Na­tion­al coach Derek King in­tends to be brave in at­tack and de­fen­sive­ly or­gan­ised when his team takes on Venezuela on March 27 in his team’s open­ing match of the FI­FA Se­ries at the Pakhtakor Cen­tral Sta­di­um in Tashkent, Uzbek­istan, from 3 pm.

King said his team wants to com­pete and will there­fore at­tempt to im­pose them­selves and their style of play on the game. Diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween the coun­tries have not been cor­dial, and it could set the pace in a 90-minute af­fair that could ei­ther ease built-up ten­sion be­tween two na­tions that are sep­a­rat­ed by a nar­row ex­panse of ocean or set­tle a score on the field to de­ter­mine su­pe­ri­or­i­ty on the day.

King, who was ap­point­ed in­ter­im coach fol­low­ing the part­ing of ways be­tween the then head coach, Dwight Yorke, and the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, com­ing af­ter an un­suc­cess­ful World Cup cam­paign, de­scribed the Venezue­lans as wor­thy con­tenders. “Venezuela is a very or­gan­ised and tech­ni­cal team. They have play­ers com­pet­ing at the high­est lev­el and a lot of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence. They are strong in tran­si­tion, and they have an at­tack in­ter­est, so we have to be dis­ci­plined and come back.”

“Venezuela will bring a strong test. They are a tech­ni­cal­ly un­sung and ex­pe­ri­enced South Amer­i­can team, but we be­lieve in our play­ers. Our mes­sage to this group is sim­ple: be brave, be dis­ci­plined, and ex­press our­selves. We want to com­pete, we want to be­lieve in our­selves that we can com­pete with any team once we ex­e­cute our game mod­el prop­er­ly,” King ex­plained fol­low­ing the T&T team’s ar­rival in Uzbek­istan, a cen­tral Asian na­tion with a pop­u­la­tion of 37 mil­lion peo­ple on Sun­day.

The T&T team is com­ing off a 3-0 loss to Bo­livia in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­counter in Bo­livia on March 15. The team touched down in Uzbek­istan last week and has been go­ing through its paces ahead of to­mor­row’s clash.

De­spite field­ing a team laced with lo­cal play­ers for the Bo­livia match, King has opt­ed for a bal­ance of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers for the FI­FA Se­ries.

Ac­cord­ing to King, “We are ex­cit­ed about the FI­FA se­ries and the op­por­tu­ni­ty giv­en to us to bring our play­ers to­geth­er in a com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment. We have a bal­anced squad with ex­pe­ri­enced se­nior play­ers like Levi Gar­cia, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Den­zil Smith and oth­ers, with some young play­ers get­ting their first op­por­tu­ni­ty at this lev­el. For us, the fo­cus is on growth, build­ing chem­istry and con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op a clear iden­ti­ty as a team.”

“Our ap­proach to the game will be or­gan­ised de­fen­sive­ly and al­so be brave in pos­ses­sion. We want to play, we want to com­pete, we want to im­pose our­selves when we have the ball.

You know, based on our per­for­mance, we have a suc­cess­ful per­for­mance in the sense that we have our clear iden­ti­ty, or­gan­i­sa­tion, dis­ci­pline and courage on the ball. And of course, we want to have a pos­i­tive re­sult. But equal­ly im­por­tant is how we per­form as a team.”

He con­clud­ed, “In terms of us com­pet­ing with teams like Venezuela, we have full be­lief in our play­ers. Once we have dis­ci­pline and con­fi­dence in our style, we can beat any team. This is the lev­el we want to be at, and these are the chal­lenges we have to em­brace. Con­cern­ing the se­nior play­ers, they are very im­por­tant to the team. They will set the stan­dard in terms of their at­ti­tude and lead­er­ship qual­i­ty, which will help guide the play­ers and cre­ate the right cul­ture in the team.”

T&T FI­FA Se­ries squad

Goal­keep­ers:

Jabari Brice (Cen­tral FC), Den­zil Smith (AV Al­ta FC/USA), Teshore Ra­goo (Club San­do FC)

De­fend­ers:

Deron Payne (FC Volen­dam/Hol­land), Rio Car­dines (Crys­tal Palace/Eng­land), Adam Pierre (Cen­tral FC), Justin Gar­cia (Song Lam Nghe/Viet­nam), Jaylen Year­wood (Or­lan­do City/USA), Noah Pow­der (Westch­ester SC/USA)

Mid­field­ers:

Daniel David (Cen­tral FC), Du­ane Muck­ette (So­har FC/Oman), An­dre Ram­per­sad (Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), John-Paul Rochford (Al-Khaboura SC/Oman), Lin­dell Sween (San Juan Jabloteh), Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton (Club San­do), Jer­rin Jack­ie (Bahla Club/Oman), Ja­heim Faustin (San Juan Jabloteh), Dan­taye Gilbert (FK Duk­la Prague/Czech Re­pub­lic)

For­wards:

Levi Gar­cia (Spar­tak Moscow/Rus­sia), Re­on More (Song Lam Nghe/Viet­nam), Ryan Telfer (Hal­i­fax Wan­der­ers/Cana­da), Roald Mitchell (New York Red Bulls/USA), Nathaniel James (North Texas SC/USA)

Coach: Derek King