion among the coun­try, as well as hope for bet­ter re­sults in the fu­ture de­spite a 3-0 loss in Austin, Texas.

Eve made an al­most to­tal change in his team for the sec­ond match on No­vem­ber 20 at the Sta­di­um, and for the first time in his last four match­es, pro­vid­ed ex­pres­sive foot­ball that led to an im­pres­sive 2-1 vic­to­ry over the USA.

The win brought back mem­o­ries of the T&T foot­ball of old, com­bin­ing at­tack­ing flair with de­fen­sive rigid­i­ty.

The US got the open­ing goal in the 26th minute from An­tonee Robin­son, but the So­ca War­riors fought back valiant­ly with a blis­ter­ing equalis­er from an al­most acute an­gle in the 42nd minute.

Vic­to­ry came from an­oth­er trade­mark free kick from Alvin Jones, whose spank­ing shot flew past the US goalie in the 56th minute.

De­spite the win, the Amer­i­cans ad­vanced to the semi­fi­nals 4-2 on ag­gre­gate, while the War­riors will face the Cana­di­ans for the right to be in Group ‘A’ along­side world cham­pi­ons Ar­genti­na, Pe­ru, and Chile of the Co­pa.

Ear­li­er in the year, in June/Ju­ly, the War­riors al­so con­test­ed the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States and won just once against re­gion­al ri­vals St Kitts/Nevis 3-0.

How­ev­er, af­ter a vis­it to Ja­maica in March that reaped sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits from two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es that end­ed goal­less and 1-0 in favour of the War­riors, an en­counter with the Reg­gae Boyz at the Gold Cup end­ed in a con­vinc­ing 4-0 vic­to­ry for the Ja­maicans at the City Park in St Louis.

A few days lat­er, the War­riors fell to an even more hu­mil­i­at­ing 6-0 loss to the USA at the Bank of Amer­i­ca Sta­di­um in Ju­ly, which saw them make their ex­it from the Gold Cup.

Af­ter­ward, Eve be­came the tar­get of a vi­cious at­tack by some of his play­ers, no­tably mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no, who said he didn’t want to be part of Eve’s set­up.

He ac­cused the coach of los­ing the lock­er room 100 per cent and lat­er called an end to his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.

Mean­while, the coun­try’s women’s foot­ballers missed out on a place at the Con­ca­caf Women’s Gold Cup, sched­uled for next year.

Coached by Richard Hood, the women’s team ap­peared to have been hasti­ly arranged, while Hood failed to get some of the top play­ers that dom­i­nat­ed lo­cal foot­ball.

Hood made his con­cerns known as strik­er Ken­nya ‘YaYa’ blanked an in­vi­ta­tion from him to join the team, while de­fend­er Liana Hinds said she was un­avail­able.

The Women War­riors need­ed to be among the top two teams to qual­i­fy for the Gold Cup, but loss­es against Mex­i­co 6-0 in their first match, cou­pled with a 2-1 de­feat to Puer­to Ri­co fol­lowed by a goal­less draw with the same team (Puer­to Ri­co) al­most guar­an­teed their ex­it.

With just a point from three match­es, the T&T need­ed to beat the Mex­i­cans by five clear goals on De­cem­ber 5 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um but lost 1-0.