Na­tion­al Un­der-17 foot­ball coach Shawn Coop­er is in the po­si­tion he once en­vi­sioned when he and his charges left for Cos­ta Ri­ca to con­test Group B of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fiers some two weeks ago—his team must beat host Cos­ta Ri­ca to ad­vance.

Coop­er’s en­tire plan had been mapped out that way, as he told the me­dia it would be a bat­tle be­tween his charges and the Cos­ta Ri­cans for the top spot.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, Guyana cre­at­ed two up­sets that even­tu­al­ly bal­anced off in the end, draw­ing with T&T on Feb­ru­ary 7, and against Cos­ta Ri­ca on Feb­ru­ary 13 in San Jose, which left both the ju­nior So­ca War­riors and the Cos­ta Ri­cans in po­si­tions two and one, re­spec­tive­ly, on sev­en points af­ter three match­es with Los Ticos in pole po­si­tion on goal dif­fer­ence.

Coop­er has since called for an all-round ef­fort against the Cos­ta Ri­cans Sun­day night at 9 pm at the Es­ta­dio Ale­jan­dro Mor­era So­to, with on­ly the win­ner of the group qual­i­fy­ing for the FI­FA U-17 World Cup in Qatar lat­er this year.

To date, his new-found strik­er Josi­ah Kallicha­ran from Eng­land has proven to be worth the wait, hav­ing scored a hat-trick in their last en­counter against Sint Maarten in a 9-0 thrash­ing, as well as a dou­ble in a 3-1 vic­to­ry over the British Vir­gin Is­lands last week.

Coop­er is still in search of his best per­for­mance de­spite his charges’ 9-0 and 3-1 wins, say­ing he thought they could have been much bet­ter. Coop­er wants his charges to as­sess the game quick­ly on the field, not­ing that coach­es would set out game plans but the play­ers are the ones to dic­tate the game when they go out on the pitch.

He de­scribed the Cos­ta Ri­cans as a dy­nam­ic group of play­ers who are al­so ex­pe­ri­enced. Coop­er said on­ly an all-round per­for­mance by his team will earn them the re­quired re­sult tonight.

To­day’s match­es

Group A

An­guil­la vs Cu­ra­coa, 3 pm

Cana­da vs Bermu­da, 8 pm

Group B

British Vir­gin Is­lands vs Guyana, 6 pm

Cos­ta Ri­ca vs T&T, 9 pm

Group C

Be­lize vs Bar­ba­dos, 2 pm

Mex­i­co vs Nicaragua, 5 pm

Group E

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da vs St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, 6 pm

Haiti vs Guatemala, 9 pm

Group B stand­ings

Pos Team MP W D L Gf Ga +/- Pts

1 Cos­ta Ri­ca 3 2 1 0 19 2 17 7

2 T&T 3 2 1 0 13 2 11 7

3 Guyana 3 1 2 0 6 3 3 5

4 British V I 3 1 0 2 5 8 -3 3

5 Sint Maarten 4 0 0 4 0 28 -28 0