Trinidad and Tobago’s Beach Soccer Men will be aiming to make a winning start to their Concacaf Beach Soccer championship campaign when they battle Antigua/Barbuda at the Malcolm Beach Soccer Facility, Nassau,Bahamas at 5:30pm (6:30pm TT time) on Monday.
The T&T team has been in Nassau since last week following a training camp in Barbados during which they pulled off convincing victories over the hosts and Guyana before drawing 3-3 with England.
Head Coach Benny Astorga believes his team in the best possible shape going into the qualifiers.
“We are in a very good shape right now. We’ve had an extensive period of intense, quality preparations largely due to the efforts of the Association which did its best to get us what we needed, and now we are just ready to get the ball rolling in the Bahamas,” Astorga told TTFA Media.
“The players have worked extremely hard, they have been disciplined and dedicated and now they are all just very eager and excited to take the sand and demonstrate their capabilities,” added the former US Beach Soccer national team member.
“We’ve played a lot of emphasis on correcting our mistakes and trying to make use of our goalscoring chances from the early and not have to wait until the latter stages of the game. We are hoping to take control and settle early,” he added.
T&T will look to the likes of prolific scorer Kevon Woodley, Shallun Bobb and Zane Coker who have all been among the goals in recent outings along with the Chad Appoo who has overseas experience, and former T&T senior team player Makan Hislop to help push them past the Antiguans.
In the 2013 qualifiers which were also played in Nassau, T&T recorded two wins and two losses, finishing seventh, and advanced to the quarter finals in 2015, completing four wins in six matches in El Salvador to finish fifth overall. The team’s rise continued in 2015 at the Lucayan Cup in Bahamas which they won, defeating Bahamas 5-3 and Mexico 5-4.
(A game lasts thirty-six minutes and is split up into three twelve-minute periods.)