… Guyana to play Cuba in final Group D match on Sunday

THEY fell 5-1 to Barbados in their opening game of the CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Caribbean Qualifier tournament on Wednesday, but head coach Akilah Castello said Guyana might be down, but certainly not out of the competition.
“We were not too worried about the end result of the game, because our players would have shown some amount of fight, given the challenges they were faced with coming forward to these games,” Castello said while speaking to the Media after her team’s defeat.
Despite getting the first goal of the game – a beautiful free-kick by Tiandi Smith – Guyana succumbed to the ‘Bajans’ who got a double from captain Tia Briggs-Thompson, while Tiana Sealy and Caitlin Padmore each had a strike. Smith’s own goal added to the tally for the visitors.
“For these girls, it was the first time being exposed to such a major game so they were nervous,” Castello said, stating that the players were selected from the Guyana Football Federation’s (GFF) Academy Training Centres (ATCs).
“Well, the coaching staff, we tried our best to give them an idea of what the atmosphere would have been like. We also told them about the additional coaches in the stands, but, like I said, this is the first major competition for these girls, most of them never played under floodlights before, so we did our best to help them along the way,” Castello said.
Guyana will play Cuba on Sunday at 17:00hrs in their final game of championship, but Castello pointed out, for her coaching staff, while winning and moving ahead is something they would want, their primary focus is development.
“For us, we’re looking at it as a form of development. They have to learn to play in a formation in a competitive environment. They did try their best to execute. We were not so worried because we basically lost the game (to Barbados) on free-kicks and possession-wise I think it was balanced, so we’re not too worried,” the Lady Jags coach noted.
In the Caribbean Zone, 19 Caribbean Football Union (CFU)-member national teams have entered the qualifying competition, consisting of two stages.
Apart from Haiti, who received a bye as hosts of the final round, the remaining 18 teams entered the first round and were divided into three groups of four teams and two groups of three teams.
The winners of each group advance to the final round to join Haiti, where they are divided into two groups of three teams, with the top three teams qualifying for the final tournament as the CFU representatives.
Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, Guyana, and St Vincent and the Grenadines were automatically seeded in Groups A–E respectively, as hosts of each first round group, while the remaining 14 teams were seeded based on the results of the previous two editions of the qualifying competition.