Coach St Clair sees hope in stalemate

Trinidad and Tobago football coach Bertille St Clair would have preferred a victory under his belt in his first match back as national coach. However he has described the local performance in Tuesday’s 1-1 draw with the Brazilian All Stars as “promising.”

For St Clair, the showing by skipper Angus Eve and his team-mates in front of one of the largest crowd a national team has played in some time was one which gave him the chance to see where some of the weak points lie, now he intends to improve on these as the campaign continues.

Asked to comment on what transpired on the pitch, St Clair’s initial response was: “I feel good but a little bit sad because I felt we should not have given up a goal with 15 minutes to go. My disappointment is that I tried  to give everyone a game but the guys I brought off the bench didn’t give us the sort of performance we expected so that changed the whole rhythm. All in all I think the performance was a promising one.”

St Clair’s last match in charge of a national team saw the Under-20s overcome the Brazilians 4-2 in 1991 and he hopes the current batch can take something away from the affair which was well complimented by an overwhelming response from the fans in the midst of the Carnival festivities.

“I hope the guys will learn from the experience and we can just move on from here and keep the momentum going for the rest of matches coming up. I think the response we got from the fans was good and we want to thank them for the support and we need it to continue for the remainder of the campaign,” St Clair added.

He felt that the “Soca Warriors” allowed the Brazilians to play too much of the game at their own pace and as such TT should have capitalised more on the chances on goal.  “We got carried away by the Brazilians holding up the ball and playing it around and that made us drop to their pace. Then at times we picked up our pace and when we had them to kill, we gave up the chances to score some easy goals. There are a lot of things to work on like our first touch, the pace of the game and our finishing but I won’t come down too heavy on the guys because they are all coming off a long season,” St Clair said.

Meantime, star striker Stern John was pleased with the response of the fans which contributed to a an energising and fun-filled atmosphere at the venue. “For a long time I haven’t felt like this playing at home,” John said. “It was really good to see the fans coming out and everyone enjoying the game and I think the TTFF and the organisers deserve some credit for pulling this one off,” John said.

“We need to realise that football is an event and it’s not just about two teams playing on the pitch. The people must feel they are coming to a show and can enjoy other things that are not just happening on the field. And I think once we the players can put out a good performance on the pitch the fans will want to always come out. What we saw out there was a really good start to the campaign,” John added.

Regarding the performance of the team, the former Columbus Crew man didn’t see any major reasons for worry. “Overall the team didn’t do too badly, even though we were playing against players who have past their glory days, I think you can never underestimate any Brazilian team. We just need to build on this and hopefully a few more matches and proper training will get us to the point where we are playing football that can see us winning matches.”

St Clair will continue sessions with the locally-based professionals while overseas pros Stern John, Marvin Andrews, Clayton Ince and Carlos Edwards were scheduled to return to London yesterday.