Speedy at­tack­ers Re­on Moore and Ryan Telfer, both known for their abil­i­ty to get pass op­po­nents with sheer pace, have re­turned to the Trinidad and To­ba­go se­nior men’s foot­ball team ahead of Tues­day’s im­por­tant friend­ly against hosts Rus­sia at the Kalin­ingrad Are­na.

​Their re­turn, along with that of steady de­fend­ers An­dre Ray­mond and An­dre Ram­per­sad, has pro­vid­ed a sense of sta­bil­i­ty to a team that was drubbed 5-0 by South Ko­rea on May 30 in the Unit­ed States.

Daniel Phillips, al­so known for his de­fen­sive and at­tack­ing ex­ploits, spoke to the me­dia short­ly af­ter the team touched down in Moscow while await­ing a con­nect­ing flight to Kalin­ingrad. Though he ex­pects a tough con­test, Phillips be­lieves the re­turn of these key play­ers will help steady the ship.

​A de­fen­sive mid­field­er for Eng­lish League One club Steve­nage FC, Phillips was re­al­is­tic when asked about his ex­pec­ta­tions ahead of the Rus­sia match.

​“I ex­pect a tough game,” Phillips said. “I ex­pect them to be a very dif­fi­cult team to break down, with a lot of at­tack­ing tal­ent. But I al­so think we’ve got a lot of qual­i­ty. We’ve brought back some of the more ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers for this game, like Telfer and Ram­per­sad, who should help steady the ship, so I’m ex­cit­ed to see what will hap­pen.”

​Re­flect­ing on the re­cent heavy de­feat, Phillips looked to­ward the fu­ture.

​“Against the Ko­re­ans, ob­vi­ous­ly, it was a tough game and a tough re­sult. But how we lift our­selves again as we look ahead to this match against Rus­sia, and al­so the Na­tions League in Sep­tem­ber, will be im­por­tant. I think for the first 40 min­utes we showed a lot of qual­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in our de­fen­sive shape. We were very tight and very dif­fi­cult to break down. We need to take that in­to this game and ex­tend it for longer pe­ri­ods. Al­so, we need to show our qual­i­ty on the ball a lot more.”

​Na­tion­al coach Derek King is us­ing these match­es as vi­tal prepa­ra­tion ahead of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League, which kicks off in Sep­tem­ber.

​Against the FI­FA World Cup-bound South Ko­rea, the T&T team, miss­ing sev­er­al of its se­nior stars re­ceived a bap­tism of fire in Salt Lake City, though the ex­pe­ri­ence for most of the young squad would be count­ed as in­valu­able. While Rus­sia will not play any part in the up­com­ing World Cup due to their on­go­ing ban fol­low­ing the 2022 in­va­sion of Ukraine, they re­main a for­mi­da­ble side, hav­ing de­liv­ered an im­pres­sive dis­play to thrash Burk­i­na Fa­so 3-0 in a friend­ly on Fri­day.

​Phillips is rel­ish­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to test him­self against such op­po­si­tion.

“I feel good. I’m ex­cit­ed to play,” he told the me­dia. “I love the chal­leng­ing games and tough op­po­si­tion. They’re ob­vi­ous­ly a very high-ranked team with some good in­di­vid­u­als, and I think it’s go­ing to be a great ex­pe­ri­ence for us. When you look at this squad that has been se­lect­ed again, there are some new faces com­ing in, at least get­ting re­called in­to the team.”

Apart from the in­clu­sion of Telfer, Ray­mond and oth­er play­ers, the T&T team will be mi­nus the Ma­jor League Soc­cer (MLS) quin­tet of Dante Sealy, Wayne Fredrick II, Tyrese Spicer, Jay­lon Year­wood, and de­fend­er Ko­bi Hen­ry, who cap­tained the T&T team against South Ko­rea. The play­ers asked to be ex­cused for the en­counter, along­side Roald Mitchell of the New York Red Bulls and new­found Ja­cob Greene of Lex­ing­ton SC, who made his de­but in the coun­try’s pre­vi­ous match.

Al­so ex­clud­ed from the team is speedy Spar­tak Moscow at­tack­er Levi Gar­cia, Rio Car­dines, the Crys­tal Palace de­fend­er, Deron Payne who plays for Volen­dam in the Dutch League, and new re­cruit Kier­an Ng­wenya who rep­re­sents Dun­fermline Ath­let­ic in Scot­land.

Phillips quizzed on how the coach pre­pares for such match­es, said, “I think it’s dif­fi­cult to bring every­one to­geth­er at one time, com­ing from a lot of dif­fer­ent places. Some peo­ple have in­juries, and some peo­ple’s sea­sons run at dif­fer­ent times. As play­ers, we just have to make the best of what the sit­u­a­tion is and work with who­ev­er is avail­able and who­ev­er is there.

“Trav­el is al­ways dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly for me, some­times com­ing from Eng­land, but you just have to pre­pare as best you can, trav­el with the right staff, do the re­cov­ery when you do reach your des­ti­na­tion, the prepa­ra­tion in the gym and make sure you’re ready to get go­ing. You can’t use any ex­cuse; you just have to be ready to play and per­form.”

T&T SQUAD

GOAL­KEEP­ERS: Jabari Brice, Teshorne Ra­goo, Den­zil Smith

DE­FEND­ERS: Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton, An­dre Ray­mond, Noah Pow­der, An­tho­ny Her­bert, Justin Gar­cia

MID­FIELD­ERS: Daniel Phillips, Daniel David, Ju­dah Gar­cia, Ali Kaz­im Nakhid, An­dre Ram­per­sad, Michel Poon Angeron, Ryan Telfer, Mo­lik Khan, John-Paul Rochford, Kasi­him Thomas

STRIK­ERS: Re­on Moore, Ja­heim Faustin, Isa­iah Lee