The in­tri­ca­cies of T&T's prepa­ra­tion ahead of the open­ing World Cup qual­i­fi­er against Guyana on March 25 in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is hav­ing lit­tle to no ef­fect on for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er, now ES­PN foot­ball an­a­lyst Sha­ka His­lop.

The for­mer St Mary's grad­u­ate who has stood be­tween the up­rights for the So­ca War­riors for more than two World Cup Qual­i­fiers, told Guardian Me­dia Sports in an in­ter­view on Tues­day that he is ea­ger to see a per­for­mance that says that T&T foot­ball has found its re­silience once more.

Lo­cal foot­ball has been hard-hit by im­prop­er prepa­ra­tion that stems from a per­sis­tent coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, which has ham­pered the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to se­cure warm-up match­es, and has pre­vent­ed T&T from gain­ing home ad­van­tage against the Guyanese on March 25.

His­lop, who played at the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many said he has been dis­heart­ened by the neg­a­tive re­ac­tions to the se­ries of set-backs in the World Cup cam­paign to date, most of which have ques­tioned the abil­i­ty of the team to earn a qual­i­fy­ing berth, with­out a ball be­ing kicked.

The nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, be­ing led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad an­nounced on Sat­ur­day that the TT vs Guyana World Cup match was moved from T&T and will now be played in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, a de­ci­sion that came af­ter sports and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe told the pub­lic that the home-match would not get the ap­proval of the gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Health, if the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers, who are ex­pect­ed in for the match, were not sub­ject­ed to a manda­to­ry quar­an­tine pe­ri­od.

Sha­ka, a for­mer Eng­lish Pre­mier League cus­to­di­an with West Ham Unit­ed said it is from these chal­lenges that the coun­try's foot­ballers can cap­i­talise.

"It's giv­ing us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove to our­selves that we can ad­just, we can adapt what­ev­er the cir­cum­stance. For me, the kind of ex­cuse-mak­ing and fin­ger-point­ing that is hap­pen­ing now, be­fore we've kicked a sin­gle ball, points to a lot more than just the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee or the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Sports and the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, not be­ing in sync. We have got to take these punch­es and roll with them. To see how we've re­act­ed is a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing to me, look­ing in from the out­side," His­lop said.

Sha­ka, who cele­br­taed his 52nd birth­day on Mon­day and who is very out­spo­ken on T&T foot­ball fur­ther stat­ed: "I hope to see a per­for­mance and a re­sult to show that our foot­ball has found its re­silience again. Af­ter the dis­ap­point­ment of 2019 and those dis­ap­point­ing re­sults, we need to show that we can bounce back. We need­ed to show that we're able to raise our game against both less­er and bet­ter op­po­si­tion, that we're pre­pared to roll our sleeves up and fight and grind re­sults out in a way that I don't think we've done since the US qual­i­fi­er for Rus­sia 2018."

The T&T foot­ballers re­sumed train­ing for this coun­try's 2022 Qatar World Cup fi­nal on Feb­ru­ary 17 with a 23-play­er train­ing squad un­der coach Ter­ry Fen­wick af­ter the team's 7-0 drub­bing in a friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al match against the USA on Jan­u­ary 31 in the USA.

The So­ca War­riors open­ing match against Guyana will be played at a nue­tral venue in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic which do not have COVID-19 quara­tine pro­to­cols.

Fol­low­ing the Guay­na match, the So­ca War­riors will play their next two match­es away to Puer­to Ri­co on March 28 and then the Ba­hamas on April 5. They will com­plete the group phase with a match against St Kitts/Nevis on April 8 at home, need­ing to top the group to be able to ad­vance.