Diminu­tive T&T strik­er Nathaniel “Nat­ty” James is ex­pect­ing a tough match when the So­ca War­riors face Cos­ta Ri­ca in San Jose in their fi­nal Group B match of the CON­CA­CAF World Cup qual­i­fiers Tues­day.

‘Nat­ty’, as he is well known, came on as a sub­sti­tute to score for the So­ca War­riors in an em­phat­ic 6-2 tri­umph over a bat­tling St Kitts & Nevis out­fit on Fri­day be­fore a packed crowd at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

James and the rest of the T&T team ar­rived in San Jose at mid­day on Sat­ur­day and had their first train­ing ses­sion Sun­day. He ad­mit­ted he is still amazed by the large turnout of fans on Fri­day but said it pro­vid­ed tremen­dous sup­port for his team, not­ing that it will be the norm for the team’s match­es in the fu­ture.

The win pushed the So­ca War­riors to sec­ond on the five-team stand­ings to sev­en from three match­es, hav­ing drawn with Grena­da 2-2 in their open­ing match on June 5 last year, be­fore a 7-1 thrash­ing of the Ba­hamas put them on four points, a few days lat­er.

James said they spent the past two days watch­ing over the St Kitts & Nevis match, as well as look­ing on as Cos­ta Ri­ca ham­mered the Ba­hamas 8-0 which took them to nine points with an un­blem­ished record to date.

Still, James be­lieves his team can get the bet­ter of the Cos­ta Ri­cans to­mor­row.

“We watched the St Kitts & Nevis game yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day), we looked at the Cos­ta Ri­ca/Ba­hamas match, and we be­lieve we can go out and com­pete. I think it’s a good game to show our­selves as well, to show our qual­i­ty against a top team like Cos­ta Ri­ca. We just need to be fo­cused; we need to be ag­gres­sive in our play and just be mind­ful of our sur­round­ings and what’s hap­pen­ing. So yeah, it’s go­ing to be a good game,” James said.

James’ in­put in the team has been a bright spark for na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke and his staff, who promised fans that there could be a few young play­ers who would leave jaws drop­ping when the team plays.

Though James has been with the So­ca War­riors for sev­er­al years now, CF Mon­tre­al mid­field­er/strik­er Dante Sealy im­pressed the crowd with two goals on de­but on Fri­day.

James spoke high­ly of Sealy, say­ing: “We have a good group right now. It’s a strong and com­pet­i­tive team. Dante has shown what he can do; he is a re­al­ly good play­er, and I like him a lot. We spoke a few times, and I like his per­son­al­i­ty a lot, and we haven’t even known each oth­er too much. He is fi­nal­ly break­ing in­to the team, so hope­ful­ly, my oth­er friend Re­al Gill can get in­to the team and start play­ing as well.”

Group B stand­ings

Team*PTS*MP*W*L*D*GF*GA*GD

1*Cos­ta Ri­ca*9*3*3*0*0*15*0*15

2*T&T*7*3*2*0*1*15*5*10

3*Grena­da*4*3*1*1*1*8*5*3

4*St Kitts & Nevis*3*3*1*2*0*3*10*-7

5*Ba­hamas*0*4*0*4*0*1*22*-21