Pana­ma’s Women foot­ballers are sched­uled to touch down on lo­cal shores to­day ahead of their in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly en­coun­ters against T&T's So­ca Princess­es on Thurs­day at the Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la from 6.30 pm, and the sec­ond match on Sat­ur­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va from 4pm.

The Pana­ma­ni­ans will be us­ing the match­es as prepa­ra­tion for the FI­FA Women's World Cup in France next year. The T&T 18-mem­ber women team be­ing will be led by vet­er­an Tasha St Louis in the team's first in­ter­na­tion­al game un­der coach Ja­maal Shabazz.

Like the Pana­ma­ni­ans, they too will be see­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion for the first time this year. TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal is op­ti­mistic the lo­cal women will utilise the two match­es to their ben­e­fit.

“I think it’s two very good friend­lies at this time of the prepa­ra­tion. We were wait­ing on two good games and they are in front of us now. Both teams are in the midst of prepa­ra­tions for their qual­i­fy­ing match­es and the Pana­ma team is al­so look­ing for­ward to these match­es which I think shows that we can ex­pect two very com­pet­i­tive games,” Corneal said.

He said, “Pana­ma from all ac­counts have ad­vanced their pro­grammes in tremen­dous fash­ion. Their Men’s team have qual­i­fied for the Rus­sia 2018 World Cup and now their women’s pro­gramme is tak­ing off and they are look­ing to prove their worth. We on the oth­er hand are look­ing to con­tin­ue where we left off the last time around in 2014 and go one step fur­ther this time. We have not played reg­u­lar­ly of re­cent but this al­so means that our ladies are very ea­ger to step on­to the pitch and kick-start their cam­paign for the World Cup in France next year.”

Team cap­tain St Louis said, “Yes, def­i­nite­ly we are very, very ex­cit­ed and hun­gry for these two games. As a group we have been work­ing very hard over the past few months. The FA has kept us to­geth­er and now it’s a mat­ter of us go­ing out there and putting in the dis­play in a match sit­u­a­tion. We al­ways know the im­por­tance of in­ter­na­tion­al match­es and it’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to get the match time with these two games against Pana­ma."

Tick­ets for both match­es are priced at $20 and will be avail­able at the game venue on the day.

Mean­while St Louis and com­pa­ny can al­so look for­ward to some much need­ed in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es as T&T has been named as one of the host for the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Women’s Chal­lenge Se­ries 2018 next month (April 18-29).

T&T will host Group One that will com­prise four teams at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va. Oth­er groups will be held at Ja­maica; Stade Sylvia Cator in Haiti and An­tigua Recre­ation Grounds in An­tigua.

T&T will lat­er turn its fo­cus to the World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion in May.

GROUPS:

Group A: St. Kitts and Nevis (hosts), St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St. Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca

Group B: Ja­maica (hosts), Bar­ba­dos, Cu­ba and Turks and Caicos Is­lands

Group C: Haiti (hosts), Mar­tinique, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and USVI

Group D: An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (hosts), Cu­ra­cao, Guade­loupe and Montser­rat; and

Group E: Trinidad & To­ba­go (hosts), Grena­da, Guyana and Suri­name.