T&T So­ca War­riors coach An­gus Eve was full of praise for his play­ers whom he de­scribed as he­roes fol­low­ing a thrilling 3-2 come-from-be­hind 3-2 win over Guatemala in League A Group A of the 2023 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Fri­day night.

With the win in front of a crowd es­ti­mat­ed around 7,000 spec­ta­tors, T&T stayed in first place in the five-team round-robin group with a 3-0 record and a max­i­mum of nine points, two ahead of Pana­ma who edged Cu­ra­cao 2-1 al­so on Fri­day, while Guatemala re­main in fourth-place with four points, two points be­hind Mar­tinique who had a 1-0 win over El Sal­vador.

It was a dream start for Guatemala, as Ru­bio Ru­bin who looked clear­ly off struck for the open­er in the 12th minute by touch­ing home a shot right in front of a goal off a pass from Nathaniel Mendez for a 1-0 Guatemala lead.

Guatemala dou­bled their lead to 2-0 in the 32nd when an ini­tial at­tempt from Os­car San­tis was blocked by Alvin Jones, but San­tis’ fol­low-up at­tempt was smashed off the post and in for the goal.

But T&T re­spond­ed to nar­row the gap to 2-1 in the 35th when Alvin Jones con­vert­ed a penal­ty af­ter Noah Pow­der had been fouled in the area two min­utes pri­or.

Nine min­utes in­to the sec­ond half, T&T drew lev­el when a Ne­veal Hack­shaw head­er was saved by Guatemala goal­keep­er Nicholas Ha­gen, but Re­on Moore was on the spot to stab home the re­bound.

The vis­i­tors came close to re­tak­ing the lead on three oc­ca­sions with the clos­est be­ing in the 70th via Jose Pin­to’s head­er that hit the cross­bar and dropped on­to the goal-line be­fore be­ing cleared, fol­lowed by an­oth­er chance from Jose Ar­don, which sub­sti­tute goal­keep­er Christo­pher Biggette who re­placed an in­jured Den­zil Smith man­aged to tip around the top right-hand cor­ner of the goal.

How­ev­er, for the sec­ond match on home soil, sub­sti­tute Nathaniel James, who had come off the bench to re­place Ryan Telfer in the 79th fol­lowed up his hero­ics from scor­ing the win­ner late against Cu­ra­cao, with a gem of a left-foot­ed free-kick that left Ha­gen strand­ed on his line to de­liv­er the 3-2 vic­to­ry.

Speak­ing af­ter the win, the 51-year-old Eve said, “I think we had a lot of he­roes in the park to­day (Fri­day). Den­zil (Smith) went in­to the game with a bad feel­ing.

Eve, a for­mer De­fence Force stand­out ex­plained that, “To­day (Fri­day) is ac­tu­al­ly his birth­day, and I thought he did tremen­dous for us, up to the time he couldn’t go any­more, and we saw Christo­pher Biggette come on and it didn’t look like we were miss­ing Den­zil at all, cause he (Biggette) came on and played great as well as Den­zil. And every­body who came on, Nathaniel James, and every­body who start­ed the game, so cred­it to the play­ers, be­cause some time ago we would not have been able to come back from two-nil in the 17th minute, but cred­it to the play­ers, and to the rest of the staff, who has been work­ing very hard so that we can go and have these kind of days in our foot­ball again.”

Re­flect­ing on what he told his play­ers at the half-time whis­tle at 0-2 down, Eve said, “When we went back in, we thought we were giv­ing them a bit too much re­spect, with the two wing­backs and two cen­ter-backs and we al­so thought the two strik­ers were not quick enough to ha­rass our cen­ter-backs. So we went man-for-man through­out the park, and that’s when we changed and put high pres­sure.”

Look­ing back at the open­ing half, Eve said, “As a team, we were com­posed, but we thought one of the goals was off­side from where the guys were. But then again, I don’t know as yet, so we’ll take a look at the tapes when we do. But we gave away two soft goals, I thought. But we were not brave enough. In the sec­ond half, when we came out more brave, you saw us re­al­ly dom­i­nate for the most part. And then it’s nor­mal when you score a goal and go on top. They peg us back a bit and they were hit­ting long balls, noth­ing re­al­ly to threat­en, and we were play­ing coun­ter­act at that point in time. But the guys played about 100 mins tonight, kept their con­cen­tra­tion, and came out with a game. I tell you if we had played this game a cou­ple of months ago, we wouldn’t have come back in this game, so cred­it to the play­ers.”

With re­gards to his play­ers on the night a sat­is­fied Eve stat­ed, “Every­body did their jobs. Nathaniel, this is not his first game. We put him on and he had that sort of im­pact. Muck­ette (Du­ane) was steady again. Re­on Moore was ex­cel­lent up front, Kaile Au­vray, he added. We thought we would start with the more sol­id play­ers, the more phys­i­cal play­ers, wear them down and then un­leash these play­ers for the last 30 min­utes. It worked as a treat. The plan was nev­er to be down two nil, but you saw the fight of this team and the char­ac­ter, and that is what we’ve been por­tray­ing this tour­na­ment thus far.”

The T&T coach and for­mer FI­FA Un­der-20 World Cup play­er added, “We are get­ting chances. If you are not get­ting chances, then you want to pan­ic. We had no pan­ic be­cause we had these op­por­tu­ni­ties, and we al­ways cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties through­out the match.

“So you know, you pan­ic when you’re not cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, but we were cre­at­ing, and I thought that the game plan worked.

“We want­ed to pass more, we want­ed to play more, and we did that. We knew that we want­ed to put on Kaile and we knew we had to put on Nathaniel.

How­ev­er, the T&T coach did ad­mit to some in­ci­dent that’s kind of thrown off the game plans with Ty­ron Charles’ sub­sti­tu­tion throw­ing off the team a bit, as well as goal­keep­er Smith be­ing in­jured.

In terms of the gen­er­al play of the team and its fight­ing spir­it to come from be­hind for the sec­ond straight match, Eve, a for­mer T&T cap­tain and most-capped play­er Eve added, “As I said pre­vi­ous­ly, we need­ed to build the char­ac­ter of the team first and then you could start to in­sti­tute play. I think we played re­al­ly good foot­ball to­day (Fri­day), we moved the ball well.

Com­ment­ing on the sup­port Eve said, “I think, once you do it well in Trinidad, peo­ple come out. Once you win, they come out. We thank them for that. The boys ap­pre­ci­at­ed the sup­port. They saw what the fans did for them. When we scored the goal, you saw Noah Pow­der cheer­ing up the fans and the crowd came on board with him and they start­ed the wave. Things that we re­mem­ber used to hap­pen. Yes, the crowd sup­port was in­stru­men­tal and giv­ing the guys the 12th man”

Look­ing ahead to his team’s fi­nal match on Tues­day away to Cu­ra­cao at the Ergilio Ha­to Sta­di­um, in Willem­stad from 9 pm where T&T on­ly needs a point to be cer­tain of a top-two fin­ish and a spot in the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nal and the chance to qual­i­fy for the 16-team 2024 Co­pa Amer­i­ca Eve said a few changes are ex­pect­ed.

“We go­ing to give some play­ers a run-out. We’re sure Den­zil can’t play be­cause his fin­ger seems a lit­tle more de­te­ri­o­rat­ed but we have some time, so we’ll def­i­nite­ly rest him. We’ll change up the squad a bit and al­low the oth­er play­ers to get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­cause, as you know, every win­dow is a com­pe­ti­tion match, so we’ll take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to play some of the oth­er play­ers.”

The teams al­ready qual­i­fied for the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League quar­ter­fi­nals are the top four seed­ed teams: USA, Mex­i­co, Cana­da, and Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The win­ners of the four quar­ter­fi­nal match-ups not on­ly will ad­vance to the Con­ca­caf Na­tions League Fi­nals in March but will al­so qual­i­fy for the 2024 Co­pa Amer­i­ca, while the de­feat­ed teams from the quar­ter­fi­nals will meet in a pair of play-in match­es to de­ter­mine the fi­nal two spots in the 2024 Co­pa Amer­i­ca.

Fri­day’s Group A Re­sult

T&T 3 (Alvin Jones 36th pen, Re­on Moore 54th, Nathaniel James 89th) vs Guatemala 2 (Ru­bio Mendez 12th, Os­car San­tis 31st)

Group A

Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

T&T*3*3*0*0*7*4*9

Pana­ma*3*2*1*0*6*2*7

Mar­tinique*3*2*0*1*2*3*6

Guatemala*3*1*1*1*5*4*4

Cu­ra­cao*3*0*0*3*1*4*0

El Sal­vador*3*0*0*3*2*6*0

Group B

Ja­ma­ic*3*2*1*0*7*3*7

Cu­ba*3*1*2*0*1*0*5

Hon­duras*3*1*1*1*4*1*4

Haiti*3*0*3*0*3*3*3

Suri­name*3*0*2*1*2*3*2

Grena­da*3*0*1*2*2*9*1

Up­com­ing match­es

To­day

Group B

Haiti vs Ja­maica @ Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, 8 pm

Hon­duras vs Cu­ba @ Es­ta­dio Chela­to Ucles, Hon­duras, 8 pm

Suri­name vs Haiti, Dr Ir, Franklin Essed Sta­di­um, Suri­name, 8 pm

On Tues­day

Pana­ma vs Guatemala @ Es­ta­dio Rom­mel Fer­nan­dez, 9 pm

El Sal­vador vs Mar­tinique @ Na­cional Jorge Magi­co Gon­za­lez, 9 pm

Cu­ra­cao vs T&T @ Ergilio Ha­to Sta­di­um, Willem­stad, Cu­ra­cao, 9 pm