Warriors must beat Cubans

TRINIDAD and Tobago footballers will attempt to bounce back from Sunday’s opening 2-1 defeat to Jamaica with a convincing win over Cuba in today’s Digicel Caribbean Cup encounter at the National Stadium in Barbados. The Soca Warriors, despite pushing the Jamaicans to the wall came out wounded as defender Marlon Rojas has been ruled out of the remainder of the tournament with a hamstring injury. Also midfielder David Nakhid had to withdraw at half-time with a gash above his eye sustained from a clash of heads. Nakhid complained of dizzy spells but is expected to be ready for today’s match while Nigel Pierre had the look of a wounded boxer at half-time as a Jamaican hand made full contact leaving him with a closed swollen left eye.

The swelling had not receded up until the team’s afternoon training session at the Police Grounds yesterday. Head coach Bertille St Clair didnot spare his players from some stern words in the team meeting at the Grand Barbados Beach Resort after the match. The mood in the TT camp was dismal but by midday yesterday, skipper Angus Eve and company were getting their spirits up ahead of the Cuba fixture. “I thought there was a lapse in concentration and we gave up two soft goals which we definitely cannot afford to be doing at this stage,” St Clair said. “It’s always difficult to come back from there. We showed some fight by getting a goal back but when we were supposed to go for the kill when we had them on the back foot, we failed to make enough penetration.

And we didn’t maintain that sort of patience by keeping the ball and knocking it around but instead we kept running and playing it over like they were doing,” he said. Looking ahead to the rest of tournament which continues with a 6 pm clash with the Cubans on today, St Clair said: “We definitely have to pick ourselves from here because we cannot afford to take a similar approach against Cuba. We showed today that once we play our kind of football which is to keep the ball and work it into their half, then we can pose problems and I think once we can keep it tight rather than give up early goals and then pick up the pace in attack, then we definitely can get the results we want to achieve.”

Nakhid meanwhile said the Jamaica match was significant going into the remaining World Cup qualifying matches. “You don’t get a bigger match like Trinidad versus Jamaica in the Caribbean and maybe even in CONCACAF in terms of the competitiveness. So this was a really good test for us to see which players can step up for the higher test in the World Cup matches,” Nakhid said. “The match was important from that standpoint and we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture which is really the World Cup. We will be happy with some and disappointed with others.” Nakhid said.