International Career - Trinidad & Tobago

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CMurray04

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Intro


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Hey! So I just started a club career story with Macclesfield ( http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...-stories/372838-club-career-macclesfield.html ), and wanted to do an international career to go alongside it. I personally feel as though international management is often overlooked in FM, and I love it! Some of my best memories have come from this side of the game, including taking Ireland to the final of Euro 2016, taking Norway to the knockout stages of World Cup 2018, and winning the WC 2026 with Uruguay!

I chose Trinidad & Tobago for a bit of a challenge. On FM17 I had a career with Jamaica (got them to WC in 2022 and won the Carribean Championship in 2018) which I really enjoyed, and so North America seems like a good option again. We've got some decent players, and a young starlet (on the Jamaica career I enjoyed developing Leon Bailey a lot). Hope you enjoy it!

We start in June 2017, and I'll probably do an update every 4 months. We're already out of WC2018 qualifying unfortunately, failing to get to the 5th and final round of the CONCACAF competition after finishing an embarrassing 3rd in our 4th round grouo behind U.S.A. and Guatemala. We've got the Carribean Championship in 2018 as our first major tournament, the the Gold Cup in 2019, so it's going to be a busy couple of years!

Anyway, I've played our first game against French Guyana, who're unranked but actually have some very good players such as Privat and Ludovic Baal who both play in the French top flight.

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We played at home, although we had to travel to the town of Sangre Grande in the north-east of the island (population approx. 16,000), rather than playing in the capital city. The stadium was small but it was nice to play our football in a different part of the country. We also gave a debut to 22 year old midfielder Duane Muckette who looks like he could be a useful player for us in the future. It was Kevin Molino, who plays in the MLS, who got the late winner for us after a poor performance though, scoring his 19th international goal.

Coming up in the next update we'll do September 2017-December 2017. In that time we'll have three more friendlies starting with Barbados. I'm starting out playing a 4-3-2-1 with a DM, 2 CMs and two wingers. Feel free to check out my Macclesfield career mode too!

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Late 2017

Hey everyone! Soooo we've just finished going through the last four months of 2017, as we step up in our preparations for next year's Carribean Championship. Now, if you don't know much about how the tournaments work in this region (wouldn't blame you!), you essentially have the Carribean Championship and the CentroAmerican Championship, with teams from those respective regions participating. As well as a trophy being on offer obviously, they have added importance because they serve as the method for deciding who qualifies for the North American Gold Cup, which is sort of the equivalent of the European Championship. So basically, we need to get to the semi-final to guarantee ourselves a spot in the Gold Cup 2019, and with teams like Jamaica, Haiti and real-life champs Curacao in the mix, it's going to be a tough one.

Anyway, enough of that. Here's some matches! We played 4 more friendlies, all against weaker opposition. We were meant to play Honduras just before Nicaragua, but it had to be cancelled due to their involvement in the World Cup playoffs against Saudi Arabia.

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We picked up where we left off against Barbados here with a strong 3-0 victory at Skinner Park in the western city of San Fernando (population approx. 49,000) in which legend Kenwyne Jones (you may remember him from Stoke City a few years ago) scored his 24th and 25th goals for the country. Levi Garcia, our young 19 year old starlet from AZ Alkmaar got POM which I was thrilled about.


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A strange game at home to St. Kitts and Nevis in Arima (population approx. 32,000) - a team who had Brentford's £3,000,000 rated winger Romaine Sawyers in their side. We got the win eventually, but only scored one goal from 28 shots. We were entirely dominant but I was left slightly concerned about our finishing. Still, 3 wins from 3.

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The thing that pleased me most about our 4-2 win in Nassau against Barbados was the brace Levi Garcia (our most promising young player) scored to win us the game. It was nice to make it 4/4 wins too.

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A tougher match away to Nicaragua saw us dominate the game, but miss plenty of chances before conceding a 92nd minute goal. Our perfect record ends before the year does unfortunately, but I still take heart from the performance, and another goal scored by Levi Garcia! He's now got 5 goals in 10 caps at the age of 19 which is pretty good going! He's also playing in the starting 11 in the Eredivisie for AZ Alkmaar, so it wouldn't surprise me if he just keeps getting better and better.

That's it for now! In the next update we'll do the first part of 2018, including friendlies against Canada and Dominica, and the entire 1st ground group of the Carribean Championship.

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Early 2018

Welcome back to our Trinidad & Tobago career. We did the first four months of 2018, and in an interesting turn of events Levi Garcia (our star 20 year old winger) was attracting interest from none other than Inter Milan in the Janurary transfer window, although they obviousuly weren't willing to pay his £10M release clause as he stayed at AZ Alkmaar for the rest of the season. Anyhow, we started off with a warm-up game against Canada in the week before our Carribean Championship campaign started!

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Now, Canada are probably a better team on paper, but we had a higher world ranking and home advantage as we did well to hold them to a 0-0 draw in Sangre Grande. I was worried about Burnley midfielder Scott Arfield (valued at over £10M), but we contained him well. A good result I reckon, and we were confident going into the 1st round of the Carribean Championship.

Now, I'll briefly explain how it works. You have the 1st, 2nd and 3rd rounds all formatted into group stages. In the 1st round, where we start off, there are 3 teams in each of 7 groups, and each team plays 2 games (one each against the other teams, with one at home and one away). The top two teams in each group progress to the 2nd round, and 3rd place is eliminated. The other slight quirk here is that there are no draws, despite it being in a league table format.A win is worth 3 points, and a match will be decided by extra time and penalties to decide who gets it. Off we go!

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A good first result and one that practically ensures our qualification - although that was never really in question with us being far superior to the other two teams. It helped that they were missing their best player, Millwall's Mahlon Romeo.Young forward Rundell Winchester got his first two international goals, and Levi Garcia added to his tally as well. Very pleased!

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This match against the Turks and Caicos Islands was the first game we'd actually played at our main home stadium, the Hasely Crawford Stadium, in capital city Port of Spain (population approx. 128,000). Over 10,000 fans turned up at the 25,000 capacity ground to see us dominate the game, having 35 shots and scoring 4 goals. Molino got a first half hattrick before going off injured, but what a performance from him! Was disappointed with Rundell Winchester, who had 13 shots, and scored no goals. Still, 6/6 points from the 1st Round, and we progress to Round 2, where you'd expect the teams to be slightly more difficult.

The draw we got matched us, coincidentally, against two teams we've played before, Antigua and Barbuda (who were in our first round group, that was the 3-1 away win), and French Guiana, our opposition in the first friendly we took charge of where we ran out 1-0 winners. They have some good players, so that match is far from a foregone conclusion. We'll bring it to you next time, along with a huge friendly away to Costa Rica in what will be our biggest test yet. Worth noting that we're unbeaten in our first 8 matches!

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Mid 2018

So, May, June, July and August saw us play our two group matches in the 2nd round of the Carribean Champiosnhip as well as a friendly against Costa Rica.

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The format and rules are the same as in the first round, except that only the top team from each group automatically progresses, whilst the 4 best 2nd placed teams go through as well. We started off with what should have been an easy game at home to Antigua and Barbuda, who we beat 3-1 in our 1st round group. However, they took an early lead and held it for most of the match despite relentless pressure from our boys, until Levi Garcia finally broke through late on. We had to go into extra time to get the winner, but we in 2-1 in the end.

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With 3 points from our first game, we have a tricky second match away to French Guiana, who have some really decent players. We struggle to a 0-0 draw, but manage to win in a tense penalty shootout, as veteran striker Kenwyne Jones scores the winning penalty. 6 points again from our 2 games, and we progress to the 3rd round.

View attachment 48414Here are the results of the 3rd round draw. It was a tense moment and we were desperately hoping to avoid Jamaica, Curacao, and Haiti - all strong teams. Fortunately, we get one of the easiest draws possible at this stage, facing 2 teams who finished 2nd in their 2nd round groups and who are ranked 162nd and 164th in the world rankings. However, only the winners progress to the final stages of the competition, so there's no guarantees.

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Finally, we played a tough friendly away to Costa Rica, which we narrowly lost 1-0. It was a good performance though and we largely matched them. If we have ambitions to qualify for the 2022 World Cup we need to perform against sides like this.

See you in the next update where I'll bring you the last 4 months of 2018, including the Caribbean Championship 3rd round matches, as well as friendlies against Jamaica and Venezuela.

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Late 2018

Welcome back to our Trinidad and Tobago career! We've just played through the last four months of 2018, which contained 4 friendlies and our 2 Carribean Championship 3rd round games.

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We start off by travelling to the Trelawny Stadium in Falmouth to play Jamaica away. We knew they were a better team coming into this, having made it to the last round of the world cup Quals, but we didn't expect to get beaten quite as badly as we did! Best move on from this 4-1 humbling.

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Much better today as we travelled to Venezuela for another really tough friendly. We matched them in the game, but unfortunately they just took their chances better and ran out 2-0 winners. A good performance ahead of our Caribbean Cup matches.

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Oh dear... An absolutely dreadful result as we lost 2-1 away to St Lucia. With only the winners qualifying from the group for the semi-final, and Barbados having beaten St Lucia in the other game, we now must beat Barbados by at least 2 goals in order to overtake St Lucia on goal difference and win the group. The next game is going to be massive.


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And we do it! We won 3-0 and we only needed to win by 2 goals to win the group. A really close call but we do qualify for the final stages next summer and meet our targets. From the other 3 groups, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba qualified. Current holders Curacao were beaten by Haiti finishing just 2nd in their group. Obviously, Jamaica are the favourites, and Cuba are the surprise package, with ourselves and Haiti fairly close in quality. The final stages will be played in the host nation, St. Kitts and Nevis, who finished 2nd in their group behind Jamaica, failing to qualify.

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So we've drawn Jamaica in the semi-final, to be played in St. Kitts and Nevis. A really tough draw, but we'll just have to see. The other semi-final is Haiti v. Cuba.

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A decent result at home to a Colombia side who should be trashing us. We managed to score after 18 seconds, but Colombia's quality eventually showed and they got the win. Still, not too bad.


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The final match of 2018 for us was a friendly away to Peurto Rico which we narrowly won 2-1. Kevin Molino continues his good goalscoring form for us but ultimately this was closer than I would have liked!

So, in the next update we'll play until 1st May 2019. We'll be preparing for a big summer, in which we'll play the final stages of the Carribbean Championship as well as the Gold Cup, which we've now qualified for. We'll have the draw for the grorup stages of that competition in April, as well as our draw for the 2022 World Cup Qualifying Section 2nd Round.

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