On the heels of a fighting 1-1 draw against Trinidad and Tobago on Friday last, Guyana’s National Under-17 football team, the Junior Jaguars will now be looking for their first win in the CONCACAF U17 Qualifiers, as they take on St Maarten in their second group game today.
The Junior Jags will come up against St Maarten at the Estadio Nacional in Costa Rica from 18:00h this evening. Reflecting on their first outing in the tournament, Head Coach Marco Bonofiglio expressed his contentment with the result.
Marco Bonofiglio
“There’re many positives that we can take away from this first match against Trinidad and Tobago. They showed very good signs of being a very strong team. Having said that, our boys battled to the point where we held our objectives that we worked on in training camp. I thought there were many positives to take away from the game on how we were able to manage the stress, manage the opportunities, deal with objectives that we held and move to an amazing, positive result,” Bonfiglio shared in an invited comment.
Detailing some of the areas that the team worked on in their three-day break before their upcoming game, the Head Coach assured that the U17 team is “strong, hungry and looking for three points”.
“Looking into the improvements that have to be made for the next match, I think it comes down now to the recovery that we’ve had a couple of days and us getting sharp in those moments where we know we can hurt other teams as well,” the Coach added.
Bonofiglio went on to share the team’s mindset heading into today’s battle, “So, the mindset of the boys right now is we’re going to create another record. Our objective is to win our first match and we’re looking to put all the cards on the table, all the objectives being hit, executing to the point where we get our first win and I think that’s the mindset right now. We have a strong, hungry team looking for three points as we look forward to tomorrow’s [today’s] match against St Maarten.”
The Junior Jags are in Group B of the CONCACAF U17 Qualifiers alongside hosts Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, British Virgin Islands and St Maarten. The eight group winners in the CONCACAF Qualifiers will each secure a spot in the FIFA U17 World Cup, scheduled for Qatar in November 2025.
