Do or die for women footballers against Mexico

This will be at the Sahlen’s Sta­di­um in Cary, North Car­oli­na in the Unit­ed States.

The match, a qual­i­fi­er for next year’s FI­FA World Cup in France, will be cru­cial for both teams hav­ing lost their re­spec­tive open­ing match­es on Thurs­day.

The un­der-pre­pared So­ca Princess­es were thrashed 3-0 by Pana­ma in Thurs­day’s open­ing en­counter while the Mex­i­cans were ham­mered 6-0 by the Unit­ed States in the sec­ond match of the dou­ble-head­er.

Yet as­sis­tant coach An­ton Corneal be­lieves to­day’s match will be a chal­leng­ing task for his girls but cer­tain­ly not an im­pos­si­ble one.

“It comes down to how bad­ly the girls want the win,” said Corneal, who coached the team dur­ing the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Qual­i­fiers in Ja­maican in Au­gust.

He told Guardian Me­dia Sports that there were a num­ber of ar­eas in the team that need­ed work­ing on, as seen against Pana­ma Thurs­day but said it was dif­fi­cult to sin­gle out any one spe­cif­ic area.

“It’s not easy to point to one area that need­ed work on be­cause you might point to the team’s de­fence, for in­stance, but the goal may re­al­ly stem from an­oth­er de­part­ment. My hope is that the girls are men­tal­ly ready,” Corneal ex­plained.

He dis­missed claims the team is un­der-pre­pared, say­ing the team’s pre­pared­ness should not be an is­sue as it is the sit­u­a­tion they have found them­selves in at the mo­ment.

De­spite Thurs­day’s de­feat, how­ev­er, Corneal said the mood in the camp was still good, adding quick­ly that the mood does not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late to win­ning per­for­mances on the field.

The T&T team will be mi­nus key play­ers Ken­nya Cord­ner and Jenelle Cun­ning­ham, both pick­ing up in­juries in the last match.

Yes­ter­day, the team went through some last minute fine-tun­ing ahead of to­day’s en­counter.

The T&T foot­ballers must fin­ish among the top two teams in the group to be able to ad­vance. This means with no points from their first match, the girls who are be­ing led by Tasha St Louis, must beat the Mex­i­cans to­day and get at least a point or full points against the Amer­i­cans on Wednes­day at the same venue.