John slams TT ‘pretty boys’

Trinidad and Tobago’s stand-in captain Stern John has admitted that a lacklustre effort was the cause for their 3-1 defeat against Cuba in their final CFU Group “B” Gold Cup qualifying football match on Sunday.

The 25-year-old striker who netted three goals in as many matches, was furious with his team-mates inside the dressing room following the match. While not pointing fingers, John confessed that the entire team would have to shoulder the blame for  the loss which now puts them into the playoffs with Honduras and Martin-ique from April 23-27. The top two teams will then advance to the Gold Cup finals. “You can’t teach gamesmanship to professionals. How manyof us went in with tackles, how many of us got yellow cards. This is football fellas, this is a man’s game. Ask ‘Dog’  how much buss head he got in Scotland.

“It’s all about life and death when you go out there. We are only trying to play pretty boy football. No one tackling and no one getting yellow card, no one fighting the game. And now we will walk away saying that we are into the playoffs and we will get more money next time. “This is nonsense fellas and it isn’t good enough. We can’t just turn our backs and walk away and then come again. We need more communication and these things you can’t teach players,” John said inside the TT dressing room as the team engaged in their post match discussions.

The Birmingham City striker, who sustained a cut to the head during the game, told his teammates in the presence of coach Hannibal Najjar and his technical staff that in order for TT to achieve, more commitment is required. “Everybody feel they’re too big to talk to each other but this is a team game. If you don’t want anyone to talk to you, go and play golf. No one man is an island. Come on fellas, is years I playing  football and it’s  the same thing over and over. “ We have to step up. This is serious times. This is my life I’m talking about here. Some others might have something to fall back on but this is my life and if we have to reach anywhere, we have to eat, breathe and sleep football. “We have to be able to work hard and think hard. This is not about money. Everything will come in time but we can’t worry about that. We won’t get paid because we haven’t won anything. When last we won something fellas? We have to win something first and then ask for stuff after. Forget everything now and we just have to start all over again. Now we have a mountain to climb,” he said.

The former Colum-bus Crew striker said: “If it’s one thing I hate to see is when we lose like we did today. We need to be more serious. That was our match for the taking today. We got the start we wanted but we let it slip away. Now we have to go into a playoffs and we’ve just made it harder for ourselves.” Livingston defender and first captain Marvin Andrews echoed similar sentiments. “We see what football is about. We just can’t wait for things to happen if we want to play at the highest level. We now have to pick ourselves up and go again. ”As Stern said, this is not about money. You don’t get prizes if you don’t win anything. No one wants to hear about losers. As we go back to our respective homes, let’s watch ourselves in the mirror and let’s work on what we have to work on mentally or physically,”  Andrews said in the dressing room. Coach Najjar admitted that TT were outplayed. “We were soundly beaten today by a team in every department of football. I was out-coached, we were out-prepared and outplayed. It’s  a fact that we were beaten in terms of fitness as well”.