THE result of the draw for the CONCACAF Final Round of World Cup qualifying really held no “team” surprises, for we all knew who the six teams were.
And in this regard, the Federation has been extremely helpful in publishing the schedule for the Final Round in a full page advertisement, with the TT matches, and indeed our home matches, specifically highlighted.
Let us look at this schedule, and how it might affect us, and how we might exploit it. Then we will look at the players, and the team we might be fielding to finish among the top three in the group.
There will be no “easy” encounters in this round, just as there were none in 2005. Then we defeated Panama twice, Guatemala and Mexico once each, and drew once with Costa Rica.
The USA beat us twice, and Costa Rica, Mexico and Guatemala beat us once each. Only Guatemala dominated us, scoring five in Guatemala City.
We begin away to El Salvador on February 11, and I think we should all take some satisfaction in this. We had played the Salvadorans in a friendly earlier this year, and did well against them.
They qualified for the Final Round by eliminating Suriname and Haiti. A win against El Salvador on opening day will be a great boost for us, and we must go for this.
Following El Salvador, and a break of just over six weeks, we play Honduras here — but in which stadium we do not know! — on Saturday March 28, and then head off to meet the USA on April 1, again in a city not known at the time of writing.
We should be going to America with six points under our belt, but this is not a prediction, just a hopeful assumption.
I will hope for a draw against the Americans.
From there we take another break before we play Costa Rica here at home in early June, flying out immediately after to meet Mexico away on June 10.
We have never beaten the Ticos in World Cup qualifying, at our best getting draws at home, and losing narrowly in San Jose. I do not expect us to get points against Mexico in Mexico, but will celebrate if we do!
This will bring us to the end of our first leg matches, with a possible eight points out of fifteen. But this remains a big assumption, and something the team will have to step up to achieve.
In the second leg matches, we have both USA and Mexico here at home, along with El Salvador, and we can, as we all know we can, get nine points from these three home matches.
But will we? We will need to develop a level of consistency which has eluded us in the past. We cannot excel in one game and then falter in another. In recent matches we struggled in the first half, but rose in the second. Against Cuba we created many chances, but excellent goalkeeping kept us at bay.
The missed chances were all narrow misses, and with a little work, these will translate into goals. We can put our faith in this team, to step up and get the early points for us.
We also have a really good mix of players from whom to choose. We are about to go into the Digicel Caribbean Cup in Jamaica, where we will not have any of our European-based players.
This tournament will give opportunities to players like Kareem Hyland, Keon Daniel, Akiel Edwards, Hislop and Toussaint to step up and lead in the absence of the more experienced Yorke, Latapy, Lawrence, Carlos Edwards, Jones and Birchall.
The locally based men will be trying to prove to Coach Maturana that they have what it takes to carry TT to South Africa — and all of this can only be good for TT Football.
Then TT will be hosting the CONCACAF U-20 Finals in late January, to find qualifiers for the FIFA U-20 Championships later next year. This U-20 Team contains the core of the U-17 Squad which qualified for the FIFA Under-17 Championships in South Korea in 2007.
They have stayed together as a squad, playing — and winning — the National Super League just last week. We can expect a couple of these players to be ready for the Senior Team as 2009 goes by.
All of this sets up a fabulous year of football for TT!