AC Port of Spain will be bank­ing on their abil­i­ty as a foot­ball gi­ant in lo­cal foot­ball as well as a bit of luck when they face Mar­tini­quan club Gold­en Li­ons in a do-or-die clash of the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup at 6 pm at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day.

Both clubs are win­less so far and are at the bot­tom of the stand­ing with­out a point. They need to be among the top two teams to progress out of the group.

The T&T men lost their first game 1-0 to Mo­ca FC of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic at the Es­ta­dio Cibao and fur­ther di­min­ished their chances of pro­gress­ing when they went down to Ja­maica’s Cav­a­liers FC 2-1 at the Sabi­na Park Sta­di­um.

The Gold­en Li­ons went down to T&T’s league cham­pi­on club De­fence Force 1-0, which al­so drew with the Cav­a­liers 1-1.

But at a press brief­ing at the Sta­di­um on Tues­day, mere mo­ments be­fore the teams had their fi­nal prepa­ra­tion ses­sion, AC Port of Spain coach Gilbert Bateau said they un­der­stand the po­si­tion they have put them­selves in and they are ready to do what they need to do to get out of the group.

“We don’t have any points on the ta­ble as yet but if you’re look­ing at the stand­ing right now, we have De­fence Force on four points. It gives us a win­dow where we can com­pete and win these two games and let the chips fall where they may af­ter.

“We brought in Ty­rone Charles and Mark Ramdeen be­cause we con­sid­er them to be valu­able as­sets to how AC Port of Spain ac­tu­al­ly plays their foot­ball. And we will see lat­er the re­sults of these sign­ings,” Bateau ex­plained.

Both play­ers have been stand­outs in lo­cal foot­ball and Bateau and his charges will need a bit of mag­ic from them, as well as some favours from oth­er teams if they are to ad­vance.

In­stru­men­tal mid­field­er Du­ane Muck­ette, who scored AC Port of Spain’s lone goal against the Ja­maicans at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, said he, like the oth­er play­ers, is aware that they need to win against a very good Gold­en Li­ons out­fit.

“I think we’re as good as any oth­er team in this tour­na­ment. How­ev­er, this team, Gold­en Li­ons, I’ve been watch­ing them since the tour­na­ment start­ed. Even in the Shield that they were in, I know that this was a very good team. They played very good foot­ball, so to get the re­sult that we want, we have to come out there and do the best that we can do.”

Coach Bateau lat­er list­ed some of his team’s ‘stats’, say­ing in the two match­es they played, they dom­i­nat­ed pos­ses­sion but they were un­lucky not to score. In AC PoS’s sec­ond match, Bateau said his team had 19 shots at goal but failed to score.

Mean­while, Li­ons coach Jean-Fran­cois Go said to­day’s game is go­ing to be a tough one against a pro­fes­sion­al team from T&T, and the Gold­en Li­ons will do their best to get points against them.

Cap­tain Kevin Parse­main, who has the record as the all-time lead­ing scor­er for the Mar­tinique na­tion­al team, said at the press con­fer­ence: “This is a sec­ond game for us. In the first one, we had no idea of the lev­el, but now we know we can take points against this kind of team.

“We lack in ex­pe­ri­ence, we know that but we have a lot of qual­i­ty, we know that too, and now af­ter the first game, it will be a com­pet­i­tive game against a pro­fes­sion­al team like AC Port of Spain.”

STAND­INGS

GROUP A

Pl*Team*MP*W*D*L*Gf*Ga*Gd*Pts

1*Cav­a­lier FC*2*1*1*0*3*2*1*4

2*De­fence Force*2*1*1*0*2*1*1*4

3*Mo­ca FC*1*1*0*0*1*0*1*3

4*Gold­en Li­ons*1*0*0*1*0*1*-1*0

5*AC Port of Spain*2*0*0*2*1*3*-2*0