The Trinidad and Tobago’s Senior Men’s Team will jet off to Nicaragua on the evening of Christmas Day, December 25th, to play that country’s Senior Men’s National Team in two international friendlies.
The games are slated for December 27th and 30th in Nicaragua and the T&T team will return home on December 31 to continue its build up to the two CONCACAF Gold Cup qualifying playoff matches against Suriname on January 4th and Haiti on January 8th at the Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva.
Trinidad and Tobago head coach Tom Saintfiet said that these two games have come at an ideal time as he prepares the team for the two CONCACAF Gold Cup qualifiers in January against Haiti and Suriname.
“First of all I am very happy that the Football Association has been able to arrange these two friendly matches at such short notice because these will be important preparation games for us before the important Gold Cup qualifiers in January,” Saintfiet told TTFA Media.
“It also helps me as coach to analyse the players we will select and as well as to implement and try out possible strategies which we will want to use in our matches to follow. It will also help us in the development of the team for the future.
“I hope we can have the best possible squad for the matches. We are still not sure about the availability of some of the European-based players and whether they will be released by their clubs because these two games and also the ones in January are not within the FIFA dates but I promise you that the players who will be selected from both foreign and local teams will form a strong squad to give us decent results in Nicaragua and to help us prepare for the important matches in January,” Saintfiet stated.
Saintfiet will announce the squad for the both games in due course once the availability of the players have been confirmed.
Nicaragua is preparing for their Gold Cup qualification matches as well, the 2017 2017 Copa Centroamericana which will be played in Panama. They are grouped with Honduras, Panama and Belize and play their opener against Honduras on January 13th.
Once T&T progresses from the CFU leg of the playoffs in January, they will meet the fifth placed team of the Copa Centroamericana in a playoff at a date to be announced for the final CONCACAF Gold Cup spot.
Nicaragua and T&T played to a 0-0 draw in a friendly at the Hasely Crawford Stadium on October 13th, 2015
In March, 2016, Nicaragua defeated Panama 1-0 in a friendly in Managua and also drew 1-1 with El Salvador in another friendly that same month. They lost 1-0 to Honduras in a friendly in San Pedro Sula in August and drew 0-0 with St Kitts/Nevis in August. Back in December of 2015, they recorded 1-0 and 5-0 victories over Cuba at home before suffering a narrow 1-0 loss away to Costa Rica.
Game Highlights - T&T vs Nicaragua International Friendly on Oct 14, 2015