TORTOLA — After playing the U.S. Virgin Islands to a 1-1 draw Friday on St. Croix, the British Virgin Islands’ senior men’s national soccer team seeks to do something it hasn’t done in 28 years — win a CONCACAF Qualifier for the FIFA World Cup match.
The USVI’s Dashing Eagles and the BVI’s Nature Boyz will face off at 3 p.m. today at the A.O. Shirley Recreation Grounds in the “Virgin Islands Classic II.”
There’s a lot on the line in today’s match between the U.S. Virgin Islands (No. 208 in the latest FIFA world rankings) and the British Virgin Islands (No. 207).
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The winner advances to Group E in the second round of the CONCACAF Qualifiers, with matches against Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Jamaica set for June 2024 and June 2025.
If the match ends up in a draw — like what happened Friday, thanks to goals by USVI midfielder Jeff Blaschka in the 73rd minute, and BVI forward Hugo Liziario two minutes into stoppage time — then FIFA’s tiebreaker rules come into play.
One of the tiebreaker rules for aggregate matches is the “away goal rule,” which gives goals by the away team double value. So if today’s match ends in a scoreless tie, the BVI would advance based on a final 2-1 aggregate score.
If the match ends tied 1-all at the end of regulation play — which would be 3-all under the away goal rules — then it would move into overtime, and then into a penalty kick shootout if still tied.
But if the match is tied 2-all (or more) at the end of regulation, then the U.S. Virgin Islands would advance under another FIFA tiebreaker rule — most away goals scored.
So it’s simple for both teams — win and you’re in.
“We need to win,” British Virgin Islands head coach Chris Kiwomya told The Daily News. “We need to play with our heads in and our hearts. We need to attack them and we need to play with a bit of knowledge to beat this team.
“They’re a decent team. We don’t underestimate them. We’ll have to be at our best to win this game and hopefully, we will be.”
The BVI holds a 3-2-3 edge in the all-time series against the USVI, but all of the Nature Boyz’ wins (and a pair of draws) came in international “friendlies.” But Friday’s 1-all tie was the first time the BVI had finished even with the USVI, who had won the two previous World Cup qualifiers — albeit played nearly 13 years ago.
The last time both teams met at the A.O. Shirley Grounds was on July 11, 2011, when the USVI competed a sweep of its World Cup qualifying series with a 2-1 victory over the BVI.
“Now that we have played them, we have a better idea of the players and the formations, the coaching staff has a better idea of what to do on Tuesday,” British Virgin Islands captain Kavon “Troy” Caesar said after Sunday’s training.
“We came out here and fixed some things that needed to be fixed because the goal that scored on us on Friday, to us, it was a lucky goal. We were well grounded defensively. It was just a mishap that happened during the game that caused them to score the goal. However, we dug in deep and scored the equalizer.
“That put us in a good position — not the position we’d like to be in at this moment in time — so on Tuesday when we go out there and finish the game convincingly, so we could go through and play the bigger teams during the other windows.”
USVI head coach Gilberto “Giba” Damiano told The Daily News that he’s looking for what they have been looking for since he began coaching the team — finding the right ways to get everyone out of their seats.
“We’ll still play the same style which is trying to keep the ball, wait for the right opportunities to go forward in a way where the players can create opportunities every second of the game,” Damiano said.
“That’s what we’re going to do and it’s going to be very similar to the first game. We had a feeling of how the grass is and all the players are very happy with how the ball moved, so we’ll try our best to keep getting everyone in the stadium off their seats with excitement.”
And since it’s basically a “winner takes all” match, that adds something extra for both teams.
“That’s what making this game even more exciting, knowing that they are coming to change this going a long time without winning a World Cup qualifier and we are going with our own reasons,” Damiano said.
“To me, this makes the game more exciting for everyone. It’s going to be a good game. Each team will play as fair as possible, respect each other and at the end of the day, the best team will end up winning.”
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