Trinidad&Tobago’s senior men’s soccer team arrived in San Jose Sunday evening ahead of Tuesday’s 2018 World Cup qualifying encounter against La Sele (Seleccion Nacional), Costa Rica’s national team at the Estadio Nacional in La Sabana.
The T&T team remained in Denver, Colorado following Thursday’s 2-0 defeat to the United States to continue preparations before departing the US with head coach Dennis Lawrence overseeing three training sessions at the Colorado Rapids training pitch, located near to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
With the US match out of the away, Lawrence has emphasized that the focus now must be on Costa Rica.
“The US match is gone, it’s out of the way and now we’ve got to look ahead to the next one which is Costa Rica. We have got to pick up and go again,” Lawrence said.
Veteran Carlos Edwards said it was a situation now where: “We’ve got to roll our sleeves up and move onto the next one. It’s no sense dwelling on the game with the US.
“We missed out on a chance to secure at least a point. Obviously, after a day we’ve reflected and the coach has gone over the clips for us, showing us the positive side of things and to be honest, we did have some very good moments in the game where we showed good shape and organization. But the two goals came at crucial moments where we slipped up. What we’ll do now is try to react as best as possible, work on some of the areas and just focus on what is ahead which is Costa Rica on Tuesday.”
On the Costa Rica side, La Sele need to sharpen several of their weapons to face T&T.
Last Thursday’s confrontation against Panama showed that the La Sele lost strength in specific points and needs to sharpen their game if they want to make to the Russia 2018 games.
Although the game against Panama ended in a scoreless tie, it did not do well for Costa Rica’s standing in the CONCACAF Hexagonal phase (Nov 2016 – October 2017)of qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup tied in second place with the US, with eight points each. Mexico with 14 points, followed by Panama with 6 points and Honduras with 4. T&T is in last position with 3 points.
