WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve and his goal­keep­er Mar­vin Phillip be­lieve that de­spite the US team hav­ing a bet­ter rank and more qual­i­ty play­ers than them, they can still eke out a win that will push them in­to the quar­ter­fi­nal of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States Sun­day night from 7 pm.

They face a sec­ond-string US team which com­pris­es play­ers hun­gry for a spot on the first team, at the Bank of Amer­i­can Sta­di­um. The US, the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and host, need on­ly a draw in the group (Group A) to progress.

The Amer­i­cans hold the top spot in the group with four points and a su­pe­ri­or goal dif­fer­ence on sec­ond-place Ja­maica, who would al­so need to draw with group min­nows St Kitts and Nevis on Sun­day to ad­vance. The game can well awak­en the ghost of 1989 when T&T, need­ing just a draw against the US at home, lost 1-0.

There was since very lit­tle re­venge for the War­riors, oth­er than a 2-1 vic­to­ry over the US team at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va dur­ing the 2017 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment that boot­ed the Amer­i­cans out of the qual­i­fiers.

On Sat­ur­day at a press con­fer­ence, Phillip said once the T&T team plays to its true po­ten­tial, it can come away the win­ner while Eve be­lieves a win for his team will be a con­fir­ma­tion of im­prove­ment since their process of re­build­ing start­ed back in 2021.

Asked what was his biggest chal­lenge, Eve said: "To start with the be­lief that we didn't start with against Ja­maica. I think for 30 min­utes we looked shell-shocked but I thought af­ter that in the sec­ond half, we set­tled down re­al­ly nice­ly and start­ed to show our­selves.

"We're in a dif­fi­cult group. No­body ex­pects us to come out of the group, no­body, be­cause both teams (USA and Ja­maica) are ranked high­er than us. They have bet­ter qual­i­ty play­ers than us, so any­thing that we do is a bonus com­ing out of this group. Both teams have four points, we have three. We're still in it go­ing in­to the last game and I think that in it­self is progress," Eve ex­plained.

The for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er, who holds the record for the most games played for his coun­try, dis­missed claims that the US team is a sec­ond-string team, say­ing, the hunger of the team (USA), as the play­ers have been bat­tling for spots on the first team makes it even more dif­fi­cult as the play­ers all have a point to prove to their coach­es and na­tion­al se­lec­tors.

Since their 3-0 tri­umph over St Kitts and Nevis on June 25, the War­riors looked like a shad­ow of them­selves, go­ing down em­bar­rass­ing­ly in a Caribbean af­fair 4-1 at City Park in St Louis, Mis­souri. Now, how­ev­er, on­ly a win can re­vive their chances of a quar­ter­fi­nal berth.

Eve said he has been try­ing to find out what is the cause for their slow starts.

"That's the mys­tery we're try­ing to solve. The warm-ups were good, and the prepa­ra­tion was good. I think some of the men­tal prepa­ra­tion was not that good maybe, so we're try­ing to cor­rect that, but our sec­ond half in both match­es was ex­cel­lent halves.

"In the Ja­maica game, we looked like we want­ed to cre­ate a lot of chances and, in fact, we did cre­ate chances, with­out tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties. But in the St Kitts and Nevis game that's when we took over but in that game, the pitch didn't re­al­ly help us in the first half, as there was a lot of wa­ter when we start­ed the game."

T&T Squad

Goal­keep­ers: Den­zil Smith (W Con­nec­tion), Nick­las Fren­derup (Ran­heim IL/Nor­way), Mar­vin Phillip (AC Port of Spain).

De­fend­ers Alvin Jones (Club San­do), Shan­non Gomez (San An­to­nio FC/USA), Jo­evin Jones (Po­lice FC), Tris­ton Hodge (Hart­ford Ath­let­ic/USA), Ka­reem Moses (FF Jaro/Fin­land), Le­land Archer (Charleston Bat­tery/USA), Shel­don Bateau (SK Bev­eren/Bel­gium), Aubrey David (SD Au­cas/Ecuador);

Mid­field­ers:Mo­lik Khan (Min­neso­ta Unit­ed/USA), An­dre Ram­per­sad (HFX Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Ne­veal Hack­shaw (Oak­land Roots SC/USA), Ajani For­tune (At­lanta Unit­ed/USA), Luke Singh (Atleti­co Ot­tawa/Cana­da), Kaïlé Au­vray (Sport­ing KC Acad­e­my/USA), Re­al Gill (Club San­do), Ryan Telfer (Mi­a­mi FC/USA), Kevin Moli­no (Colum­bus Crew/USA),

For­wards:

Levi Gar­cia (AEK Athens FC/Greece), Kadeem Corbin (La Hor­quet­ta Rangers), Mal­colm Shaw (Atleti­co Ot­tawa/Cana­da).